This is the first of three posts detailing my experience of the Science Blogging Conference held at the Royal Institution, London, on 30th August. Parts “2”:http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/rpg/2008/09/12/on-science-blogging-2008—part-2 and “3”:http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2008/09/15/on-science-blogging-2008—part-3.
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In the television series Californication, David Duchovny’s character—a previously successful novelist now suffering from writer’s block—is embarrassed when his agent tries to interest him in writing a weblog for a magazine. The implication is obvious: blogs are for pictures of my cat, not for serious writers. Similarly, there seems to be a widely held perception that a scientist who keeps a blog in any degree of ‘professional’ capacity can not be serious about science, quite apart from the issue of writing personally about one’s day job.
Nature Network’s blogging conference, the first of its kind in Europe, was intended to bring together members of the science blogging community to discuss issues in science, science communication, publishing and education. Places were limited to 130 people and it was rapidly overbooked. Most delegates were from the UK and Europe, with significant numbers coming from the US. Attendees included scientists who blog ‘professionally’ and ‘personally’, senior editors at Nature, a representative from the American Chemical Society (“We have bloggers but we don’t know what they’re doing”) and professional journalists from the Guardian and Times Higher Education.
With support from the Faculty of Science and the School of Molecular and Microbial Biochemistry I was able to represent the University of Sydney and participate in the concluding panel session. Although I was the only delegate to travel from as far as Australia, a combination of ‘live-blogging’, Twitter, FriendFeed and Mogulus enabled the sessions to be followed in more-or-less real time across the world, which appears to have been greatly appreciated.
Keynote
Matt Brown welcomed everyone (reminding us that in the nineteenth century the Royal Institution’s public lectures were so popular that Albemarle Street became London’s first one-way street), and introduced Ben Goldacre: medical doctor, writer, broadcaster and Bad Science blogger.
Ben, after applauding the University of Sydney for paying most of my airfare, railed against the ‘over-popularization’ and dumbing-down of science, particularly noting the inanity of Einstein BMX. He made the point that there is an economic and social cost to ignoring bright children (he actually said ‘geeks’), and that science blogs are useful for stimulating future scientists.
Science blogs have in-built peer review; anything said in public will be fact-checked by ‘an army of bastards’—readers who are experts in their fields. This forces the writer to think carefully, develop their ideas over time, and in many cases provide access to original documents. This contrasts with science and medical journalism in the mainstream media, where trained journalists often write apparently very convincingly on something they actually know nothing about. Science bloggers play an important role in policing the mainstream media for specious claims, uncovering the truth behind so-called ‘miracle cures’ and exposing sloppy journalism.
Bloggers are invaluable in uncovering source material and making it available, and can cover science news much more effectively than career journalists. Perhaps more importantly, bloggers are able to publish the negative aspects of medical and science stories usually ignored by the mainstream media. Because they are written and commented on by experts, science blogs potentially provide direct access to world-class knowledge, peer-reviewed literature and discussion in any discipline.
Blogging the scientific life
The first panel session of the day saw three science bloggers with very different styles talk about their experiences in writing about life as a scientist. Most people actually do not know any practising scientists, and science blogs can help to rectify unrealistic impressions of science and scientists that are gleaned from television and other mass media. Science is not scary, and despite the jargon necessary to our trade and the somewhat esoteric nature of much of our research, science is actually performed by ‘real’ people.
In general, people’s view of science and the scientific process is shaped by the media. As Ben said, mainstream media reporting of science is unsubtle, and most people do not realize that science is not about facts as such, but about how we generate knowledge1. The debate and division within any scientific field, that we as scientists view as healthy and necessary, tends to make non-scientist members of the public very nervous, and they need to be convinced that this evolution of scientific thought is normal. Blogging about the scientific process as it happens could address this in a way that conventional media can not.
Different bloggers write for different audiences. Seed Magazine’s blogs tend to go for a more populist approach, but (to me) seem to be deliberately and sometimes unnecessarily provocative. They are also very bad at linking out to non-Seed blogs. The blogs hosted by Nature Network (where the bloggers receive no income for this activity) are in a more ‘closed’ environment—one has to sign up in order to comment, for example—although they can be read by anyone. They tend to be written with other scientists in mind, but are usually pretty accessible to the lay person.
The panellists disagreed on the necessity for anonymity: one had been threatened with loss of her scientific career if she went ahead with writing a blog. This ties in with the issue of respectability alluded to earlier, and we returned to it in the last session of the day. On the other hand, using one’s real name lends an air of credibility and accountability that might otherwise be missing, but it is imperative that one then takes care not to embarrass or inappropriately identify colleagues.
Related to the issue of anonymity is the problem of dealing with hostile commentators. Nature Network is ‘preternaturally friendly’’ according to one of the panellists, and destructive flamewars never seem to get going. The consensus was that being on the internet seems to bring out the worst in people even if they use their own name, and that the best way of dealing with hostility is to ignore bad behaviour.
Blogging can be a ‘support’ activity: it is a means of talking with people who are experiencing similar situations, and it can be useful to find someone else who has gone through the same difficulties. The problems of doing science, managing careers and families, etc., in general are not discussed in more conventional channels in academia. On the other hand writing about problems, about how things are not always great, can be viewed by peers as letting the side down.
The issues of perception and support were discussed briefly. One panellist said that her boss reads her blog and enjoys it, although she did not know about the Head of her department or her funding body. She voiced a concern that if anyone appeared less than fully committed to their career in a blog post that this could have negative effects if it was read by the ‘wrong’ people.
All panellists seemed to agree that although educating the public about science through blogs was valuable and worthwhile, it was irresponsible to encourage children to become scientists themselves because there are already too many scientists! This contradicts Ben and media reports that there are too few science graduates coming up through the education system (although it is probably a fair reflection on the current state of science funding).
1 Karl Popper: Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp.
Popper K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson, 1959.
Great post Richard – spot on. Glad to hear that the Twittering and Friendfeeding were appreciated but I confess I still don’t get these technologies. Was it not a great distraction for you and others to keep feeding the world, so to speak? And can a series of one liners do the event justice?
Thanks Stephen.
It was actually no more distracting than taking notes (I tried both)—and of course, no one else (maybe not even me 😉 ) can read my notes…
A series of one liners can not do anything justice; even my write-up and those of others can not do that, but it was a great way of letting other people know what was happening, and especially in the breakout sessions let us discuss what people were saying in more depth. More and more people seem to be using Friendfeed like this. It’s not ideal, but it’s an interesting start (and is easier to dip in and out of than video, especially for people like me who are good at reading…)
Well done, sir. I have a feeling that blogging is still in its infancy. It has a kind of wild-west, pioneering feel. Eventually it will settle down with an acceptable set of norms.
An acceptable Norm, yesterday
My worry is that in the process, blogging will lose the air of freedom and, dare I say, anarchy that makes it so enjoyable.
hmmm. Interesting point. Maybe our challenge (you’ll have to wait for part 3 for that…) is completely the wrong thing to do, then?
Maybe our challenge (you’ll have to wait for part 3 for that…) is completely the wrong thing to do, then?
My worry is that persons in authority will seek to take blogs over for their own purposes, using the freewheeling image of blogs to put over messages in the guise of freedom and unbiased independence. Either that or blogs will be squashed. Therefore to get senior scientists to write blogs might be a good thing, as it allows an infusion of respetcability without disturbing the anarchy, as it were.
I don’t think that weblogs as a hole would be susceptible to the first. It’s not going to happen like that because we can comment on them, and point out where people are being (for want of a better phrase) corporate shills—Ben’s “army of bastards”.
The squashing of weblogs by those in authority is more likely (and as Grrlscientist reports, actually happens) but I think we can win that battle.
I think I’m agreeing loudly with you.
I think the challenge is moving in the right direction – it’s partly what prompted me to finally get on with it…
Also long as the bloggers have a degree of freedom, the anarchy element should remain. I think commenters will very quickly sniff out any whiff of corporatism or agenda-setting.
Wow – I hadn’t see your 10:50 comment, Richard, before writing mine. Slightly eerie synchronicity…
heh, I did wonder if our comments crossed in the ether. Sounds like one for the tracking session…
Very good write-up, Richard. I’ve read quite a few write-ups of aspects of this conference already (including the extremely scary ones on Friend Feed of the sessions I moderated, which were going on in real time but luckily for me I did not realise that at the time, only that night), and thought I might be bored of reading about it, but this one is compelling.
You have bought out some salient issues and questions.
Looking forward to the next installments.
I am a British Professor (just like Stephen Curry but in a different field) and I have had a Blog post removed at the request of individuals within my University. I was slightly cynical of a new initiative and it was felt that it might interfere with something else they were after. It was caught because I used the acronym of the initiative in the blog. This was then picked up by Web Consultants (I guess all Universities higher these sorts of guys now!) who were trying to improve the positioning of the initiative on the Web and they claimed that my post was taking too many hits!
Because blogs are open, it is easy to put foot in mouth (or is there a better phrase for an unintentional bad blog?). I don’t believe many people in universities actively police the blogs of staff but something might be picked up by a web search.
Anyway, in my case the offending post was removed, although it must reside in many caches and there have been no repercussions.
That’s something I think I mentioned at the conference, Brian. I was once particularly pissed off at a senior member of the department and vented my spleen on my USyd blog. I thought I was suitably oblique, but he thought he could be recognized, and it turned out we’d both got hold of the shitty ends of various sticks, and I took the post down. We kissed and made up, too.
Thanks Maxine. I hope the rest live up to expectations.
Great post Richard. I hope as scientists we can do better than David Duchovny…
Thanks Duncan.
I should like to add that the only reason I was watching ‘Californication’ is because it is a sodding long way from London to Singapore, and flying over Afghanistan scares me.
Excellent post! thank for another addition to my ‘starred’ posts in Google Reader.
btw – the link you provided to “When Blogging Gets You Fired” is a dead link – but it is available via Google Cache — for anyone who is interested in that article, CLICK HERE
A dead link? I’m sorry Richard, but your geek credentials are hereby revoked.
Welcome to the nerdosphere…
A preternaturally excellent post, Richard. Great reading!
And yes, I was wondering about the ‘too many scientists’ comment. Lots of people nodded. I assumed that there were too many of the wrong sort, perhaps. Are there some disciplines that are too popular? All I ever seem to hear about are the shortages.
Too many scientists – a topic too complex for a blog comment. Apologies to Richard, but I’ve responded to this in a separate blog post.
The short answer is that there is a glut of PhDs in almost every field (except engineering) in most countries, but the media and received wisdom tends to trumpet the opposite – for reasons that are inscrutable to me.
Nice post mate. Very nice indeed.
Fixed the link. Fat fingers while converting from HTML to this awful textism thing.
It’s an interesting conversation on Jenny’s blog about too many scientists. I wonder, if there was an unlimited amount of money, if there would still be too many.
bq. I assumed that there were too many of the wrong sort
Brian thinks there are too many biologists, at least…
Um, Brian Clegg, not Derby. Sorry.
Wonderful write up, Richard! Thank you. Looking forward to the next part!
I do want to clarify my position on the whole “too many scientists” thing. I think my view on the matter is slightly more temperate than Jenny’s or GrrlScientist’s. First, I think it’s important to separate grad students from career scientists. A Graduate school is not vocational school, nor is a PhD a degree that comes with a job attached. Few people, if any, enter grad school expecting a job at the other end, as one would with medical or law schools. I for one, never thought I would go on to be a PI. But I love science and wanted to work on it, get a PhD, and have science in my life, somewhere.
Attracting/recruiting more grad students may not be such a bad thing. Grad students’ work benefits themselves as well as the scientific community as a whole. Pushing grad students to continue in science is a separate subject. The “must recruit” stance of many current scientists may be off base. As mentioned in Jenny’s concurrent comment thread, if you are passionate and committed (and very lucky), you will make your way. Pushing everyone coming out of grad school in that direction may not be for the best.
Btw, hope it’s ok that I hijacked your comment thread for this. I just don’t think that I made myself clear during the panel… nor would anyone have had the time to listen!
I think, Anna, that one lesson of the conference (that I haven’t written about, actually) is that it wasn’t long enough!
I could listen to you all day.
Thanks for the backlink Richard. I’ve got a few more of those kinds of stories, but they’re for down the pub dissemination rather than open blogging 😉 Next year’s meeting perhaps?
Heh, I look forward to it David!
Anna, I think you made thoughtful comments in the panel that people did listen to and acknowledge (see FF group). I admired the way that you were asked a rather confusing question, and then after the other panelists had spoken, you quietly but firmly got the microphone back and said your view (along lines of your comment above). This was very brave in front of all those people, good on you. I would have been too scared I think.
Mmm, I thought you did bloody well, Anna.
Thank you, really. I was about three clicks past stressed out that morning. I very much appreciate your kinds words. Whew.
Really Anna? Never suspected you were stressed. Not ever.
Sarcasm doesn’t travel well over the internet.
heh. Sorry.
😉
Just in case the tags don’t work, for the benefit of posterity, the concluding part is “here”:http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/rpg/2008/09/15/on-science-blogging-2008—part-3.