In reply to Carl Boettiger.

I can't argue with that. At some level the standards problem I sketch out *is* the social problem. So TCP/IP and HTTP are solutions to social problems - how do we agree to send packets across a network and how do we request them in a standardised form. They are implemented as technical standards but the social problems were the ones solved by development and critically adoption of those standards. If we could agree a standard then we would also have solved the social problem for research - the problem of course is to get enough people to the point where they recognise there is a problem. And you're dead right - the incentives are core to that.