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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

Needs more blockchain IMO. I’m actually serious about that too — individuals can choose to trust / distrust other individuals they know to be experts in their personal network, and if there’s enough proximity to their trust graph, they can know that there is some rigor behind that. Approve too many papers that are garbage and your status will fall and people will unlink you.

If there was any system crying out for a distributed proof-of-work / proof-of-trust system, it’s the peer review process. Provide incentive to review and proper analytics visibility are all there; the only key is that you would have to involve institutions in the signing chain in order to ensure a blockchain “account” belongs to a single individual and not, say, a troll farm working for a pharma company.

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That's a terrible idea. Science shouldn't rely on "trust", and reviewers and reviewees should be anonymous to one another. A fact stands on it's own; it's not dependent on it's source.

"Shouldn't?" True, in an ideal world. But in this one, a 'fact' stands on its own if it can be replicated. Which is only possible for someone who has the expertise, time, and inclination.

And that's the easier part; arguing the conclusions drawn from observations is where it can get really gritty ... particularly when the conclusions discredit the work of others.

Much of classical science was constructed on a basis of reputation amongst familiar colleagues... a form of trust. But a close look at history reveals that factions and bias have always existed.

Times have changed, and everyone can't know everyone else. Another corrosive modern 'fact' is that science is largely driven by who will pay for it. E.g., government and corporate interests may be less concerned with facts than the 'right' facts.

What value does the blockchain add that a 'social network' for academics wouldn't? For work that is largely taking place in universities it doesn't seem like there would be much trouble establishing trust.

http://www.osn.global/ sounds up your alley.

Yeah; industry interest groups are putting these together for basically every industry with a multi-tier supply chain. Blockchain tech is quickly taking over operations; it solves a lot of strategic problems with rent seeking and the relative value of data. Audit and compliance folks love it — smart contracts make their lives a lot easier.

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