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Science should be done in secrecy

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June 12, 2017

My friends know me as the Cindy who blindly believes that all research should be open access. Scientists should publish their research process in real time and everything should be open.

Last month I changed my mind. Science should be done in secrecy.

I've come to the conclusion that science should be done in secrecy until the creator is ready to release the process and results. For one scientist that could mean opening up tomorrow, for another scientist that could mean one decade from now, for another scientist the day they die, for some never. Never is okay by me.

The point is the power of distribution of scientific results should sit in the hands of the scientist, the creator.

Today I am going to reveal to you three secrets I've learned in the past five years.

Scientists want freedom.
When given freedom, scientists do their best work.
We should give the control to the scientist, the creator.

Scientists want freedom

I am a lot of things, but at the core I am a scientist. I run the company like it is a lab. Five years ago we started a website with the goal of allowing someone like me to control my own destiny.

We solved my own problem. We made a place online for scientists can finance their dreams from the crowd for research projects costing less than ten thousand dollars. By accident, we also raised over two million dollars for one project.

As a scientist myself, having five thousand dollars was enough to make my wildest dreams come true. That money let me work towards discovering the truth, a truth about antibiotics that no one in our universe had ever attempted.

The thousands of dollars my professor diverted away from his existing NIH R01 to fund my pet project gave me freedom.

When given freedom, scientists do their best work

With freedom comes responsibility. There is financial freedom and then there is mental freedom. Financial freedom does not always come with mental freedom. To acquire mental freedom the scientist has to seek it out.

Each scientist is different. Each scientist will need a different environment to thrive. This space that the scientist makes for herself is critical for achieving her best work. In my opinion the most important thing you can provide a scientist is trust and safety. Money provides trust and safety to a certain extent. Ultimately if an institution is paying a scientists salary, even if it is just the $16k for a graduate student, the survival of the scientist is still tied to the money.

To get more money to do more great work, the scientist has to do good work in a limited amount of time. To do great work in a limited amount of time, the scientist has to make space in which the she spends minimal time thinking about money and maximum time on the work.

These last few months I've spent the majority of my brain cycles thinking about how we can use technology and design to create a space for scientists, and science, to thrive. I now have a concrete thesis for this.

We should give the control to the scientist, the creator

There are two types of people in the world. People who log their observations and people who do not. People who log their observations are scientists, people who don't are not.

When the observations sit inside a paper lab notebook, there is only one notebook. To access the observations of an individual scientist you need to get access to that one notebook. Some of these notebooks have gone on to be published. Charles Darwin's Beagle field notebooks are one example.

Today there are millions of people that want to be the next Einstein, but they cannot because of a lack of resources. Beyond that there are billions of people that want to hear what the next Einstein has to say, but they cannot hear the next Einstein because distribution is locked up with publishers.

The first step is we need to upload all existing scientific research content and make that digital content accessible to anyone anywhere with the internet. Google is doing that. I admire sci-hub's efforts in this space. Sci-hub's team has done what I am too afraid to do myself.

The second step is we need to record all new information generated by today's scientists digitally.

I've come to the conclusion that all science should be done in secrecy until the scientist is ready to release the process and results. If we break down this problem into two parts the first part is documenting the process and results digitally. The second part is releasing the process and results when the scientist is ready. Release should be done with a click of a button.

Someone needs to build a system for today's scientists to collect and store all the new knowledge being produced and keep these secrets safe until scientists are ready to release them. It might take a scientist one year, one decade, or one century before they are willing to make their process open.

I am willing to wait as long as it takes, as long as the scientist needs. I am unwilling to live in a world where the scientist does not document their process and results digitally. All generated knowledge should be documented digitally so that at a later date, the knowledge can be retrieved and made open.

There is already an organization that is organizing the world's existing information to make it universally accessible and useful. There will be an organization that stores and organizes the world's newly generated information. One day when the scientist is ready that new information will be released, organized, and made universally accessible and useful too.

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Science should be done in secrecy

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