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by __MatrixMan__
828 days ago
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Paper is a technology. This systemic social problem around paper has the quirks that it does because paper has limitations (you can't add highlights and margin notes after you've given it to somebody else). If we stop replicating those limitations, it's not unreasonable to expect that the social problem will change also. I don't think the answer is search engines in the traditional sense, but we probably do need something that knows how to search. If whatever we use to view research were to display warnings wherever a retracted citation was viewed (or whenever one the citations' citations were retracted...), similarly to how we display SSL certificate expiry warnings in a browser, I think that would create a dampening effect on the momentum that a retracted paper can have. "Retracted" probably isn't the only color we'd want here. "Replicated" might be another. My point is that summoning up-to-date metadata on a something published last year should just be the default view mode, not something you have to ask a grad student to go do. Knowledge graphs, not dead trees. |
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This is called technological determinism and is not an accurate heuristic for how humanity adopts tools
Humans generally adopt tools broadly after the social environment allows it, not when the tool is capable. This has been shown over and over. Never has there existed a tool whose introduction was immediately and universally adopted.
There’s almost always a period of introduction, then decades of middling adoption and refinement, then the social climate changes and production adjusts enough to adopt en masse.
This was true for every major invention and is an artifact of human social structures