A possible solution to arbitrary evaluations

My letter to Physics Today was just published in its issue in October, 2024. Hopefully, it’ll draw attention from a wider audience to the issues and a possible solution to these issues of peer review or evaluation systems in various research activities in STEM fields, including those in job applications, tenure review, refereed publications, and grant/facility proposals. The solution proposed in two papers, “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research” and “OePress: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM “, will hopefully start a peer-review reform in basic research. By implementing a sophisticated credit- and role-based incentive mechanism, we could establish a new self-sustaining ecosystem for the entire scientific community. Rigorous science requires rigorous evaluation, and scientific innovation won’t develop efficiently until such a system is built.

OePRESS: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM

Based on the earlier paper “A Robust Community-Based Credit System to Enhance Peer Review in Scientific Research“, we will present more quantitative details of the full scheme of such an evaluation system — an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM (OePRESS) that is ready to be implemented.

Abstract:  In light of the failed peer review system in basic research, we propose a novel open science initiative: an Open ePrint and Rigorous Evaluation System for STEM (OePRESS). In particular, three different types of research activities — original research, indirect contributions (e.g., participation in the evaluation system), and funding/time requests — should be evaluated using quantitative and continually refined metrics. This new community-based rigorous evaluation system will provide the best incentive for all members by rewarding them with accurate recognition of their innovative achievements and accurate credit for their service and other contributions to the community. The system rewards the quality, not the quantity, of accomplishments. Community members earn credits for their research and other activities in OePRESS, and as they accumulate experience and credits they can advance in their role in the community. High-risk, high-reward research projects will have a better chance of being funded. Eventually, when funding agencies and hiring institutions rely on this rigorous evaluation system to make their decisions, we will see a self-sustaining community of researchers striving for perpetual innovation and development.

The new website MirrorUniverse.org is up and running

The website of mirroruniverse.org dedicated for the studies of the new mirror matter theory and its test is now up and running. Content-wise, I still have a lot to do and I’ll slowly get it up to date. If you’d like to participate in forum discussion there or make other comments at the site, you need to register. The best (recommended) way to register/login is through the authentication with ORCiD which provides an open ID for all scholars. Here is the link on this how-to if you need more details.

I still need lot of help on the other website: openarxiv.org. In particular, we need people who have experience in developing ePrint platforms or softwares like eprints.org, biorxiv.org, etc. Please contact me if you’d like to help.

Volunteers are needed for graphic and web design of two websites

Two websites are under construction: mirroruniverse.org and openarxiv.org. We need volunteers who are experienced in graphic and web design to join the team for building these two websites. Feel free to contact me at <wtan AT nd.edu> if you are interested or have further questions.

New chiral electron-hole pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity

Motivated by the ideas from the NJS model and the concept of staged chiral quark condensation developed in mirror matter theory, I ventured into superconductivity and fortunately developed a novel microscopic pairing mechanism for non-BCS superconductivity. It took me the entire summer and more to reacquaint myself with BCS superconductivity and associated condensed matter physics and I have to immerse myself in the extensive literature on superconductivity accumulated over the past decades.

Random Thoughts on Diversity, Equality of Opportunity, and the Golden Mean

Introduction/Abstract

Diversity is argued to be the central or original principle based on our ponderance about the evolutionary Universe, life, and human civilization. Egalitarianism, or more precisely equality of opportunity, and many other social tenets such as democracy, freedom, justice, and fairness, are representative or derivative of this central Diversity Principle, and therefore their interpretation should always be normalized under the context of diversity. Conversely, extremism, bias, prejudice, and other social aberrations, are detrimental phenomena of anti-diversity.

Another essay contest by FQxI.org on "How could science be different?"

This is the 2nd time I am participating in an essay competition held by FQxI.org. This time the topic is “how could science be different” and participants must be anonymous. Here is the link for all participating essays: https://qspace.fqxi.org/competitions/entries. Winning the competition is not exactly my goal, but attention gained via winning, which would hopefully lead to implementing my dream sketched in the essay into basic science fields such as physics in the real world, will be!

My first-time experience with FQxI was not great. I thought I wrote a pretty good article titled “No single unification theory of everything” about three years ago. Most of the comments under the article in the forum were very positive. Two of the participants even explicitly claimed that they gave me a full score (10 points), including one who was eventually one of the winners. But I don’t know how I could end up with a pretty despicable average score of about six. Hopefully, anonymity will help this time.

Implementation of an improved review procedure for high-risk high-reward funding programs

As far as risks are concerned, there seems to be a consensus view on general funding strategies from different funders: government funding agencies tend to fund low-risk proposals while private foundations, at least in principle, should fund more of those so-called high-risk high-reward projects. Unfortunately, these high-risk high-reward funding programs, in their actual practice, often utilize similar measures that have been applied for funding main-stream or low-risk projects. Here, an improved review procedure for such programs will be tentatively proposed, which will be easy to implement and meanwhile biased properly toward high-risk, potentially paradigm-shifting proposals.

Human rights of persons of Chinese origin in US

 I have always admired  great efforts by S. B. Woo, president of 80-20 Educational Foundation (https://www.80-20ef.org/), who has been standing up and fighting for Asian Americans. Recent trends of a new type of McCarthyism have been disrupting the academic world in US. In particular, too many scientists of Chinese descent have been wrongly charged and their human rights have been grossly violated due to repeated wrong doings of FBI. Below is the open letter by Dr. Woo asking for protection of the rights of Chinese Americans in US and it will appear as a full-page ad at the back page of Section A of Wall Street Journal and Politico on Feb. 10 (Thursday). It does not even include the most recent case against Dr. Gang Chen, an MIT professor, which was just dropped a few days ago. A more readable text version of the letter can be seen here.

Support scientific startups for transformative research

We discussed how we should fund high-risk high-reward proposals of novel ideas, proposing a new review system for transformative research. Here we continue to talk about how startup scientists, who originate most of the disruptive ideas as history has shown, should be supported. The business world has an effective system of venture capital and angel investment for fostering risky startup companies. The academic community can certainly learn from their experience.

A new review system for high-risk high-reward scientific proposals

Scientific advancement includes two types: one is incremental and the other is transformative. The incremental one is typically consists of conservative small improvements based on widely agreed frameworks or principles. Obviously, effort of this type is easy to gain support from the community. Contrarily, the transformative one involves disruptive / unorthodox ideas which more often lie outside of the box of our collective thinking or even break some existing principles. Not surprisingly, these kind of so-called high-risk / high-reward ideas and studies are difficult to get funded, especially in the beginning. To balance both types of efforts, open science practices are in need.

A crackpot's counter-statement

Some physicists have labeled me as a crack pot when considering my works on the new theoretical framework of mirror matter theory. However, I disagree in the spirit of scientific principles. With three papers published in esteemed journals, seven invited seminars by unrelated people (or more than 10 in total), and grant-seeking in collaboration with several different groups, I don’t think that it is fair to categorize my work on this topic as crackpottery. It is not, especially when considering the unique concrete predictions from my new model that can be readily tested in the laboratory using existing technologies.

New blog to continue my mission on open science and mirror matter theory

Under enormous pressures, I had to close my former blog hosted at Notre Dame. This is my new blog site that contains all my previous posts and articles. And I will continue my advocacy of open science principles and studies on the new mirror matter theory. I wish that the right of academic freedom and freedom of speech would not have to be such a luxury, at least in the United States. Join me if you believe in freedom and openness in both science and society.

Is arXiv a monopoly bully in scientific publication?

After decades of ever-increasing dominance, arXiv.org has become the largest and most popular storage space or eprint service for scientific publications in physics and other related fields. It would have been the most beneficial to the physics community had arXiv sticked to its original principles for sharing new ideas and works quickly. Sadly, arXiv.org is becoming more and more arrogant these days instead. Veiled censorship by arXiv is making it just like another giant refereed journal system but without any transparency.

Over-moderation makes arXiv.org another refereed journal

I just so happened to stumble upon a very interesting comment on arXiv’s moderation issues (certainly more interesting than the original blog article). I could not agree more with the commenter. It is almost exactly like what I would like to write about the issue but probably not as well as the anonymous commenter articulated. In particular, I made similar comparisons between science and business; startup companies vs. researchers with risky/novel scientific ideas, etc. I can not help but fully quote the comment here,

How should private foundations support science?

It is amazing that there exist quite some private foundations in the United States who care about science and are enthusiastic about funding scientific projects. However, a lot of them, if not all, don’t seem to know how they should support science in a complementary way when compared to government funding agencies like NSF and DoE.

Time to reform peer-review

One of the critical features in scientific research is the application of the so-called peer-review process before a scientific paper is officially published in a journal. Ideally, peer-review, at least seemingly in its original purpose, should serve as a measure of quality control that benefits both the authors and the readers. However, nowadays, it becomes more and more like an obstruction to the advancement of science, in particular, in terms of radically new ideas and directions.

How can a new idea be accepted by eminent physicists?

In a nostalgic review article titled “Twenty years of the Weyl anomaly” [Michael J Duff, Class. Quantum Grav. 11, 1387 (1994)], Duff recalled the history of his discovery of the Weyl or conformal anomaly in quantum theory with Derek Capper.

Old Wine in New Bottles - How does science advance?

A lot of times science advances by incorporating or interpreting old ideas under new scenarios.

For example, Lorentz first proposed the so-called Lorentz transformation, but it was Einstein who correctly interpreted and applied it in his theory of special relativity. Yang and Mills first came up with the SU(2) gauge theory idea for studying nuclear isospin. But it was Glashow, Weinberg, Salam , and ‘t Hooft who found the best application of the idea to the electroweak interaction eventually leading to the most celebrated unification theory (called the Standard Model) for all three gauge interactions of the known elementary particles.

A dream world and society

I had been totally immersed in further development of my supersymmetric mirror models early this year. The COVID-19 pandemic did not draw my attention until about a month ago when it hit the US really hard. Then all of a sudden it really changed me, not only my life but also my way of thinking. I could not focus well on my favorite mirror-matter projects. I should have finished my invisible-decay paper weeks earlier. Instead it has made me pondering more on what a dream world or society should or could be like. With an open universe of physical objects in mind, what an open world of creatures and an open society of human beings could we imagine?