Read this and then ask yourself, why is historic journal Nature freaked out over American public school science classrooms – again?
From Richard Harris at NPR:
Another concern is that today scientists are judged primarily by which journal publishes their work. The greatest rewards tend to go to scientists who can get their papers into major journals such as Science, Nature and Cell. It matters less what the actual findings are.
“To me that is one of the very biggest problems in the system today,” says Erin O’Shea, president of HHMI, “and it drives a lot of behavior — behavior that we don’t want.”
And if a top journal reviews a paper and decides not to publish it, the scientist needs to start the process of getting to print all over again — which is a waste of resources. “Science moves slower because research isn’t available immediately,” O’Shea said at the meeting. “To me, those are big problems.” More.
They are indeed big problems. Perhaps it is no surprise that with all this stuff crying out for reform, major science journals that are implicated would rather worry about science education in Florida, over which they have only elite opinion influence.
See also: Historic journal Nature is freaked out over American public school science classrooms – again. Idea: Why don’t we wait to see whether the new standards are more rigorous? For decades, the United States has spent more on education and got less for it than most Western nations. We can afford a bit of time to seeing whether a new broom sweeps cleaner.
Just for fun: Possible school field trip in Florida … from a safe distance, to be sure.