From Vox, Julia Belluz, Brad Plumer, and Brian Resnick on the 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists. An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors. Troubled from the start: Pivotal moments in the history of academic refereeing have occurred at times when the public status of science was being renegotiated. Science is suffering because of peer review’s big problems: Stefano Balietti on how to reform the journal publication process. Joshua Tucker on what happens when scientists evaluate research without knowing the results. The sharing economy comes to scientific research: Deborah Berry on how pooling resources can save scientists time and money. Why science should be crowdsourced — sometimes: Crowds are excellent at finding answers to problems, but we still need scientists to work at defining the questions. Why is simpler better? Ockham’s Razor says that simplicity is a scientific virtue, but justifying this philosophically is strangely elusive.
