Ben Goldacre writes in support of Open Access

Ben Goldacre, the Guardian's Bad Science columnist, gave a brief talk last week at a Colloquium on Open Access organised by BioMedCentral. He contrasted the way scientists think about science with the way the media present it. Scientists take an article as a collection of methods, data and conclusions. The conclusions cannot be separated from the methods and data, and are only credible if the methods and data are credible and support the conclusions. Journalists (and hence the public at large) see science as a series of didactic, authoritative statements and newspapers report these statements, ignoring boring old data or methods. It therefore becomes difficult to interpret science stories in the media.

Ben Goldacre suggested that with Open Access it will be far easier to view the original research (if only journalists would include links in their stories).

He wrote persuasively about Open Access in his Guardian column on 10th Feb:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,,2010036,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=18