Science, journalism or public discourse?
Maxine Clarke
Monday, 23 February 2009 16:08 UTC
More researchers should engage with the blogosphere, including authors of papers in press, according to an Editorial in tomorrow’s issue of Nature (457, 1058; 2009, free to access online). The ambiguity of blogging’s status means that clarification is needed about Nature publications’ procedures, and about how embargoes apply to blogs. It also highlights more generally the potential importance of scientists engaging in the blogosphere.
The Editorial outlines the rules of online engagement for scientists so far as those publishing in Nature journals are concerned, concluding:
“The blogosphere differs from mass media and specialized media in many respects, but the same considerations apply in disseminating new scientific results there. Authors of papers in press have the right to correct misrepresentations and to point to results that will appear in a paper. But a full discussion should await the paper’s publication.
Indeed, researchers would do well to blog more than they do. The experience of journals such as Cell and PLoS ONE, which allow people to comment on papers online, suggests that researchers are very reluctant to engage in such forums. But the blogosphere tends to be less inhibited, and technical discussions there seem likely to increase.
Moreover, there are societal debates that have much to gain from the uncensored voices of researchers. A good blogging website consumes much of the spare time of the one or several fully committed scientists that write and moderate it. But it can make a difference to the quality and integrity of public discussion.”
The Nature journals’ polices on embargoes and communication between scientists.
Our polices on confidentiality and pre-publicity.
We look forward to your views.
Updated 25 February 2009 18:39 UTC
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
Drug Monkey – many papers in Nature and other journals contain in their reference lists the earlier, pre-submission preprint (ArXiv, Nature Precedings, PhD thesis, conference abstract, or other). This is completely standard and has been for tens of years.
You state you prefer to discuss your preceptions and not reality. That’s up to you, but there is plenty of reality available if you wish to take a look. I prefer reality, and I suspect many scientists do, too.
-
What I found interesting about the editorial is that there is the pessimistic assumption that a blog relating unpublished results can trigger a debate that would get much more public attention than the actual original article-in-press about which it is debating. I don’t see why authors can’t step in partway into the nascent discussion and say “next week, you’ll see in my Figure 2 that your assertion is way off the mark.”
If Nature journalists or those from any other publication should hear results presented at a meeting, or find them on a preprint server, the findings are fair game for coverage.
Usually this would give sufficient fodder for a rebuttal, anyhow; there probably would not have been a debate if the results were so revolutionary that no one had even generated the hypothesis before.
-
Heather, I agree, that’s just what I’d do if I were an author of an in-press paper, and I think that the Editorial is recommending pretty much the same:
Authors of papers in press have the right to correct misrepresentations and to point to results that will appear in a paper. But a full discussion should await the paper’s publication.
Raised by the Editorial is the disctinction between scientist-scientist communication (which we encourage before submission and during consideration of papers) and the scientist(author)-media and scientist(author)-public communication (which we encourage when and after the paper is published but not before, for what we think are good reasons explained at the policy links in my post). Blogging, in particular, adds an additional few dimensions and grey areas to that distinction, don’t you think?
-
Hiya.
I’m all for the sentiment expressed in this editorial (the part following on from previous Web 2.0 discussion here). I like the idea of creating a kind of ‘attention watershed’ for a paper or body of work; and of course normally work is published in slices these days, making the linking thread of a blog useful for an additional reason. More room to be chat, with all the added value and pooled wisdom a wider group can bring.
But I still don’t know how I’m supposed to stay on top of it all. Fine, there are digests and meta-blogging and (waaay too much) cross-posting and stuff but this is just like the bioinformatics integration thing all over again — recursive meta-ness where there are ever more sites integrating other integrative sites blah blah. Obviously I’m slightly exaggerating, but apart from picking a ‘favourite’ blog (I get ‘Bad Science’ on rss for example, though that is more about mass media than science per se) I just don’t see how I am supposed to extract much of the value from the blogosphere.
And contributing? In an ideal world… Thought I’d start now I can do it on my phone but actually it turns out my problem is that I’m torn: On the one hand I have quite a high threshold for what is blogworthy, so I tend to hold off on random thoughts; otoh I feel a bit silly writing corporate speak in an ostensibly informal setting (I could spew that stuff till the heat death of the universe, but normally I wouldn’t do it in a personal capacity). Perhaps a project-centered blog might work, but that is no longer a place for my thoughts. Confusing. Seems similar to workplace facebook or twitter — where is the line do these people get on facebook twice (with and without work hat)?
I remember how much I was looking forward all this stuff after reading Ender’s Game as a yoof — ah to be Demosthenes or Locke (noms de clavier) in a dream world of lively highbrow chat — I’m still quite chuffed with our groovy modern world really :)
-
Chris – Totally agree about the difficulties of staying on top of it all. Twitter, Friendfeed and all the blogs, plus (maybe) Facebook and Nature Network. I’m still trying to work out my preferred strategy for reading and contributing.
But if you have something to say on a blog, you should just leap in and start one. I like your idea of a high threshold of what’s blogworthy and I think your readers will appreciate that too.
-
I empathise with what you write, Chris!
I just popped back here as I’ve seen the Editorial in the latest Nature Methods_, which is on a similar theme to the Nature Editorial we are discussing here. "(_Nature Methods 6, 181; 2009":http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n3/full/nmeth0309-181.html).
Abstract: The increasing impact of science on society calls for improved communication between scientists and the public via dedicated science media centers as well as nontraditional personal blogs. (Sorry, Chris!) Here’s an excerpt that indicates some of that journal’s ideas about why blogging can beneficial for scientists to do:
A powerful aspect of blogs is their capacity to put a human face on science and related health issues by allowing scientists to discuss how these things affect them personally in a format in which regular readers feel as though they know the writer. Analysis of the MMR vaccine incident suggests that emotional arguments like a scientist talking about vaccinating his or her own children might be more powerful than the rational arguments that form the basis of normal scientific discourse. The public’s emotional response to genetically modified food in some countries might also have been very different if people could see numerous online blog entries from scientists discussing why they were not concerned about the scenarios being promulgated in the press. But can enough scientists be convinced of the potential benefits of blogging to make this a reality?
Conferences such as Science Blogging 2008: London, organized by Nature Network, and ScienceOnline’09 are exploring the role of blogging in science and trying to get more scientists involved. Nature Network just concluded their Science Blogging Challenge 2008—won by Russ B. Altman—where the goal was to get a senior scientist to start blogging. Altman’s colleague Steve Quake also just started blogging in a guest stint for the New York Times. One hopes that examples of prominent scientists blogging will convince others of the benefits. When a blog author is not a prominent scientist with a reputation to maintain, the quality of information on the blog can be a concern, but science-blog tracking sites such as http://blogs.nature.com/ can help alleviate this problem.The journal is going to develop its Methagora commenting forum into a “proper” blog, and welcomes readers’ comments on the proposal and on the editorial there (free access).
-
Now that’s odd, I checked preview and the link to the N Meth editorial worked, but on live it did not. Here it is again. Nature Methods 6, 181; 2009.
Apologies. -
“Moreover, there are societal debates that have much to gain from the uncensored voices of researchers.”
In my view there is no censorship going on. Some scientists will speak out if something is going wrong.
What would happen is “non-peer reviewed” views being sold over the internet, and with the control that bloggers have over their copyrights, will be misused by the anti-science, anti-evolution, anti-vaccine, anti-round earth, anti-old earth crowd.
And don’t worry about the communication part. Refer to Maya’s law of scientific blogging. Here. :-)
-
As they say when you tell somebody something too personal at work…
TMI…
This all boils down to too much saturation with too much information. I think the whole web 2.0 model will fall under its own weight.
We all need to get back to finding the cure for cancer instead of talking about finding it.
-
I dunno, I don’t habituate this place that much but the deleted commenter sure sounded like a broken record one hears in comments hereabouts. Perhaps the editors are tired of one particular person pursuing the same old agenda regardless of how closely the intended topic fits?
But Maxine, getting to your reply regarding perceptions, you appear to be woefully ignorant of a swath of decision making and other human behavioral science which demonstrates that we flawed humans don’t always make objectively optimal decisions. Nor are our decisions always based on the best available evidence. Feel free to dismiss my comments as the opinion of a single person if you like. This doesn’t make you correct and persisting in an obstinate refusal to grapple with the beliefs and motivations of scientists seems a suboptimal way to reach your apparent goal.
I’ve provided my hypothesis to explain why bioscientists have been reluctant to adopt pre-print server deposition of manuscripts in comparison with the users of ArXiv. Do you have an alternative hypothesis?
Results
-
