Open Science at ASIST in Milwaukee

Well I'm off to Milwaukee tomorrow for the ASIST conference.

I am participating in a panel on Open Science on Tuesday October 22 at 8:30. Anyone can add questions for us to answer on the wiki. Here is an abstract with a few questions already posted:

Opening Science to All: Implications of Blogs and Wikis for Social and Scholarly Scientific Communication (SIG STI, SIG BWP)
Bora Zivkovic, Jean-Claude Bradley, Janet Stemwedel, Phillip Edwards and K.T. Vaughan

A growing number of scientists are turning to Web2.0 communication tools such as blogs and wikis to provide open channels for their social and scholarly discourse. Because of these tools, scientists are increasingly able to share data, results, and analysis of research (scholarly communication) with distant, and sometimes unknown peers, and are also able to enter the realm of scientific commentary (social communication) with the general public. While many science bloggers focus on purely social commentary on science, others include conference announcements and reports, book reviews, brief discussion of “failed” experiments, and non-publishable research findings. Within this environment there is a strong awareness that readers include – and may preferentially be – non-scientists, perhaps even nonspecialist skeptics about established theories. This session is not only concerned with presenting a state of the blog for science communication, but also with thinking about the impact of “plain English” science writing on both society and on science.

Question: Is it really a good thing to let anyone who thinks they have a scientific breakthrough have access to free, open, public, Googleable media?
Question: What if I make a mistake in my data, never fix it, no one catches it, and then someone dies because a medical decision was based on my "findings"? Isn't this exactly why we have formal peer review in formal publications?
Question: Who is the audience for science blogs and wikis anyway? Scientists or laypeople?
Question: Can you get published if you've already posted your results to your blog/wiki?

I hope to see some of you there!