A recent article in Nature Chemistry by Woelfle et al. describe a fascinating new way of doing science in the open. This paper describe an 'open science' research project in organic chemistry, which would be just like having your daily notebook published openly on the web. A Faculty of 1000 evaluation compare the classical way of doing science with building cathedrals:
... scientific progress, just like the erection of a splendid cathedral, is often a slow meandering process, riddled with challenging problems requiring the technical skills of a few highly trained experts.
The Woelfle et al. paper offers a remarkable and unexpected alternative to the building of cathedrals. The work was performed in full view of the public eye, with progress, data, results, analyses and manuscript drafts being posted online as they were generated (the synaptic leap).
This is related to the polymath project where mathematicians collaborated massively to solve a previously intractable problem. This is related to doing science online which was enlightening for me and one of the motivation behind this blog. This is in the line of what I intend to do with this blog. So come on, let's go, let us build cathedrals in the open.
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