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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Heather, these are some very good points. Some of them could be delt with by having blogging guidelines. And there needs to be a way to access the work of a blogger, but that would just mean yet another commitee. Having a platform such as Nature Network would certainly make the legal and technical aspects much less challenging. For that to work, the affiliation part of Nature Network needs to be expanded just a little bit.
I would guess that similar issues have already come up (and have mostly been solved) when blogging started in companies. As a side note, there could also be intranet science blogs, but I doubt that they do already exist and the audience would be much smaller.
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Yes, Martin- what I meant, Heather, was that an external site would be the “publisher”, not the institution, so all the institutions would not have to be continually reinventing the wheel on legal definitions. I can tell you it isn’t as simple as one might hope or at first think.
I was also thinking, when I wrote my suggestion, that if an employee of an institution is “editor” (for want of a better word) of a group/forum for that instution on an external site, it would be more readily demonstrated to be outreach, and hence added to the “editor’s” credentials.
But these are just thought experiments, I haven’t gone into all the details and I am sure there are caveats that haven’t occurred to me. -
That’s an example of course – and it takes a single line to say that the final sayso lies with the Institute. You’d also put in a line to say that no responsibility is accepted for any comments, yadda yadda, and let the lawyers fight it out.
For pity’s sake. If the overly litigious are going to screw things up for everybody we may as well not bother. I say reclaim the commons.
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I’m not saying give up! It’s just worthwhile to think through the possible objections.
Personally, I have found some institutional “blogs” to be very whitewashed and boring. It would be nice if it were possible to have institutionally sanctioned blogs that are meant to really represent a point of view of one (or more) of their individual employees.
See how cool and diverse they are? and they work for us! you could, too! rather than see how cool and diverse our products are? which is just glorified marketing.
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Heh. I wasn’t saying give up. You’ve been in France too long ;)
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Martin> I tried to explain that it is an example of a blog by scientists for “all” (as in both scientists and general public) supported and cared for by the university. I meant it as a reply to the discussion about Departments having a “blogging section” on their website as talked about from Richard and Matt.
The blog is mainly focused on environment, agriculture and other similar issues (GMO….) since it is based at the Swedish University of agruculture and the scientist who blogs are most often working with either microbiology, plants or soil.
I didn’t mean to be complicated since I did realise that the point was smaller since it turned out to be in Swedish ;)
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Asa, I was talking about exactly this kind of science blog hosted by a university.
Another way to put science blogging (and the blogger) more into the mainstream of research work would be to invite a science blogger to give a seminar. This could be just the last 5-10 minutes of a lecture talking about science blogging or a regularly scheduled talk. This probably needs more content than just explaining science blogging, but there are many interesting topics that we care about: impact factors, open lab notebooks, web 2.0 for scientists, etc.
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I dont do experiments anymore anyway and everyone knows that I cant even find I pipette in my own lab. Instead I sit at my computer all day and write papers, grants, and make slides.
In the last few years I have spent more time communicating science to a broader community (articles and a book for general audiences) because there is a lot I would like the world to know and because the creative non-fiction writing process itself is an interesting challenge. Blogging is a natural extension of these activities.
Most of my colleagues and family find this “outreach” of my work a little puzzling but they are mostly kind about it. It is “just one more eccentricity of Pamela”. i feel no need to do anything about the image but do appreciate the community of other eccentrics out there.
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Coming in late to this interesting discussion, but I think that sounds like an excellent idea to have universities blogging about the science they do.
I agree the major stumbling block is that universities – many of which seem to run their public relations in the manner of a private corporation rather than an open house where a thousand flowers can bloom – automatically prefer to keep things secret, for fear of generating controversy or legal action, or whatever else enters their fevered imaginations.
Of course, universities aren’t private companies, they’re paid for by taxpayers, so they don’t have a moral leg to stand on when it comes to keeping their activities secret…
But try arguing that case when you’ve been hauled in front of the head of department because your blog has been spotted and deemed to be too revealing, or detrimental to the corporate image (I wonder if there have actually been any cases like this?).
So I guess a lot of junior/mid-career scientists don’t tell colleagues about their blog because they fear the heavy hand of the university that’s going to tell them to shut up or get fired (and put a black mark against their name).
PS: I wonder how the newspapers handle the comment functions on their web sites, because they really do attract some crazy comments – are they getting legal challenges all the time and do these ever make it to the courts?
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My University encourages blogging by staff members.
So yeah, that’s an interesting point.
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