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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William, what steps would you suggest to convince department heads and other university administrators that science blogging will be actually be beneficial for them (increasing the repuation, attracting students, etc.)? Do they need positive examples that we should collect? A scientific study that examines the value of science blogs? A survey of students, faculty or the public? An evening in the pub?
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All pertinent questions, I hope we’ll address and even answer some of them at ScienceBlogging in August.
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Yes, those are interesting questions and I’ll be interested to hear what answers you guys come up with at that conference.
I’m not really sure I have the answer other than to suggest that universities need to be more open in general. As public bodies they really should make a point of disclosing the details of all their activities, whether it be through staff blogs, forums, or via their own web sites.
But I’m pessimistic that this type of change is ever going to happen, and if it did happen it would need to come from the top.
That said, there’s undoubtedly a growing awareness of how in today’s world secrecy can be a double-edged sword and can actually generate very bad publicity in itself, witness what happened to my own university (BMJ subscription required to view this I’m afraid).
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William,
the link you provide (Academic freedom is at risk in dispute over Gardasil, lecturers say, free access abstract here) is indeed a good example of the fears of university administrators towards public statements by faculty members.
We had the opposite example at our university this week. A research group of our university published a paper about the antitumor activities of a novel compound in the last issue of Cancer Cell. The title of the news release of our PR departments of the involved institutions: Argyrin: natural substance raises hope for new cancer therapies. Reporting cancer research is difficult because the discussion often shifts away from the interesting research and towards the potential to treat patients, and a good science blog could be helpful here.
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Another example of a University standing by one of its bloggers was UCL’s support for David Colqhoun, as reported last year by Ben Goldacre
Although they wobbled at first, UCL came with a statement in support of David, saying “UCL has a long and outstanding liberal tradition and is committed to encouraging free and frank academic debate.”
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Gulp. Well, I did it, folks. Hope the INSERM sees this with as indulgent an eye as some of the other institutions mentioned above.
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