I was recently alerted to a policy regarding media coverage of CSHL meetings that I was totally unaware of. Via this exchange on Notes from the Biomass (nice title by the way):
greg - 2005-09-16 13:01
And highlights so far are ?
In reply:
spitshine - 2005-09-16 14:25
Difficult to answer really: For one, Cold Spring Harbor Meetings have strong policy on media coverage of the conference, considering all presentations and posters personal communication. Guess blogging the content would not be a good idea.
So does that mean I was in violation of ISMB's press policy, when I recently blogged sessions I attended ? I did some investigating...
Digging around on the ISMB2005 leads to a press registration page but no specific guide lines on confidentiality of information. However the CSHL media registration page is more than explicit:
Often, during the course of a meeting, a scientist will discuss a discovery, method, or current project that is not yet complete or published. For this reason, we ask that any media covering these meetings use information heard in meeting sessions as background only, and refrain from reporting on any spoken or printed material gained from the meeting.
And this:
For the most part, these meetings are "closed," to protect the freedom of exchange between the scientists.
Now I can appreciate that meetings are not public, mainly because the registration cost so much money. But not "to protect the freedom of exchange between the scientists", and to protect the scientists from what exactly ? Walled garden, Ivory Tower anyone ?
Trying to protect scientists by not giving the larger audience a window into the mechanics of science (of which conferences play an important role) seems ridiculous. Sure there is always the possibility of journalists being irresponsible and reporting new and relatively unsubstantiated findings or miss interpreting something. But this kind of thing happens all the time. Weblogs are one platform for letting "real scientists" speak out against bad science reporting. As an example, P.Z. Myers over at Pharyngula has been balancing the creationist rhetoric with insightful science blogging.
So in conclusions I can understand why they have their "closed meeting" policy, but it is missguided and sends the wrong message about science communication. Or am I just being unrealist about the process of science ?
Comments
Embargoes
Coming at this discussion from the journalistic point of view, one of the things that big conference organisers and publishers like to do is offer the media advance information so that they can get the best coverage in the popular and trade press.
As such, a system of embargoes was created quite some time ago to allow them to do this. A journal will release to the media a press statement ahead of publication, highlighting specific papers of interest, for instance. This, they insist, gives all members of the media an equal chance to research and prepare their news stories ahead of the embargo lifting. Basically, so that a story can begin "TODAY SCIENTISTS PUBLISH IN THE SUCHANDSUCH JOURNAL".
There are some benefits, but one side-effect is that together with the no pre-publication policy of most journals, scientists are also restricted from talking to the media without emphasising the existence of an embargo.
Many journalists complain that the embargo system places an artificial restriction on the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Others complain that as journalists we shouldn't simply be following the publishers' claims as to what is important in their journals in the first place.
A similar no pre-publication and embargo system seems to have been applied in the conference sector now too.
But, as others have already commented, once a scientist gives a talk or publishes a preprint (as is very common among physicists) the knowledge enters the public domain anyway, so why should a journalist (or in the present discussion, blogger) have to hang around waiting for some artificial embargo to lift?
David Bradley Science Writer
Protecting them from who?
If you're going to a meeting and talking about your work to other scientists, it seems like the cat's out of the bag already. Preventing other people from hearing about it, and implicitly not wanting to know what other people might think about your work, seems a bit odd.
Perhaps it's different if the meeting is just a small group, where you know and trust the other people present not to steal your ideas, but I don't see why reporting should be a problem at large conferences.
It's about novelty...
When we go to conferences, we want to learn of novel findings. ISMB enforces this by having people to submit whole papers, CSHL meetings by protecting the presentations such that the scientists have the freedom to talk about it but still being able to publish their findings later.
Both policies have their drawback but I find it hard to come up with another scheme for balancing importance, timeliness and publishing policies.
We heard an excellent yet controversial presentation yesterday night. The opinions on the drug discovery process voiced would have undoubtedly been smoothed out if the talk would have been streamed around the world.
Scientific communication is not as free as it could be because careers depend on publications and nobody can afford to be scooped. I think we can do a lot of improvements to it but I can't see how it should ever be completely open.
I am wandering of - having to choose between listening to recooked, at least 9 months old stuff at ISMB or RECOMB, I would rather listen to fresh and interesting findings at "closed meetings".
Even if I can't blog them - which, in general I find an excellent idea to communicate science.
About novelty
Not that I have that much experience on the topic, but it is my feeling that what is usually presented in meetings is work that is mostly finished, in press or just published. People that go to present also take into account the in the audience are usually some of the most likely competitors. In others words, very little additional "damage" will be done by talking about the work outside the conference (like blogging about it) .
I probably would have agreed
I probably would have agreed until I came here and talked to the people who have been to this particular meeting before. Much of the work is really in progress and there are some projects that were presented on previous meetings that are still not published because they are still being worked on.
I quizzed some people about the subject last night - and many like the idea of this oversized group meeting.
seems to depend on the meeting
Seems this issue is very dependent on the type of meeting. At large international meetings like ISMB, most data is published or about to be published (indeed abstracts are openly available at their website before presentation). The CSHL meetings are different - as Spitshine said, more like an extended group meeting. I think both have their merits, though the latter does make for difficult blogging. You can always blog privately - it can still be a good way to record your thoughts in "diary" form, even if you're not sharing.