Scientists know more than what they publish in peer-reviewed journals. And blogs can be a good medium for disseminating this tacit knowledge, says Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies at Columbia University, New York, in a Commentary that is published in Nature Geoscience (Nature Geosci. 1, 208; 2008), and discussed in Peer-to-Peer and Climate Feedback.
In the same issue of the journal (Nature Geosci. 1, 209; 2008), Myles Allen at the University of Oxford, UK, describes having his peer-reviewed work criticized and misinterpreted on the Internet by people who would not subject their conclusions to peer review, and wonders “Can science survive Web 2.0?” He concludes that the Internet, “far from creating a level playing field, just ploughs it up and makes the game impossible”. Yet Schmidt remains optimistic: “Our ability to do science and enhance its relevance in public life relies on the community’s willingness to engage, inspire and inform. Blogs are one way to do that, and they can excel at providing the context that is so often missing in other media. Not every scientist needs to have one, but maybe every scientific field does.”
Nature 452, x; 10 April 2008