Serious Science

http://serious-science.org

by agrostis • 13 years ago

79 26 13 years ago

serious-science.org

A science popularization site featuring researchers giving video talks about their respective areas of study.

(Russian readers of HN might happen to know the site postnauka.ru, of which this is an English-language spin-off.)

ivarrr7• 13 years ago

thumbs up!

jesuscrust• 13 years ago

It's called "serious science" but its articles don't even cite sources for their claims. So it's actually less serious than wikipedia. Why should anyone use this over wikipedia?

ivarrr7• 13 years ago

I guess cauz it provides knowledge directly from scientists

jasallen2• 13 years ago

That would be our high priest caste of "scientist" from which all knowing is given. We needn't evidence or studies, people, the 'scientists' said it is so.

(FWIW, not a commentary on source link, just on parent comment)

alan_cx• 13 years ago

Does the phrase "cite source troll" exist?

lake99• 13 years ago

Some people [1] [2], have coined "Citation Nazi" , analogous to Grammar Nazi.

[1] http://www.bigbible.org/blog/2008/05/citation-nazis-get-u2_0...

[2] http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2998

pervycreeper• 13 years ago

Why should anyone use this over wikipedia?

A better comparison would be one with mainstream science journalism.

toufka2• 13 years ago

I don't think this is a serious question here. On the other hand, I think it's an intriguing question in general.

There is nearly no way for a PI (head scientist) to cite everything that they say. Knowledge at the forefront is cobbled together from little whispers, tastes of failed experiments, hearings-ons from colleagues, intuition, guesses and literally decades of thinking. And so when speaking abstractly (as these videos are), they are often less wrong than anyone else (Clapper, this is how you use that term...). If you were to press them on specifics, they would become mostly correct and dig up where they got that nugget of wisdom, though simultaneously losing much of the power of generalization. In that sense - the generalities are always slightly suspect, but of far greater quality than anyone else's generalities. And usually the generalities you'd like to hear about from the cutting edge are those that there is no consensus about anyway.

So in that respect, I'd say the generalizations of cutting edge scientists are usually the least wrong, rarely perfect, always insightful, and nearly impossible to source. They are the tenuous 'hypothesis' writ large to which their career is attesting. Citation of such is nearly a moot point, as no generalizable experiments yet exist.

On the other hand it'd be a great resource if they listed to the side a paper or review about some of the stuff they just spoke of. It'd be trivial for them to name a paper or two that they find dominating their perspectives here.

ivarrr7• 13 years ago

it'd be a great resource if they listed to the side a paper or review about some of the stuff they just spoke of.

Great idea! We'll put it unto the to-do list.

hengheng• 13 years ago

I kinda want this as a Podcast. Or do you monetize exclusively via YouTube?

PS: Also the "subscribe" page can, for now, just link to the youtube channel. At least I could subscribe there.

patrickyeon• 13 years ago

So do I, and I wonder if there's a more reasonable way to monetize this than youtube (assuming it's meant to make money). I'd much rather sign up for an RSS podcast than set up a cronjob to download the video and rip the audio (which would also mean no money from youtube for them).

ivarrr7• 13 years ago

No, we do not expect to monetize it this way. We will open mp3-podcast later.

possibilistic• 13 years ago

My roommate and I are working on a very similar video series. We have a differet angle (short breadth survey => depth on a novel or interesting discovery or inquiry; informed by paper review, but no PIs.)

I'll watch how you guys evolve closely.

Good job.

ivarrr7• 13 years ago

thanx!

a_olt• 13 years ago

Just wondering, do you know about http://edge.org ? They also do something similar.

renox• 13 years ago

I don't get the point of videos here, it doesn't seem to bring much benefit and text would be much faster to read..

Serious Science

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