Nowadays Wikipedia is commonly used by scientists at every possible level to make quick and dirty check on the most various facts. It might be the exact form of a mathematical formula, the definition of some quantity or even the birthdate of some famous collegue. For simple facts we can say that Wikipedia entries are rather accurate; anyhow if the validity of the information you are searching is really an important issue you should never trust the net and you better search some good reference. The biggest doubts arises when you start looking on articles regarding your field of expertise: the best you can hope is that they are incomplete but, most of the time, you can easily find blatant mistakes or huge misconceptions.

Nothing to be surprised of: most likely that article wasn’t written by an expert but by a student that has either a second hand knowledge of the subject or didn’t yet manage to grasp it. Since it is your field of expertise you probably know everything about it so you don’t need the Wikipedia article; therefore you are probably not interested at all in making it better. You will just leave it as it is with a slightly worse opinion of Wikipedia quality.

I think Wikipedia articles should never be allowed as references in the primary scientific literature.

Generation gap
The young generation is on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The older generation, if participating in a social network, will join the more sober-headed  LinkedIn. Young people even leave a virtual social network if they discover that too many members are of the old generation. I still remember situations where faculty members refused to use a computer or email.

In many cases they were cheaters, because all that computer work was done by their secretaries. Innovations are invariably accompanied by people denying their usefulness. After a period of habituation the new development is widely accepted. This pattern of denial, hostile reception to acceptance is notorious. Any critical remark on a modern development is returned with “You are old-fashioned. You better get used to the new situation”.

By the same token, any critical remark on the importance of web 2.0 developments for science is reciprocated by this “Wake up old guy!”. I am sure the rest of this post will meet the same resistance.