Re: Issues


"Larry Moran" <lamoran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:db2792$2a4m$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> The other problem is the way in which Science selected the questions. Why
> didn't they ask scientists instead of science writers? How many real
> molecular biologists would have chosen that question as one of the top
> 25 questions in science?

Here is what Kennedy wrote about the question selection process:

------
We began by asking Science's Senior Editorial Board, our Board of
Reviewing Editors, and our own editors and writers to suggest questions
that point to critical knowledge gaps. The ground rules: Scientists
should have a good shot at answering the questions over the next 25 years,
or they should at least know how to go about answering them. We
intended simply to choose 25 of these suggestions and turn them into
a survey of the big questions facing science. But when a group of
editors and writers sat down to select those big questions, we quickly
realized that 25 simply wouldn't convey the grand sweep of cutting-edge
research that lies behind the responses we received. So we have ended
up with 125 questions, a fitting number for Science's 125th anniversary.

....

We selected 25 of the 125 questions to highlight based on several criteria:
how fundamental they are, how broad-ranging, and whether their solutions
will impact other scientific disciplines. ...
We listed the 25 highlighted questions in no special order, but
we did group the 100 additional questions roughly by discipline.
----

Membership in those boards may be found here:
http://www.aaas.org/Science/BOARD_OF.HTM

Hmmm. So they changed the protocol midway through the experiment in
order to get the result they decided they wanted. These people obviously
come from the natural sciences, rather than the social sciences. ;-)


.

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