Some things just really annoy me to the point that I write them up as posts. This one is no exception.
After literally hundreds of ‘spam’ emails in recent weeks from ResearchGate I felt the “pressure ” to actually look at the product and try to update it with my profile and papers etc..just in case it actually might be useful one day compared to all the other places you can find my info and papers (e.g. Google Scholar, linkedin etc).
Having never actually used the product I added a few papers, photo, corrected affiliations etc..and saw that a scientist had asked for a preprint / reprint back in June. I cannot understand why they did not just email me because it can be found pretty easily in PubMed etc..and then I decided to ask a research philosophy question that was burning inside.
“Lead or follow – you choose!”
A very open ended question which to me gets at the core of science, do you try to be innovative and lead a field by doing things differently, or do you tag along on someone else’s coat tails and just go with the flow. I do not know why I was thinking about this but hey its Friday and I am still thinking so that is a plus.
I logged out wondering if anyone would respond..
then I get an email that said “your question was deleted by an editor”.
For one I took a look at the guidelines and yes my question is not on some arcane topic that delves into biological minutae, its bigger, its philosophical.
Maybe I should follow up by asking why they think a valid question on research philosophy is invalid. Well better yet. I will abandon ResearchGate, delete your spam email and not waste anymore time on them, as they are no better than the scams that also drop into my email inbox!