Title:
A Social Network Aims to Speed Up Progress in
Science
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
A few years ago, a university researcher was having
problems with an experiment that involved medical
imaging. His adviser and his friends had no
solutions. The researcher was Ijad Madisch at
Harvard in Massachusetts. "I was so frustrated," he
says. His solution was to start a scientific network
for researchers. It lets them connect with each
other and share information about their research and
their publications. ResearchGate is similar to
another social network developed at Harvard --
Facebook. But Mister Madisch says the purpose of his
site is to make scientists more productive. He says
his goal is to win a Nobel Prize: "If we think that
ResearchGate will accelerate research in all the
different fields, it will change the speed of
science significantly in the future. So I definitely
do believe that ResearchGate could win the Nobel
Prize for that one day."Mister Madisch received the
support of investors including a former Facebook
executive and the same investment group that put
money into Twitter. So far, nine hundred thousand
people have signed up as members of ResearchGate.One
of those users is Caroline Moore-Kochlacs at Boston
University. Her profile page shows her picture and
her specialty -- neuroscience. It also lists her
doctoral adviser and the work she has published. She
can follow other researchers and click onto group
pages that discuss different subjects.She also uses
Facebook but says people almost never discuss
science there. She says on ResearchGate she can ask
questions and learn about what other researchers are
working on before they publish their results. She
can also learn about recently published science. She
says: "The scientific literature is so huge at this
point, that it's really impossible to get through
everything in your topic area. People really rely on
hearing it from other people."But not every user is
pleased with ResearchGate. Kim Bertrand at the
Harvard School of Public Health is an epidemiologist
-- someone who studies the spread and control of
diseases. Ms. Bertrand says she finds more value in
her own offline network of researchers and advisers
than in this online network. She says: "Sometimes I
get these emails that are like: 'Dear Sirs: I'm
writing a dissertation on public health. Any
suggestions? Please advise.' I don't need that."For
VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal. To read and
listen to more stories, go to voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
