One of the things that came out of the discussion of the ethics of blogging about science at the 2008 NC Science Blogging Conference was a clear sense that we don’t yet have general agreement about what kinds of ethics should guide science blogging — in part, because we haven’t come to an agreement about just what kind of activity science blogging is.
Category Archives: Communication
Obeying the sign(s).
Signs are not the boss of me (or of you), but they often convey useful information. For example, this sign reminds of us of responsibilities that come with being a dog owner (or dog guardian, depending on your jurisdiction):
You’ll notice that the sign advising you to clean up after your pet actually dispenses biodegradable gloves with which you can scoop the poop. This is a sign doing everything it can to help you follow its directions.
Other signs are more focused on our safety than on getting us to behave responsibly towards others in our shared public spaces. For instance, this sign:
Are certain forms of address ill-suited to academe?
A comment on ScienceWoman’s post (concerning, among other things, how her students tend to call her Mrs. ScienceWoman and her male colleagues Dr. MaleColleague), got me thinking about the norms around addressing faculty that prevailed at my undergraduate institution and whether, if they still prevail, they’re worth abolishing.
The commenter wrote:
What people know about animal care at my university.
Likely, the throbbing mass of humanity at my university knows at least a little more than it did before last week, owing to an article in the student newspaper about the institutional animal care and use committee. (It was a front-page article, so the chances that it attracted eyeballs was reasonably good.)
A few things that jumped out at me:
Does valuable information want to be free?
The November 5, 2007 issue of Chemical & Engineering News has an editorial by Rudy M. Baum [UPDATE: notbehind a paywall; apparently all the editorials are freely accessible online] looking at the “Google model” for disseminating information.
Baum writes:
The ethics of science blogging: help set the agenda.
At the upcoming North Carolina Science Blogging Conference on January 19, 2008, I’ll be leading a discussion on the ethics of science blogging (not about blogging about ethics in science). If you attend the conference (and if you’re not sucked in by one of the other attractive discussions scheduled for the same time-slot), you’ll be able to take part in the conversation in real time.
But even if you won’t be able to come to North Carolina for the conference, you can help set the agenda for our discussion by editing the wiki page for the session.
Survey on the impact of blogs about science on the world outside the blogosphere.
It has seemed to me for some time now that the landscape of news and information sources has changed since the end of the last century. Anecdotally, I seem to know an awful lot of people who rely primarily on online sources (both online versions of traditional newspapers and magazines and blogs with journalistic leanings that provide solidly researched articles and deep analysis) for their news. But I also seem to know some people who automatically equate information on the internet with the nutty website of a paranoid guy in the cellar.
And it’s really hard to assume that the people I seem to know are a representative sample of the population as a whole.
In the interests of science (what with the penchant for empirical evidence), some folks are trying to get some data on who is reading about science in the blogosphere and about what impact, if any, blogs may be having in the three-dimensional world. To that end, they’ve constructed a survey which you are invited to take. Here’s the official explanation:
This survey attempts to access the opinions of bloggers, blog-readers, and non-blog folk in regards to the impact of blogs on the outside world. The authors of the survey are completing an academic manuscript on the impact of science blogging and this survey will provide invaluable data to answer the following questions:
Who reads or writes blogs?
What are the perceptions of blogging, and what are the views of those who read blogs?
How do academics and others perceive science blogging?
What, if any, influence does science blogging have on science in general?
Please consider participating in the survey as an act of ‘internet solidarity’! It will likely take 10 minutes, and a bit more if you are a blogger yourself. We thank you in advance.
If you survive the survey unscathed, you might even email the link to a friend (although for goodness sake, don’t make a chain letter out of it!) to help build a larger and perhaps more representative sample.
The above LOLcat brought to my attention by RMD, who got to interview Cheezburger!
C&E News on writing journal articles.
Since scientist-on-scientist communication is a longstanding topic of interest in these parts, I wanted to point out a recent (August 13, 2007) article in Chemical & Engineering News (behind a paywall, but definitely worth locating a library with a subscription) that offers tips for writing journal articles. It’s quite a substantial article, drawing on advice from “dozens of scientists and engineers around the world in academia, industry, and government” — which is to say, the people who read and write journal articles as part of their jobs.
It goes without saying that this crowd has some strong views.
What the scientists don’t talk about in their papers tells you something, too.
On Stranger Fruit, there’s a response by historian of science Naomi Oreskes to recent criticisms of her 2004 paper in Science discussing the consensus position regarding anthropogenic climate change. While the whole trajectory of these sorts of “engagements” is interesting in its way — attacks on claims that weren’t made, critiques of methodologies that weren’t used, and so forth — the part of Oreskes’ response that jumped out at me had to do with the kinds of issues on which scientists focus when they’re talking to each other in the peer-reviewed literature:
Reacting to PRISM and publishers’ concerns about ‘scientific integrity’ (the short version).
Even though I’ve been frightfully busy this week, I’ve been following the news about the launch of PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine). I first saw it discussed in this post by Peter Suber, after which numerous ScienceBloggers piled on. If you have some time (and a cup of coffee), read Bora’s comprehensive run-down of the blogosphere’s reaction.
If you’re in a hurry, here are three reasons I think PRISM’s plans to “save” scientists and the public from Open Access are a bad idea.