Thread by @nickcammarata

Current feeling on meta-science: I’m not sure anyone — authors, readers, etc — actually likes papers. What if we just got rid of them?

What could we replace them with?

conjecture: papers are weak and unopinionated

want to communicate an idea? do a vlog -- most communication is about inexplicit vibes

want to release a reproducible protocol? Record you in colab doing it, release for one click reproducibility

want to debate your side of an idea against another side? Do an adversarial collaboration with someone who disagrees with you slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/24/adv…

want real peer review? Record podcast with a bunch of peers for a couple hours. Less time, higher bandwidth than normal review

want a place to continually post updates to a research direction? Do a scientific thread distill.pub/2020/selforg/ or a twitter thread or even a twitter alt :D

want to help others join the field? Instead of writing a review, start a Slack where people can join and get up to speed

different ideas need different vessels. The paper introducing DNA was 2 pages, Origin of Species was 500+

It's hard because it means tradeoffs and choosing what to focus on, but when it's done right the vessel can be as important as the idea itself

science isn't magic it's just a bunch of people trying to figure out what's going on. IMO we're doing a terrible job with communication, and that may be the most important thing to get right

So let's try weird new things