Coming-out for science bloggers?
Martin Fenner
Tuesday, 27 May 2008 17:36 UTC
Science blogging can be many things to different people. It can be educational, entertaining, career-promoting or just fun. But what is the social standing of a science blogger? How are science bloggers perceived by fellow scientists, science journals or even bloggers from other parts of the blogosphere? The first reaction from fellow scientists is probably that they never heard of such a thing. The second reaction that it is a waste of time and that one should rather be doing experiments.
The result of this (perceived) image: many science bloggers don’t talk much about their blogging with their scientific colleagues and communicate mostly with other science bloggers. Do we have an image problem? And should we do anything about it?
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There is an article all over the internet these days that expresses what I believe is a big part of the problem:
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
It basically says that watching television is what people are accepted to do with their spare time, and if you do something else (in his example it’s editing Wikipedia, but it might as well be blogging) people wonder how you can possibly find the time for it, and I think that makes us a tiny bit embarrassed about it.
I’ve done a lot of volunteer work in my spare time all through my university career: sat on a bunch of committees for student unions, done outreach activities, etc. My supervisors knew about this, but always warned “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your lab work”. They thought I was doing committee work instead of work, but I’ve always done these things in my spare time. Same with blogging.
But for some strange reason it’s acceptable to work all day and then go home and watch sports on TV or read beauty magazines on your coffee break, but it’s weird when you spend that time doing something useful. People tend to not get that it takes away from the time they spend doing nothing and not from the time spent doing productive/paid work.
That’s why I rarely tell lab people about my blog. I don’t hide it, and people found it, but it’s not considered normal. It’s considered a “waste of time” by people who set everything aside to catch the latest episode of TV shows like America’s Next Top Model.
It’s not just science blogging, it’s all kinds of extra-curricular activities (like the committees and outreach work I mentioned). Some people just can’t understand that that is what others do with their spare time.
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@Eva: your __boss watches America’s Next Top Model and talks about it bald-facedly?
In my case, if I am completely honest – some of the blogging does come out of my work time. But “work time” for me is a very flexible concept time-wise; it has to be, with my lifestyle. So until the day when someone forces me to clock my work hours, it will go unproven that overall, the time I take to upkeep the blog does not impinge on the state’s value for money.
I really work better multi-tasking, and taking my coffee sometimes in front of the computer screen rather than talking about rugby with my co-workers seems a small price to pay to add some intellectual diversity to my day. Coffee and bathroom breaks are admitted. I have a blog break when I drink my coffee (can’t bring it to the bench, after all).
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Ha. No, I don’t think she does, but my labmates watch stuff like that and that is not considered a waste of time (because it’s at home, when they’re not working) but my hobbies look too much like things that one does at work, and the idea that I write about science for fun in my spare time is not “normal”
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I’m not sure about the whole “open” thing is the same as telling everyone. I personally think it is a little like everything else I do outside of work – personal time. If I were to write a column in a loval paper once a week I am not sure I would tell my co-workers either. I wouldn’t mind talking about it if they brought it up “hey, I read your column in the paper yesterday” but I wouldn’t ‘brag about it either’.
Key thing is I don’t really think scientist are too proud of telling their fellow scientist about anything else they are doing apart from work and experiments. (Maybe we are shy to an extent?) It is always that “oh, you have time to do that?! and not work?!”. It might be different depending on where you are on the ladder of course. A new post doc might be asked more openly if you really have time to spend without working although (as pointed out by Eva) noone really questions watching telly as much.
Personally I find it interesting that I still get the “how do you have time to read real books?” so I can imagine what would happen if they realised that I both read blogs and write myself…
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I watch next to no television. I try not to blog while actually in the office at work, but then I spend a lot of time at home thinking about experiments and writing things that are directly work-related.
After tea yesterday I sat down and examined a protein structure – which cut into my ‘me’ time, my writing time.
Anyway, gratifyingly, my boss is pleased that I’m going to the conference in August. He’s not really into blogs, but he approves of what I’m doing (at least, when it’s not so silly as it sometimes gets on NN). My colleagues, especially the students, think what I do at the Lab Rats is wonderful.
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I was surprised last week when I saw how many scientists in my discipline read and like (and use!) my blog.
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Most folk would probably say that, once the working day is out of the way, they don’t have the energy to do anything ‘useful’ or ‘constructive’ and just want to relax in front of the TV. Maybe it takes a special sort of person to keep using their brain deep into the evening. Or maybe anyone could do it if they gave it a go.
The feedback and friends you get from online discussions can get addictive and, for me, make a preferable alternative to watching TV. But you’d never expect this to be the case until you’ve tried it. There’s a high activation energy, to borrow a term from chemistry.
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I think you’re right, Matt.
For me, I resent the brainlessness of TV. I’d rather engage with people, or even play a game, than sit there and drool like
a moronHomer Simpson. -
Blogging is just television for grown-ups.
The problem with TV is that the watchers are ‘consumers’, who do little more than receive, passively, what they are given, and so the standard slides inexorably to one that can be appreciated by the insensate masses. (The ‘little’ part refers to being deluded into voting, by phone, at astonishing expense, for whichever moron one favors in a
freak showtalent competition).At least with blogging one can be interactive. One might say that blogging is an attempt to revive the lost art of conversation. It gets over the fact that people capable of engaging in conversation are, these days, distributed so thinly among the overwhelming morass of proles, that without the internet they might not actually ever meet, or even know of one anothers’ existence. We bloggers
and Richard Grantare the last, fading spark of intelligence left on this planet (except me – I’m only visiting). Would the last person to leave please switch off the lights? -
Matt> I completely agree with the “relaxing after a long work day” and watching telly is a way of escaping and doing that.
I really liked your chemistry analogy. The idea that you get more energy from giving something in the whole debate for example. I guess though, that this could be interpreted as “needing feedback in order to refuel energy” :)
Or it is an easy conversation with people you share a common interest with but aren’t in the same place as so rather than never see them and talk to them you use the internet and share thoughts and ideas?!
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