TED Blog

The difficulties in opening science: Q&A with Michael Nielsen

2012-02-09T20:02:08Z

In a timely and incisive talk at TEDxWaterloo, Michael Nielsen made the case for open science — the idea that research data and results should be freely available to the public, and that scientists should collaborate more freely with each other and with the public.

Since the talk, his book, Reinventing Discovery, has been released, and even more recently the US Congress has introduced controversial legislation to prohibit funding agencies from requiring open access. TED’s Ben Lillie called Nielsen to talk about the politics and difficulties of open science.

Your talk got a significant pick-up from the science community and other people starting to discuss the idea of open science. Have you seen people moving more toward this notion of doing open science, or at least that – I mean, your goal here is to spark a conversation and get that into the things that people are talking about. Is it happening?

Yeah, I think it’s definitely on the up-tick. The phrase “open science” was, I think, pretty uncommon even three or four years ago. It’s a very old phrase. Certainly, it’s been in use for many decades, possibly even centuries. But it’s not something that people talked about a lot until the last two years.

I guess I’ve done 30 talks in seven countries in the last couple months, and particularly in the United Kingdom it really seemed like there was a huge amount of awareness. Organizations like the Royal Society are doing investigations of open science. The Wellcome Trust, a very large funding agency, has certainly done a huge amount for it over many years. In the United States, there also seems to be increasing interest. There’s more articles in the mainstream media than there were – well, there were very few articles even a few years ago. But now it seems like there’s quite a bit of coverage, and in more specialist outlets – Wired, and places like that.

You have this notion that we need to share our data, we need to share our ideas, and that will help to accelerate progress. And one of the main barriers to this, of course, is that we simply don’t have a culture of rewards for doing those activities. In the book, you give the example of scientists editing Wikipedia, which has no upside and takes a lot of their time. Where do you start with implementing a reward system where this is actually something that professional scientists would be driven to do?

There are two great places to start. One is, if grant agencies start to say, “Look, please tell us about your non-traditional contributions. If you’ve uploaded materials to YouTube, we want to know about it,” that kind of thing can certainly have an impact. The other direction you can come at this from is when people build tools which measure non-traditional contributions. Scientists have a tendency to look at those numbers and they start to report them. A classic case is in high-energy physics, part of the reason why there’s been this rise of a preprint culture in high-energy physics is that it’s possible to measure the impact of those preprints. There are tools available to measure the impact, and so you can demonstrate to your tenure committee, or whatever it is, that “Oh, it’s just in preprint at the moment, but Ed Witten and whomever have cited it already, so it must be good work.”

So the directives from the grant agencies are important of course, but it strikes me that they’re more of a reflection of the culture of the scientists and what they desire. It seems like the hard work is really on the ground.

A bit of both. I mean, the great thing, of course, about the grant agencies is, even though there’s a lot of scientists in senior positions there, to some extent they’re removed from the everyday concerns of a working scientist. And so they can afford to have a broader view and not just say, “What’s in my immediate short-term best interest?” But they can also say, “Well, what’s in the best interest of society as a whole?” And so if you look at things like open data mandates in the past, often the grant agencies have played a real leadership role in causing communities to come together and decide, “Oh yes, we should start to systematically share our data.” And so it’s not good for them to be too far out in front, but often they do seem to be a little ways in front.

If they put forward these ideas, are they going to be accepted by the scientific community, or will there just be revolution and pushback?

That’s the reason why you want the grant agencies to be working in concert with the scientists in this leadership role, but also not coming in and just mandating, “Thou shalt share all your data!” or “Thou shalt share all your code!” That kind of mandate is asking for people to be passively non-compliant, to share data that hasn’t been cleaned up or that is actually just useless to other people for various reasons. And so there needs to be a conversation that goes on first about what’s actually useful to share, what’s feasible to share, and what an appropriate reward or incentives would be. You can’t get too far in front of the community.

That brings us to the second major force of pushback, which is the entrenched financial interests and the current publishing system and that sort of thing. I’m not sure what I want to ask about that other than – I’ve seen movement on their end, but this does seem like one of the major roadblocks.

Yeah, the publishers, the traditional publishers, are all over the map. Some of them strongly oppose any kind of open access. Others have been pioneering open access models. And some are transitioning from one place to the other. A really interesting, maybe encouraging, thing is that one of the biggest publishers, Springer, bought BioMed Central, arguably the world’s largest open access publisher. Springer has also moved to a hybrid open access model on all its other journals, whereby you as an author can opt to pay a fee to make your article open access. That indicates that Springer sees that as the viable commercial model. And if they can transition from their old business model to a new business model that makes open access at least possible for all papers, then actually maybe this isn’t such a big obstruction after all.

In recent weeks the issue of access to data has exploded with the Research Works Act, a bill that would prohibit agencies from requiring open access. A large number of scientists have responded by boycotting Elsevier, a major journal publisher that supports the bill. Are we seeing the moment when open science becomes a major issue for most scientists?

The Elsevier boycott has generated a great deal of interest and discussion about open science, and I think that’s great. Of course, a boycott can only ever be a part of what needs to happen: we need positive actions as well, not just an agreement about what not to do! But what’s good about the boycott is that it has engaged lots of new people in serious discussion about better ways of doing and communicating science, and some of those people are taking action. That’s exactly what’s needed for open science to thrive.

With that said, there’s still a long way to go. Open science is still at most a minor blip (or invisible) on the radar of most scientists. But I think we’ll see more and more actions like the Elsevier boycott, building awareness of open science, and encouraging many more scientists to do more of their work in the open.

Sign up to audition for TED2013 in Doha

2012-02-08T21:14:08Z

From April to June 2012, TED will be holding 14 auditions, around the world, to search for unheard voices to put onstage at TED2013. Learn more about TED2013 Worldwide Auditions >>

Just announced: The very first audition will be held in Doha, Qatar, in April, as part of the TEDxSummit conference. If Doha is the closest audition spot to you geographically, sign up to audition! Signups are open from now until February 28; to audition, you’ll need to send a one-minute video.

Learn more about the Doha auditions for TED2013 at on.ted.com/auditionsdoha >>

New TED Book envisions the ‘living’ cities of the future

2012-02-08T17:57:07Z

What will the urban areas of tomorrow look like? More like an ever-changing and vibrant garden than a static set of buildings and blocks. In our new ebook Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives, British designer and architect Rachel Armstrong re-imagines the world’s cities and argues that in order to achieve sustainable development of the built environment — and help countries like Japan recover from natural disasters — we need to rethink how we approach architecture. By genetically modifying biological systems and studying such things as protocells — nongenetic self-organizing molecules that exhibit movement and sensitivity to their surroundings — we could create more responsive and dynamic structures. The result is a new kind of architectural practice where cities behave more like an evolving ecosystem than a lifeless machine. We recently spoke with Armstrong.

What do you mean by ‘living architecture’?

It’s a way of using ecological solutions to urban problems. Living architecture works by applying new materials and engineered systems that harness some of the unique properties of ‘life.’ Living technology is more robust and environmentally responsive than traditional materials, and can deal with unpredictability in a way that current technologies cannot.

How?

Our future cities will be designed more like gardens than machines. Buildings will perform functions that we currently attribute to the plant world, such as carbon capture. They will also contribute to the health of residents by removing pollution or providing food and energy. Living architecture is not a panacea to urban problems, but propose an alternative approach to making buildings that may help alleviate these problem. Our cities, as they currently exist, as seen as inert barriers to the natural world. But these barriers are inevitably breached in the event of a natural disaster. What might happen if everyday buildings were designed with the seeds of regeneration?

What developments in biotech will make a difference?

Protocells, for one thing. Protocells are a very interesting technology in this new portfolio as they are not strictly speaking ‘alive’ – since they do not possess a biological set of instructions, such as DNA – but they do behave in a life-like manner. They can sense and move around their environment through chemical means. They can function together in groups and can be chemically programmed to lay down solid materials. They are one kind of living technology that will be part of a whole new portfolio of materials that architects will have at their disposal as they develop of our cities. These materials will literally transform inert, non-living building surfaces into dynamic, life-like ones that carry out a set of functions normally associated with ‘life,’ such as, growth, self-repair or recycling resources, like oil and water.

How far out are these concepts? When will we start to see them in play?

These technologies already exist in the laboratory and in prototype model form, although they still need research and development to turn them into widely available products. The ideas may seem outlandish but they are based on real technology that exists today. All applications of scientific research in the laboratory remain speculative until they are transformed into products. But we are heading that way.

Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives is part of the TED Books series, which is available for the Kindle and Nook as well as on Apple’s iBookstore.

New: Find “courses” from TEDTalks on iTunes U

2012-02-08T20:37:50Z

New on iTunes U: Find TEDTalks organized by subject area into courses, curated for students, educators and lifelong learners. In our initial course offering, explore such topics as “Creative Problem-Solving” … “Understanding Happiness” … “Climate Change” … where you’ll find great thinkers from TED exploring multiple aspects of a fascinating topic.

Explore these curated collections of TEDTalks on iTunes U … and watch for new courses over upcoming months!

Remembering Mike deGruy

2012-02-04T21:51:49Z

We are saddened by the news that ocean photographer, filmmaker and storyteller Mike deGruy died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Australia. Mike was truly one of the great teachers and advocates for the oceans, as you can see in his TEDTalk, filmed aboard Mission Blue in 2010:

In this talk, as in his photography and his many films, you can sense Mike’s infectious humor, his passion for the oceans — and his example of a life well and richly lived.

Photo top: Mike deGruy at Baltra Airport in the Galapagos Islands, April 2010. Photo below: deGruy holds a pair of shoes decorated by Jim Toomey, aboard the Mission Blue Voyage. Courtesy James Duncan Davidson.

State of the X: Stats on TEDx and TEDxTalks in January

2012-02-04T16:33:11Z

The new feature “State of the X,” on the TEDx Tumblr, runs the numbers on TEDx and the great video coming from these worldwide independently produced events.

To start — how many TEDx events happened in the past month?

TEDx events by the numbers: January

77 TEDx events happened around the world
67 cities hosted one or more TEDx events
29 countries hosted one or more TEDx events

TEDx by the numbers: All time

3190 TEDx events have happened around the world
800 cities around the world have hosted one or more TEDx event
126 countries have hosted one or more TEDx events

One of the things we love about TEDx, here at the TED Blog, is how much astonishing video comes in from around the world. Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, some of our favorite TEDTalks were recorded at independent TEDx events, and we’re always scanning for more. Check out these stats:

TEDxTalks by the numbers: January

785 new talks added to the TEDxTalks library
3.5 million views of the TEDxTalks YouTube channel and the TEDxTalks website
22 talks were featured on TED.com (twice as many as in December, our previous record month)
4.2 million views of the TEDxTalks on TED.com

TEDxTalks by the numbers: All Time

12,900 TEDxTalks
27.6 million views of the TEDxTalks on the YouTube channel and the TEDxTalks website
122 talks featured on TED.com
45.8 million views of the TEDxTalks on TED.com

The huge number of talks in our library can be overwhelming but if you focus on just a few, you can uncover surprising connections. Here are two that were featured on TED.com in January:

Philosophy is extremely difficult to illuminate, but Julian Baggini nails it. In this absorbing talk from TEDxYouth@Manchester, Baggini tackles one of the oldest questions: What makes you, you?

Drew Berry asks many of same questions as Baggini, but his approach to finding the answers is different. At TEDxSydney, Berry animates some of the astonishing processes that happen inside everyone at every moment of every day — revealing that what makes you, you, is more elaborate and much more beautiful than what the naked eye can see.

Explore TEDxTalks on TED.com and our Weekly Editor’s Picks from January and discover connections on your own.

Robin Ince: “I’ve just realised what I should have done my TED talk on”

2012-02-04T02:47:00Z

Late in January, Robin Ince tweeted:

balls, 7 months too late I’ve just realised what i should have done my TED talk on

So the TED Blog asked: What?

And here is what he wrote:

Every year I attempt to say yes to things that are out of my comfort zone. These are never physical things such as parachute jumps or mountain climbs — I am not so keen on actual death, I am happy to make do with the death of my own self-regard. A TED talk was one of those leaps into abject terror I made in 2011. I had admired these talks for some time and frequently fallen into bouts of voluntary insomnia playing TED talk tag until dawn.

My mistake was that I had never watched the funny ones. I didn’t even know that they existed. So I spent my first month of preparation for TED mulling over how I could create the illusion of being smart. This has been made even more difficult now you are no longer allowed to smoke a pipe onstage, a surefire device to create the illusion of thoughtfulness as successive British Prime Ministers demonstrated.

About a week beforehand I suddenly realized I had gone in totally the wrong direction. I had been asked for to provide levity, not compete with people who were clearly qualified to talk of astrophysics and the evolution of empathy. The wastepaper basket was rapidly filled and a new notebook opened. I gathered together some words on whether it was possible to be happy if approaching the world scientifically. In 8 minutes I hoped to cover love, death and the strong anthropic principle. As it was, I had to drop the strong anthropic principle due to time constraints. It appears that love and death take up more of your allotted eight minutes than you might imagine.

The night before my morning session (“morning session” is a term that strikes terror into the hearts of the predominantly nocturnal comedian), I sat alone in the hotel bar, scribbling and re-scribbling until I had nervously chewed all the ink from the pen.

The blessed relief of not overrunning, and saying most of what I had planned, meant I didn’t start mulling over the talk until I was on the train home. But by the time I walked through the door I had demolished all I had said and, as so often on these occasions, the clear picture I had wanted to see in the buildup only became transparent in the aftermath. To attempt eight minutes summing up happiness through science was preposterous. I now knew the TED talk I should have done, which was about the daily problems I face of attempting to write comedy routines about contemporary physics which both I and a reasonably broad comedy club audience can understand. A world of quark-based conundrums and neutrino dilemmas flooded my mind with a revelation at 7 minutes 34 seconds, which would have been like opening a box and a cat leaping onto your lap.

There is not time for regret — actually that’s not true; if you read French literature you’ll find it can occupy your life. Nevertheless I can’t look back too much and wish I had done something else. The process of terror was in itself fascinating, and I got the chance to enjoy coffees from around the world while listening to speakers who hotwired my mind (coffee and hotwired minds is a stimulating mix). And thanks to Hugh Everett and the many-worlds interpretation, I can be safe in the knowledge that in another world I did deliver the speech I wished I had, and also safe in the knowledge that in that other world I walked off and wished I had attempted something about happiness through science.

– Robin Ince

Watch his TEDTalk, which is really very funny >>

Breakthrough solutions: Fellows Friday with Juliette LaMontagne

2012-02-03T17:48:30Z

Juliette LaMontagne’s Breaker offers millennials a unique, hands-on alternative learning opportunity — working on projects with serious social impact. Breaker teams take on such challenges as illiteracy and feeding the city, while gaining valuable real-world social entrepreneurship skills.

Take us through the Breaker process — how does it work?

Each three-month Breaker project convenes a multidisciplinary group of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 to design product or service solutions to a global challenge. Projects are led by two visionaries — experts in the field who provide inspiration and context to the challenge. The first project we did, the Future of the Book Challenge, addressed the rise of functional illiteracy in the US, and asked the team to consider how emerging technologies might be harnessed to get adolescents reading. Our current Urban Agribusiness Challenge addresses the need to help urban agriculture grow from small-scale ventures to having a wider social impact.

Over three months, the Breaker team works with a series of collaborators — leading innovators in the field inform the research; industry experts guide the team throughout the process. The team approaches problem-solving using design processes they learn from IDEO, fuseproject, Frog and more; they’re exposed to start-up perspectives by working inside innovation ecosystems like AOL Ventures and QLabs. The project concludes by having the team pitch its products to an audience of all the existing collaborators, as well as members New York’s venture community. We set the bar high, but we also bring in the best of the best to support the process, offering the team access to the people and companies driving innovation in the space.

Majora Carter presents a talk to the Breaker team and project collaborators to kick off the UrbanAg Challenge at the TED amphitheater in NYC. Click to see larger size. Photo: Juliette LaMontagne

Tell us more about the Urban Agribusiness Challenge.

The idea for this project grew out of a conversation I had last year at TED with Majora Carter, Founder of Sustainable South Bronx, about the challenge of and opportunities in New York City urban agriculture. I later invited her to participate in a Breaker challenge as a project visionary. We chose Danielle Gould of Food+Tech Connect as a second visionary to complement Majora because she has an IT-fueled approach to innovation. Once the Breaker team was chosen, we invited a wide range of urban agriculture innovators across New York City to participate. In fact, TED Fellow Viraj Puri’s Gotham Greens — a hydroponic greenhouse — is one of more than 20 research sites included in the first phase of the project. The team will survey sites across sectors — from grower to shipper, seller to consumer. They’ll be identifying needs in various stages of production and consumption, and develop products that might better satisfy these needs and help scale up urban agriculture.

What do you look for in applicants?

We look for tenacity as well as a proven ability to collaborate. Individuals are chosen to represent different skill sets. We’re looking to assemble a team with diverse domains of intelligence who will come at the problem from various perspectives. We like to have a visual artist help synthesize ideas during the messy collaborative process. We want someone with a programming background, and somebody else with experience in business. We like outliers who have a passion for creative collaboration even if they have no prior experience in design or entrepreneurship — even if they have little content knowledge specific to our challenge.

Future of the Book participants and their research findings at a workshop at IDEO. Click to see larger size. Photo: Juliette LaMontagne

What’s been the most remarkable or successful outcome you’ve seen from a Breaker session?

The mandate to design a commercially viable product is a huge driver — but launching it is not a necessary condition of success. Still, I think the fact that the products that came out of the Future of Book Challenge — Mobo (a service for receiving, sharing and engaging with stories via text messaging) and Unbound (a video reference tool) — continue to be developed speaks to our success. The participants who continue to push forward with them are stepping into unfamiliar roles that unveil unseen potential — both for them and for the world. At the end of the three months, some team members decide they’re done and are moving on to something else. But either way, all the participants come out of Breaker with an entrepreneurial mindset and a toolkit for designing solutions to the problems they will encounter — both large and small — for the rest of their lives.

What problem did you set out to solve with Breaker? Were you mostly concerned about education’s failure to nurture creativity, or did you see young people disengaged with social challenges?

I’ve been working to influence public school reform in NYC for fifteen years — as a teacher, a professional developer, a professor, and a leadership coach. I know firsthand how a culture of high-stakes testing quells curiosity and creativity, burns teachers and kids out and disrupts family life. The current iteration of Breaker is post-secondary, but the applications to secondary are there. As we grow, we’ll develop partner programs at the high school level that work in tandem with the Breaker teams — connecting them around similar lessons in designing for social entrepreneurship.

There are so many talented young people — some of whom have not been successful in traditional schooling — who know that have something valuable to contribute, but can’t find opportunities to apply their skills to meaningful work. Even students who have successfully navigated the college track complain of a disconnection between content learned and the skills needed for today’s economy. What we’re hearing from participants is that Breaker is seen as an alternative-learning pathway for those who’ve chosen not to go to college after high school, or as an experiential supplement to college coursework, or as a transitional opportunity for early career professionals. We see all three types applying to our program.

Breaker will gradually expand to cities across the US and abroad with the aim of establishing concurrent programming in sister secondary schools.

“Unbound” work session: one of two product development groups that came out of the Future of the Book Challenge. Click to see larger size. Photo: Juliette LaMontagne

Tell us about your own kids and how they affect and shape your work

My kids go to a public elementary school in New York City. My 4th grader works out of a Kaplan Test Companion workbook every night for homework, and has little opportunity to apply these discrete skills in substantive ways – through no fault of her teacher or the principal, they’re only complying with a whole host of system-wide mandates and pressures. Alternative models exist in the city, but they come with a price tag a middle-class family like ours can’t afford. Suffice it to say that I’ve got a five-year plan to get the Breaker model into the NYC public high schools!

How has being a TED Fellow changed or affected your work?

It wasn’t until I began attending TED in 2009, as a Fellow, that I began to rethink my long history with project-based learning in terms of design thinking and social enterprise. I found that user-centered design required the same rigorous research, interviewing and empathy work that was the central to the projects I taught; I appreciated the permission to fail inherent in an iterative methodology; and I was attracted to the idea of designing solutions within the constraints of the marketplace. In other words, I began to see problems and their solutions not only as academic exercises, but as opportunities for product and service development. And I saw the educative and entrepreneurial potential for students.

There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What one piece of advice would you give them, based on your own experience and successes?

Maintain a learning stance. It takes the pressure off getting it perfect, and compels you to find the lessons in your failures.

TED Conversations in the classroom

2012-02-03T15:05:53Z

Can students learn better by sharing what they know? TED Fellow Nina Tandon believes in the power of sharing ideas and using TED Talks in her classroom. In addition to that, she is now using the TED Conversation platform in the Bioelectricity course that she’s currently teaching at Cooper Union in New York City. After hosting her own conversation on TED Conversations, Nina was inspired to use the platform in her classroom and let students take the role of sharing knowledge and leading discussions with the global community.

Here, Nina Tandon shares her motivation on using TED Conversations in her class:

“I’ve been hosting a class blog each year for the past four years as a way for students to share amongst each other, but this year I wanted to extend our reach into the global community, to have the students engage in “external participation.” I’m hoping that the students will learn by teaching, and will appreciate the unexpected lateral connections that may develop by engaging with the diverse TED community in the context of their developing classroom expertise! It’s an experiment, but I’m really looking forward to seeing how this experience contributes not only to the students’ growth, but hopefully to the TED community as well. Thank you so much to the TED Team for collaborating with us in this exciting endeavor!”

Each week throughout the semester, students will be starting new conversations. You can track them by searching the following tags: TEDinClass and Bioelectricity. Each conversation will be open for 1 week, until the next students starts a new one.

One of the students Samantha Massengill kicks off the conversation series with this question: How immune should science be from the political environment of its time?

And Ariel Habshush suggests an idea: Our bodies are amazing nano/micro electrical factories! and hopes to share his knowledge on this topic throughout the conversation.

You can access all these classroom conversations here as they are added, every week until mid-April. Students will be sharing what they’ve learned during the course on TED Conversations. Come to learn, participate and share, at ted.com/conversations/topics/TEDinClass.

Announcing a global talent search for TED2013 speakers

2012-01-31T20:27:26Z

The best moments at TED have often come from unexpected places. But this year, we’re pushing that to an entirely new level. We’re staging a global talent search to bring together the most remarkable lineup in TED’s history. A series of public auditions in cities around the world will reveal voices, talents and ideas that delight and surprise. As a result, at least half of our TED2013 program will literally be crowd-sourced through what we’re calling the TED2013 Worldwide Auditions.

Public auditions will be happening in 14 countries on six continents — in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Tunis and Vancouver — between April and June 2012. The auditions will be official TED events, and we’ve tapped local TEDx organizers in each city to produce.

Online audition applications, which include the option to upload a short video, will be available for each city at least two months before the audition. From those submissions, TED will invite 30 of the best applicants to each audition, where speakers will have 3-6 minutes to deliver a proposed talk in English. Anyone – with the exception of those who have already spoken at an official TED Conference or have a talk on TED.com – is eligible to apply to auditions in his or her nearest city. In some exceptional cases, TED will contribute to travel costs.

Learn more about TED Worldwide Auditions >>