"If a scientific paper's findings are surprising, there's a very, very good chance that it's wrong: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... the solution is to check, to revisit, to reanalyze. And then there's journalism, where reporters come out with shocking and surprising stories every day, and no one ever gets to reanalyze the…

To think I almost worked on their dotcom project 12 years ago (shiver): "Lots of researchers post PDFs of their own papers on their own web-sites. It’s always been so, because even though technically it’s in breach of the copyright transfer agreements that we blithely sign, everyone knows it’s right and proper. Preventing people from making their…