The Scientist has just published an online version of an upcoming print story on their site. This story asks the question, What are your three favorite life science blogs? I noticed that they asked seven men this question (not one woman, hello??!) and predictably, nearly all of the top blogs that they listed were written by .. men!
Quite frankly, I am offended. Are women life science blog writers really second-class citizens, undeserving of recognition and top honors? If you think that women have something of value to say about the life sciences, get on over there and be sure to let the editors of The Scientist know! They are accepting comments for this piece.
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Hey, two out of my three choices are female bloggers. I was hoping that they would ask female bloggers the initial question as well. Now go forth and add more female bloggers to the list - they will be updating the list every week.
It's a shame Barbara McClintock died before blogging came along.
I noticed it immediately and mentioned it to the new editor (a woman) since I hadn't known who the other bloggers were that had been solicited by the old editor (a man). Of my three suggestions, at least one was a woman and my blogroll is full of female bloggers. But I do share your misgivings and encourage all Grrl scientists to go over to the comment thread and recommend their favorite bloggers.
I went to The-Scientist and I voted for your blog.
I always look forward to posts from your blog as well as Bug Girl and ERV!
Hi, I'm the "man" that Abel refers to here. I wanted to clarify why there ended up being an all-male list of bloggers in this article. We contacted around 15-20 male and female bloggers in total -- based on Technorati authority -- across several life sciences topics, such as evolution, pharma, genetics, etc., to try to cater for all the readers' backgrounds. The bloggers that appear are all the people who replied (and again, thank you very much for doing so).
This method, like any other for assessing blogs, is not without its flaws, but the only discrimination involved in the process was in selecting only 1 or 2 bloggers from a specific area to contact, which would ensure that as many different areas of life science blogs would be covered. The fact that the list ended up as being all-male was not intentional, and apologies if any offence has been caused by this.
The original intention of the article was to compile a list of most popular life sciences blogs as determined by the life sciences community themselves, using a few well-known bloggers to seed the discussion (it's not a final list as some bloggers seem to be implying, far from it in fact). But if another result of this is that the vibrant discussion about the apparent gender disparity in the science blogosphere continues and has a productive outcome, this will be an unexpected and welcome outcome for the article.
One, more minor, point of clarification, the female news editor that Abel refers to has been the editor of the article from the start. I am just the humble writer of the piece!
It's a shame Barbara McClintock died before blogging came along.