A pharmacologist at Oxford, Susan Greenfield, is putting forward a theory that computer games cause dementia in children. The theory itself doesn’t really concern me, but I do notice that often when someone comes out with a theory like this, people tend to be pretty dismissive — you hear things like “How can you possibly think that?” Well, every fact we know about the world had to be thought by someone first, and just because it sounds ridiculous or even offensive doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.

However, any theory, especially a controversial one, does need to be verified or rejected with plenty of evidence, and that’s where publication comes in. At the Bad Science blog post linked above, Dr. Goldacre makes a good point

Science has authority, not because of white coats, or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case. Other scientists can then read it, see if you’ve fairly represented the evidence; and decide whether the methods of the papers you’ve cited really do produce results that meaningfully support your hypothesis.

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In this regard, I don’t mean peer …

As I posted yesterday, I now have a paper (and an account) on arXiv. No, the point of this post is not to gloat (which wouldn’t make any sense because half the people I know already have their own papers out, and the other half are making productive contributions to society). Somehow, I always looked at the process of being “inducted” to arXiv as a big mystery, but it’s really not. I thought I’d explain how the process works.

For starters, there are two ways a person can be associated with arXiv: as a member, or as an author of a preprint. You get a “member account” by simply signing up using the “register” button on the login page. They will ask you for an institutional affiliation, which reflects the fact that the site is designed for academics, but technically anyone can sign up. Then again, there’s no reason to sign up for the site as a “random person”; the only thing your account allows you to do is submit papers, once you get approved as an author.

Becoming an author, on the other hand, doesn’t actually require any involvement on your part. When a …