Comments on: Science Blogging as a Public Outreach Tool — Unfulfilled Potential or Unrealistic Expectation?

By: How the Internet Changed Medical Journals « The Scholarly Kitchen

How the Internet Changed Medical Journals « The Scholarly Kitchen — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 09:31:59 +0000

[...] of us keep returning to, in order to explain why most scientists eschew Web 2.o, social networks, science blogging, open review, and post-publication review, is that authors gain very little professionally from [...]

By: Recherche / information scientifique (21/03/10) « pintiniblog

Recherche / information scientifique (21/03/10) « pintiniblog — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:02:35 +0000

[...] Science Blogging as a Public Outreach Tool — Unfulfilled Potential or Unrealistic Expectation? (source: The Scholarly Kitchen, [...]

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:15 +0000

1. Agreed. Kouper directly addresses this in her paper, and it’s noted in the blog entry above, “Kouper admits that she’s missing out on non-scientist lurkers, who read but don’t comment, so perhaps more education is happening than she concludes…”

2. That’s far too reasonable and accurate a statement to make about social media. This is Web 2.0, and apparently you’re supposed to drown everything in unrealistic hype….

By: Brad Walters

Brad Walters — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:36:31 +0000

1. just because the people leaving comments are scientists doesn’t mean there are not any non-scientists reading the blogs.
2. blogs by their very nature will always pander to a mainly scientist (or at least science loving) crowd as they usually have to be sought out. The internet is not like tv or a movie theater where the only show playing is “Science Blogs” or “Science Blogs the Sequel”. The internet is a big place, and only people who have enough of an interest in science are going to regularly check in on science blogs. I wish the public at large were just as interested in science as they are in the drinking and driving habits of Hollywood celebrities, but if Nielson ratings teach us anything, that is simply not the case.

By: Zen Faulkes

Zen Faulkes — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:08:48 +0000

“(W)ould it change the way you write if you knew they definitely ‘were’, and if their interpretation of the blog was part of your evaluation?”

No. I have tried to follow the maxim, “Own every word you speak” for a while.

“(W)ould you object to a committee like that putting expectations on your blog, dictating the types of content you create?”

Yes. That, to me, would be the same as them dictating what journals I publish in. I would see that as an academic freedom issue.

By: sharky

sharky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:26:47 +0000

I’m most fond of what happens when a lot of blogs decide to write about an event or a book. They write with different levels of accessibility from different backgrounds, and it gives me a much better picture than if one blog had tried to write one easily-accesible esssay.

We’d see less if everyone tried to sit down and make their work available to the layman but interesting enough for their peers, anyway; that would be work, and not someone dashing to their blog to essentially go “lookit my SCIENCE!!! everyone!” I like reading spillovers of excitement, not hashed-out mini-essays.

And I’m reacting mostly to the idea–I haven’t read the article. But from the sound of it, the article also shortchanges the reader. A layman who’s been following a science blog for a year is going to be getting more out of later posts, and a first-time visitor probably isn’t there to read in-depth anyway; just to get some food for thought and move on.

By: Science Blogging as a Public Outreach Tool — Unfulfilled Potential or Unrealistic Expectation?

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:42:08 +0000

[...] Read the rest of the article HERE [...]

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:33:34 +0000

As noted, it was a hypothetical.

By: Michael Nielsen

Michael Nielsen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:05:52 +0000

To come back to Bill’s question, I don’t believe blogging should be required, and certainly don’t say it should be in my article.

By: Hope Leman

Hope Leman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:56:30 +0000

I found this wording, “your funding agency” particularly interesting and the noted advocate of Open Notebook Science (and active blogger) Jean-Claude Bradley has some interesting comments here, “Funding Agencies and Open Science” http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/2010/02/funding-agencies-and-open-science.html

I think this discussion could be widened to include not only blogging but the Web presence of scientists in other Web media as well: Open Notebooks, Wiki, etc.

For instance, I am a classic layperson with little scientific background, but I have found Bradley’s blog and those of Cameron Neylon http://cameronneylon.net/

and Steve Koch http://stevekochscience.blogspot.com/

(and keep your eye on him as a test case of how blogging and active engagement in Open Science affect the career trajectory of a young scientist, in his case a biophysicist) to be exemplars of clear, cogent, compelling writing by working scientists that explain complex matters engagingly to those with scant grounding in the sciences.

And David Crotty is himself an example of a scientist who succeeds with non-scientific reading audiences.

I would think that if a potential funder were intrigued by a grant proposal, the ability to, in a second, call up a series of blog posts or an Open Notebook run by the applicant would provide that applicant with a huge edge over other applicants with no such presence. As an organizer of the recent Science Common Symposium I can say that I became aware of many of the speakers we invited to come basically via their work as bloggers and in Open Science projects and only later became aware of their equally strong reputations in mainstream publishing and accomplishments in the lab.