Despite ‘open science‘ getting a lot of play lately, many people don’t quite get what it is. That’s understandable, because people use it to mean many things — open access to science publications; open sharing of data; open protocols of communication; open everything. Can get a little fuzzy.

It takes a good story to pull it all together, and that’s what Michael Nielsen delivers here: A nice, short, TED-sized story about a slick project that shows the power of open science’s main principles. Nielsen gave the talk a few weeks ago at TEDxWaterloo, one of the independently organized TED events, in this case, at Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada. I give the flagship TED some grief now and then, when its hunger for powerful ideas gives air to expressions of scientific claims that walk too far out beyond the evidence. Here we see the redeeming strength of the TED format: It generates concise stories illuminating the firm frameworks of complexity.

Those who follow Nielsen aren’t surprised to see him talk so engagingly about open science. He’s consistently one of the clearest writers on the subject. After you watch the vid — or even if you don’t — you’ll want to follow him at his blog and on twitter. I suspect the move to open science will increasingly shape science over the next decade. If you want to track it, Nielsen should be on your short list.

See Also:

• How to Crack Open Science – from ScienceOnline

changes:

Apr 9, 2011: Added sentence about TEDxWaterloo. Changed ideas to claims.