14 Year Old Inventor of Pancreatic Cancer Test Explains Why Science Journal Paywalls Have to Go

This is probably true. I have a biotech degree and this kid seems (from what I've heard and read) to have only a basic grasp of the science he's talking about. He's smart, don't get me wrong, but he was definitely guided through the experimental protocols by real researchers in that lab.

The test from his project isn't even new science. Similar procedures have been investigated for other cancers, but it's not easy to make something involving carbon nanotubes into a viable product. It's link bait. But it's link bait that's sending the kid to college. So good for him, I suppose. I hope he hasn't let this stuff go to his head, because he's going to have professors that know the situation was kind of a publicity stunt.

I wish more people "got" this. 14 year old don't do groundbreaking research on their own, they are invariably a puppet of a professor behind them.

Props to this kid for taking initiative but...

I was 14 and didn’t even know I had a pancreas but I soon educated myself about what it was and started learning about how it was diagnosed

So, not even a year later and now he's an expert on cancer. Ok, cool.

I feel even worse for the poor graduate student who probably held his hand the whole time and did 95% of the experiments but hasn't seen a fucking dime after the 14 year old got a $75,000 for experiments he neither conceived nor ran.

Why do these threads always have to devolve to shitting on self-motivated kids why try to get involved in science at an early age? Yes, all the press about him is almost certainly an exaggeration, but that doesn't detract from the huge amount of hard work and learning that goes into putting together a project like this.

Also, this looks exactly like something a precocious 14-year-old would write. I have known a number of people who would write (and have written) things like this. The writing is clearly immature -- this is not how professors write.

Almost like he's completely full of shit... shocking.

Obviously, he doesn't understand how this type of behavior is contradictory. He wants everyone else to disclose and publish their research for free; yet, he wants to be able to commercialize the product (patent it) to be able to potentially stop others from using it. Seems like he and the professors just want to make money just like the other people involved in any industry. No one likes to work for free.

Good spot, but I don't think that makes him a hypocrite. I agree the system of encouraging research through patents is broken, but it's possible to support free access to published articles and still allow patenting the products of the research. He's not saying people shouldn't make money off articles, just that government should pay.

I could be wrong but i'm pretty sure the people who do the actual study don't get any money from this, you actually have to pay to submit the articles to many journals. The money goes to the actual journal.

This is a thing that comes up a lot and there are often quite a few opinions thrown around by people who have very little experience with the publication process beyond "I want to read a paper."

What it comes down to is this:

Pay to read vs Pay to publish. Publishing companies must make revenue somewhere and, to my knowledge, these are the two options. In pay to read universities and corporations foot the bulk of the bill and only members of those groups get access. In pay to publish the onus is placed on the group publishing their paper but everyone gets access.

Pay to read helps to eliminate bias, pay to publish only serves to encourage bias. Those research groups out there that are more poorly funded will lack the ability to publish in higher impact journals. The inability to publish more meaningful papers will very likely feedback and result in more difficulties in acquiring funding and exploring less exciting fields of research.

As an added bonus, well funded groups who are able to afford publication fees will then have the opposite sort of bias. Their publications will make higher impact journals, resulting in increased interest and funding which will in turn result in more publications by that group.

Further, it devalues more specialized journals even more as a result of the feedback from above. If all of the interesting research is getting published in higher impact journals it creates a disparity. Who wants to publish in Minutiae of Electrochemical Microscopy B when it costs money to do so, will not serve to advance your ability to do research in the field?

Now, you may say "I understand that, but the general public should still have access" and yes, in the ideal world you would be right, the general public should. But in the real world, you would be wrong. The potential damage that could result in the peer review process that encourages sound scientific research far outweighs the layman's ability to read a research article the impact and implications of which are far and beyond what he could even begin to understand.

-A scientist

Edit, clarity: obviously the current system is not fully meritorious but it is still more so than the alternative.

It costs money because the companies that publish the research have to pay their staff to format the articles, index the abstracts, edit the shitty scientific writing, store pdfs online, recruit and keep an editorial staff, etc. Its not the best system, but its not a total scam either.

None of the money is used to re-coup the costs of the study.

Researchers do the research with money they find on their own (their university might finance them, some wealthy people might make donations or the researcher might use his own money, etc.)

Then the researchers need to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal, who will have other researchers review the research paper.

If the article is published, the original researcher and the reviewers don't get a cent. The journal keeps all the money in their pocket.

Researchers don't get any money, publishers do. Total BS. Researchers do the work and write it up. Peer reviewers also get nothing. On top of that, a large portion of research funding comes from the federal government.

Sometimes it's not up to the people who did the study. Even if they want to make the paper they produced open access, the journals themselves do charge the authors of the paper for that "right". Apparently that's how journals themselves profit.

You pay for a publishing company to take the papers written by scientists and often quite unreadable, and send it for copyediting, typesetting, coded for online publication, print file preparation.

It's not forcing, it's a market opportunity that is there for publishing companies because Scientists wanna science (and not publish), and readers want readable science.

I don't know. I stopped reading there, because I had no idea what he was trying to say with that. It felt like he was starting an analogy and then immediately forgot about it.

Was wondering the same thing myself. Wtf do Olympic running times have to do with this issue? Am I seriously missing something here?

Hope you enjoy papers that have shit readability then.

Because if /r/all has taught us anything, it is that only the best content will be visible.

And before you directly or indirectly start quoting Freakonomics, remember this; taking an average estimation by people versed in the field and applying the estimation is not new or surprising.

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We already have journals run by lay people who have no knowledge of the field they are tasked with peer reviewing. They're called law reviews, and nobody reads them.

Exactly. I remember being given a project in high school where for a paper we were writing, we had to consult at least one peer reviewed source that you would likely find in scholarly journal. The teacher didn't tell us anything more than to go to a university library and work from there. I ended up going to one of the state universities. Walked right in to the front desk, asked for help accessing these journals. They had no problem with helping me do this. People act like it's hard, but I'm sure most public universities would have no issue letting you access journals through their libraries. Heck, I'm sure there are some private universities that wouldn't have this issue either.

A lot of it already is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, etc. NIH actually makes all publications free to the public no later than 12 months after their original publishing date. Check it out:

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

100% agreed. No one is going to do this work for free. In the end, people want to be compensated for their originality and innovations.

You benefit indirectly from the knowledge gained. That is what tax money pays for. It doesn't mean you are entitled to access the articles for free any more than you are entitled to walk into a grant funded researcher's office and use his or her computer.

Wait a minute. Some kids get federally subsidized reduced lunch prices at school. WE OWN THOSE KIDS!!!!!