There’s a recent paper on blogs as a channel of scientific communication that has been making the rounds. Other bloggers have discussed the paper and its methodology in some detail (including but not limited to Bora and DrugMonkey and Dr. Isis), so I’m not going to do that. Rather, I want to pull back and “get meta” with the blogospheric discussion of the paper, and especially the suggestion that it might be out of bounds for science bloggers (some of whom write the blogs that provided the data for the paper in question) to mount such a vigorous critique of a paper that was, as it turns out, authored by a graduate student.
So, let’s consider the situation more generally:
Category Archives: Blogospheric science
#scio10 aftermath: Continuing thoughts on what civil engagement could mean, online or offline.
Back in January, at ScienceOnline2010, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Dr. Isis, and I led a session called “Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents”. Shortly after the session, I posted my first thoughts on how it went and on the lessons I was trying to take away from it.
Almost two months later, I’m ready to say some more about the session and the issues I think it raised.
Friday Sprog Blogging: more on pseudonymity.
Although I swear that the Free-Ride offspring have not read the relevant prior posts!
While walking home from school:
Younger offspring: From now on, in the sprog blogs, can you call me “the small, silent one”?
Dr. Free-Ride: Why? You’re neither small nor silent.
Elder offspring: Definitely not silent. I live with you, I know.
Impediments to commenting worth typing into a text box.
On the post where I asked you what made you feel welcome to comment on blogs and polled you on what would make you unlikely to comment on a post, friend of the blog Eva notes in a comment:
One of the bloggers at nature network is currently polling (silent) readers about what makes them not comment. Registration requirements are in first place at the moment, followed by the mysterious “another reason”, so I’m curious to hear what the other reasons were, and whether they overlap with anything from your poll!
So, in the interests of sharing the information gathered by my (decidedly unscientific) poll of my readers, here are the responses people who picked “other” in my poll typed into that text box:
Weekend reflection: what makes blog commenting inviting?
I’m not looking for a general theory of what sets up the right room for dialogue as opposed to an argument, nor even for a fine grained analysis of whether dialogue or argument is what most blog readers and commenters are looking for.
If you’re reading this post, I’m interested in knowing what you prefer.
First, a quick poll (where you can choose all the answers that apply):
Anonymity, real names, and dialogue.
Matthew C. Nisbet put up a post today titled The Right Room for a Dialogue: New Policy on Anonymous Comments. In it, he writes:
I’ve long questioned the value of anonymous blogging or commenting. Much of the incivility online can be attributed to anonymity. And with a rare few exceptions, if you can’t participate in a dialogue about issues without using your full name and true identity, then what you have to say is probably not that valuable.
These long standing thoughts were called to mind again after reading a post by Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth. Quoting as the subject to his post a line from Monty Python “is this the right room for an argument?,” Revkin writes:
Michael Palin asked that question nearly 40 years ago on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and it’s as germane as ever in considering the merits and drawbacks to blogging, and particularly the comment strings following posts. Often, the commentary here and elsewhere threatens to devolve into extended volleys of retorts, particularly when anonymous contributors are involved, some of whom are so relentless that their ideological foes sometimes allege they must be getting paid to do what they’re doing.
Revkin goes on to link to a column by Columbus Dispatch editor Benjamin Marrison who discusses the negative impact of anonymous commenters on the newspaper’s Web site. As Marrison observes of people who email the Dispatch or leave comments at stories: “Is it a coincidence that all of those civil people are reachable (and somewhat accountable) through a return e-mail?”
Matt then notes that he’ll be taking steps on his blog to end anonymous commenting.
Of course, it’s Matt’s prerogative to establish whatever sort of ground rules for commenting on his blog that he likes. However, the title of his post suggests that his aim, in moving to block anonymous commenting (and presumably pseudonymous commenting, although it’s not made explicit in the post) is to foster dialogue.
Some reflections on my fifth blogiversary.
Five years ago today, I put up the first post on a blog that was mean to capture the overflow of discussions and ideas from my “Ethics in Science” class. Back then, I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d manage to maintain the blog through the end of the semester.
It just goes to show you that you can’t always tell which of the things you try will become sustainable practices (although maybe the ones that don’t involve exercise equipment have better odds).
On the occasion of my fifth blogiversary, I’m reflecting on a question posed by BlogHer upon BlogHer’s 5th anniversary:
What are five opportunities you’ve gotten because of blogging?
#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on “An Open History of Science”.
Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session’s wiki page.)
The session was led by John McKay and Eric Michael Johnson. John posted the text of his presentation and Eric posted his presentation a la YouTube. I’m going to take this as permission to skip doing a proper recap here. Instead, I’m going to write about the big ideas this session raised for me.
First, I’m struck by how easy it is for those of us who were trained to do science to know very little about where scientific practices come from — especially practices around communicating results and methods to other scientists. Somehow, we either assume it’s always been this way (where “this way” is often the way we were taught to do it), or that the practices were put in place in plenty of time for the scientists of earlier eras who might have needed them, or that the practices that were established as the right ones were so obvious that their adoption was inevitable.
What I’ve gleaned from my coursework and reading in the history of science is that the inevitable usually takes a lot of work (plus some luck).
#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on “Science and Entertainment: Beyond Blogging”.
Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session’s wiki page.)
This was sort of an odd session for me — not so much because of the topics taken up by session leaders Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette, but because of my own sense of ambivalence about a lot of “entertainment” these days.
The session itself had lots of interesting glimpses of the work scientists are doing to help support filmmakers (and television producers, and game designers, and producers of other kinds of entertainment) who want to get the science right in the stories they’re trying to tell. We heard about the efforts of the Science & Entertainment Exchange to connect makers of entertainment with scientists and engineers “to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines”. We saw the Routes website, produced in association with the Wellcome Trust, which included “a set of minigames, a documentary and a murder mystery which explore the fascinating world of genetics.” (In one of those minigames, you get to be the virus and move to the next level by infecting the target proportion of potential carriers — but you get just one sneeze per level to make that happen!) We learned that the drive to add “extras” when movies are released on DVD is creating something like a demand for real science content to complement science fiction.
In other words, it sounded like producers of entertainment were aware that a science-y angle can hold appeal for the audiences they are trying to reach, and were generally enthusiastic about (or at least open to) the idea of drawing on the expertise of actual scientists.
Of course, there were caveats.
#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on “Talking Trash: Online Outreach from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch”.
Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session’s wiki page.)
Among other things, this panel took up the article panelist Lindsey Hoshaw wrote about the garbage patch for the New York Times and some of the reaction to it (including from panelist Miriam Goldstein).
Lindsey’s article was interesting because of the process. To get a spot on the ship going out to the North Pacific gyre, where the garbage patch is, she had to come up with funding. (We learned during the session that ship time on some of these expeditions can run to $18,000 a day.) Rather than pitching the story idea to the New York Times and hitting them with the bill, or covering the cost of the ship time herself, she “crowd-sourced” her participation — that is, she turned to readers of Spot.Us, a nonprofit web project that supports freelance journalists, for donations. The pitch she gave when asking for this money described deliverables: