The Role of Trust in Science at SLA 2011

International Year of Chemistry:
Perils and Promises of Modern Communication
in the Sciences
The Role of Trust
Special Libraries Association
Jean-Claude Bradley
Department of Chemistry
Drexel University
June 14, 2011

Unknown Perils of the Past
Before online databases (early 90s) searching for properties like melting points using ONE “trusted source” was practical
CRC Handbook
Merck Index
Chemical Vendor Catalogs (e.g. Sigma-Aldrich)
Peer-Reviewed Journals

Known Perils of the Present
Today, many librarians discourage the use of new online sources (like Wikipedia) for the searching of chemical data and recommend using only “trusted sources”
The problem is that the “trusted source” model is - and always was – fundamentally flawed.
Ironically most of Wikipedia’s chemical information is problematic BECAUSE it is based on “trusted sources”!

Promises for the Future
Using technology, we can begin to replace the “trusted source” model with one based on transparency and provenance

The current state of transparency in scientific communication
Case study of melting point data

The Chemical Information Validation Sheet
567 curated and referenced measurements from
Fall 2010 Chemical Information Retrieval course

The Chemical Information Validation Explorer
(Andrew Lang)

Discovering outliers for melting points (stdev/average)

Investigating the m.p. inconsistencies of EGCG

Investigating the m.p. inconsistencies of cyclohexanone

The Role of Trust in Science at SLA 2011

by Jean-Claude Bradley

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