"Wikipedia with quality control"

[kristopher]

http://www.earthportal.org/

About the EarthPortal

The Earth Portal is a comprehensive resource for timely, objective, science-based information about the environment. It is a means for the global scientific community to come together to produce the first free, expert-driven, massively scaleable information resource on the environment, and to engage civil society in a public dialogue on the role of environmental issues in human affairs. It contains no commercial advertising and reaches a large global audience.

The Earth Portal has three components:

1. The Encyclopedia of Earth, with over 3,500 articles, is produced and reviewed by 1,000 scholars from 60 countries.
2. The EarthForum provides commentary from scholars and discussions with the general public.
3. The EarthNews offers news stories on environmental issues drawn from many sources.


Scope of the Earth Portal

The scope of the Earth Portal is the environment of the Earth broadly defined, with particular emphasis on the interaction between society and the natural spheres of the Earth. The scope of the Earth Portal thus includes:

* The hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, magnetosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere, and their interactions, especially in regards to how these systems support life and underpin human existence.
* The living organisms on Earth that constitute its biological diversity.
* The interactions and feedbacks among society, biological diversity and the physical systems of the Earth. This includes the social, economic, political, behavioral, technical, cultural, legal, and ethical driving forces behind environmental change.
* Those parts of traditional disciplines that investigate the environment or its interaction with society. This includes the natural, physical, and social sciences, the arts and humanities, and the professional disciplines (education, journalism, business, law, public health, engineering, medicine, public policy).
* The interdisciplinary fields of environmental science—natural and social—that integrate concepts, methods, and analytical tools from multiple fields in the investigation of the environment or its interaction with society. Examples include:

– Environmental physical sciences such as atmospheric sciences, Earth systems science, remote sensing, biogeochemistry, oceanography, and other non-biological terrestrial sciences.
– Environmental life sciences such as environmental biology, ecology, forestry, fisheries, marine biology, agriculture, aquaculture, and related fields.
– Environmental engineering and other sciences related to the impacts of natural and anthropogenic activities on the environment, including assessment, prevention, control, regulation, remediation, and restoration.
– Environmental social sciences such as ecological and environmental economics, environmental sociology and history, and other fields that study human social and cultural activities which affect, and are affected by, environmental conditions.
– Environmental data and information sciences that deal with the collection, storage, standardization, integration, analysis, and management of data related to the analysis of the environment or environmental change.


The People and Institutions Behind the Earth Portal

All material in the Earth Portal is approved the Stewardship Committee of the Environmental Information Coalition (EIC), the governing body for the Earth Portal. The EIC is comprised of a diverse group of respected scientists and educators, and the organizations, agencies, and institutions for which they work. The EIC defines the roles and responsibilities for individuals and institutions involved in the Coalition, as well as the editorial guidelines for the EarthForum, EarthNews, and the Encyclopedia of Earth.

The EIC is governed by its own set of bylaws and an International Advisory Board with renowned scholars from diverse fields.

The Secretariat for the EIC is the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE),
Washington D.C., USA. NCSE is a 501(c)(3)non-profit organization with a reputation for objectivity, responsibility, and achievement in its promotion of a scientific basis for environmental decision-making. The Department of Geography and Environment and the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University also provide administrative support.

The Earth Portal was created with ManyOne Networks, a company to be owned and governed by the non-profit ManyOne Foundation. ManyOne is building a Public Internet Media Service—a service that empowers non-profits, companies, agencies, and individuals to build and operate financially self-sustaining web portals and communities.

[Cleita]

1. K&R

Thanks.

[papau]

2. Best of luck to them-but "Wikipedia with quality control"ignores the army of wiki editors/reviewers

[kristopher]

3. But at EarthPortal the "army" is screened and their work reviewed.

You want everyone to get ACCURATE information, don't you?

[papau]

5. LOL - the folks editing a topic at wiki are indeed experts in their field-but thanks for the concern

[bluedawg12]

21. FYI papua was TS'ed this AM n/t

[NNadir]

7. Who's judging "accurate?"

You?

Given that you belong to the 4082 > 4285 cult, is there some special reason that we should rely on you for an interpretation of what is and is not accurate?

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/ELECTRICITY_GEN_1983-2006.XLS

I mean, I realize that in your exceptional mind, the IEA and the Working Group of the International Panel on Climate Control don't exist because you didn't mention them

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=155541&mesg_id=155664

and of course, they are not to be trusted, because you say so and they don't agree with you, even if they are internationally respected organizations collecting data from tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of energy professional around the world but still...

I personally couldn't care less what you think is "accurate." I passed 5th grade math, and I am thus qualified to state categorically my opinion that you couldn't do as much.

Basically, it's pretty clear that if you don't like the data, you just make stuff up and don't even bother to list a source. That, of course, is the essence of dogmatism.

[wtmusic]

10. But...but...no. This is DIFFERENT.

This is loads and loads of really SMART people...you know, the ones who always kicked your ass on tests and made you feel bad. I mean, people with six, seven, twenty-two degrees from some of the biggest colleges in the world.

If I were you, I wouldn't bet that all those smart people were wrong.

[bhikkhu]

4. Thanks for that

I think highly of Wikipedia, but multiple sources and peer review are very good things. I've got it bookmarked now.

[wtmusic]

6. Read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

and you will get an inkling of why "quality" is nigh impossible to define, as well as why one should maintain a healthy skepticism of anyone who tries.

Who gets to pick who's on the EIC Stewardship Committee? Do I have to accept his/her/their definition of quality? :shrug:

[kristopher]

8. Sophistry. nt

[kristopher]

9. Interesting isn't it.

How the die hard proponents of nuclear power reject quality control in science related information?

[wtmusic]

11. Nah, we just reject "control" of any information

as any good scientist does. It gets kinda icky and incestuous.

Look at what happened in 1905. All those smart people at the Berlin Academy of Sciences couldn't control that patent clerk from Ulm.

[kristopher]

12. Right, peer review is such a flawed process...

[Nederland]

13. Question

Do you always accept the conclusions of papers that come out of a peer reviewed process?

[kristopher]

14. No, I don't.

However, it is a process that produces more consistently valid information than any other.

[Nederland]

15. Another question

If two peer reviewed papers come to contradictory conclusions, what process do you use to resolve the conflict?

[kristopher]

16. What is the purpose of your hypotheticals?

I can't answer that question until I know what you are trying to get at. It is too broad based. For example, am I a peer in this process, am I a layperson, or am I an expert in a related field?

[Nederland]

17. You are a lay person

Trying to figure out the truth.

[kristopher]

18. I asked your purpose. nt

[wtmusic]

19. Why does it matter?

Why someone seeks understanding is irrelevant.

[Nederland]

20. My purpose

...is to better understand your Epistemology. I find it easier to discuss things with people once you understand how they think.

[kristopher]

22. Then to address your question

What is the probability of a lay person confronting the dilemma you offer? The function is usually performed by popular science press outlets. That doesn't speak to the accuracy of those outlets; it is often abysmal.
The problem is compounded by several factors but it is precisely the goal of EarthPortal to help address the information deficit and deliberate misinformation that confronts laypeople. I'm not a sposeperson for the group, but it seems like a good concept.

[bluedawg12]

23. Attack on peer review is interesting- it is the same argument the RW

used in attacking global climate change. They claimed that it is "consensus" science.

If you have two papers that are peer reviewed and they conflict in their conclusions, that means nothing about peer review being right or wrong, it signals uncertainty in a scientific topic, which is common, and it tells researchers to go back to the bench.

Peer review ain't perfect, because science ain't perfect, but it still beats pseudo-scientific gibberish that gets put out for mass consumption when there is no peer review behind a paper.


And yeah scientists have their bias and yeah research is funded by possible conflicting interests, but at least in peer review the science is debated by those trained in a field, and conflicts of interests have to be disclosed in reputable journals.

Then, we all have to read the papers critically for ourselves.

[wtmusic]

25. This isn't open peer review.

It's peer review where the "peers" are selected by a panel.

Kinda negates the purpose, don't you think?

[kristopher]

26. That is how it is usually done.

You submit an article and the journal selects reviewers.

[wtmusic]

27. What journal?

Peer review is when research is submitted to the scientific community. Anyone and everyone can review it and subsequently publish their opinions.

The process works in large part because it has no oversight. The lame work gets ignored, the stuff that makes sense attracts interest.

[kristopher]

28. You don't understand the system.

Peer review is what you say, however it begins as I described. The method of submission "to the scientific community" is via journal articles. The board at the journal and independent experts selected by them are the first line of "peer review".

[wtmusic]

29. Publication in journals is one way.

Research appears at symposia, in online forums, on personal websites.

A revolutionary grand unified theory in physics appeared last November on the website of its author, and has never been published by a journal.

[kristopher]

30. Why do you suppose that is?

Even extreme opinions get published. Hell, the more controversial the better. But the arguments presented must meet the basic requirements of validity. If something (metaphorically) relies on 2+2 equaling 5, then it probably would have a difficult time being published.

[bluedawg12]

31. there are many ways to present scientific ideas

and seminars are among them as is on line blogging.

but for the scientific community the gold standard is to have a preselected panel of editoral reviewers go over the paper for basic checks on methodology- before the paper is published.

The readership at large is welcome then to comment on the article and even question the author(s).

However, for a counter idea or theory to be established, one which may actually discredit the preceeding paper's conclusions, that too would have to be in some peer reviewed journal.

Peer review is not over sight, nor is it censorship. It is what I expect when reading a journal article- especially something out of my field, that a panel of similarly trained exeperts has read to paper and agreed that it uses sound methodology before it is published.

It prevents chaos theory from taking over! LOL.

I will be blogging on my very own Grand Unified Theory of the Universe- and I will even explain gravity--however, if you believe it--LMAO. because it would not be peer reviewed.

-Dawg

[wtmusic]

32. Big distinction: journal(s)

OP is suggesting that one entity is allowed to pick the panel.

That is oversight, and it doesn't happen that way in the real world. Multiple journals and multiple boards make different decisions based on different criteria.

BTW the GUT I alluded to has received plenty of peer review online and off. Unfortunately many career students still cling to the antiquated notion that anything of value must be printed on paper.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/dn12891-is-mathematical-pattern-the-theory-of-everything.html

[bluedawg12]

33. Every entity picks it's own editorial review panel

this one appears to have picked it's own, as well.

That doesn't ring any alarms with me.

The issues for me would be:

a.) Are they qualified experts in their field?

b.) Are they truly independent in terms of no corporate funding for their role on the panel, or in RL?
i.) To qualify, many academic researchers are corporate funded- but, at least they are obliged to disclose those facts.

c.) Are they selected based on competence vs. ideology?
i.) Competence works, selection on the basis of any political POV, does not.

"BTW the GUT I alluded to has received plenty of peer review online and off."

On line peer review? Again, what is the e-journal that it was published in? Who is on the editorial board? What is the name of the e-journal?

Because online blogging is not formal peer review. Any more than this forum is.

You might argue that this is a form of peer review, admittedly, there are (likely- haven't seen any CV's) experts here, but the quality of feed-back varies from intelligent, if heated debate, to "cheese."

"Unfortunately many career students still cling to the antiquated notion that anything of value must be printed on paper."
That's a specious argument. We have discussed what defines a journal, and it is not the medium it is presented in.

You know, going back to when the RW fought tooth and nail against anthropogenic climate change one of the standard bearers was M.Cr*chton.
He even wrote a book about it, and was hailed as a voice of reason against "enviro" alarmists. He had plenty of review on line and off, many wrote referentially about him in the RW media, but, that still didn't make him a climatologist.


Good discussion- thanks everyone.

-Dawg

[diane in sf]

24. Thank you Kris--just added it to my environmental bookmarks