Morning all,
Here is a rundown of the story I mentioned last night in which blogging was used as a technical review tool:
December 2, 2010: Science publishes an article in which the author claims that they have discovered a "microbe [which] seems to be able to replace phosphorus with arsenic in some of its basic cellular processes." (Abstract available here) The article generates a huge amount of press and the conclusion is repeated continuously in the popular media.
December 4, 2010: Dr. Rosie Redfield writes a blog post in which she heavily critiques the methodology used and conclusions drawn by the article's authors.
December 5-15, 2010: The blog post picks up steam. Notice the large number of comments posted. The original author responses to Redfield's criticism. Redfield writes to Science, and the story of the concerns is picked up by Nature.
December 16, 2010: Redfield replies to the original authors response on her blog, and discussion on the blog continues.
January, 2012: After spending a year attempting to repeat the experiment, Redfield releases a response which has been submitted to Science, but also has been released publicly in the hopes of "open-source peer review". Commentary on the article picks up immediately.
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