How do you see bloggers?
Are we time wasting - less than serious academics. Would you hire a blogger knowing that they spend time on things other than research (even though everyone spends time doing other things - just not as publicly).
Or are we the next generation of academics who promote our ideas to the public? Are we seen positively by a tenure review committee? Will our hit counts be as important as our citation rates and teaching evaluations at some point?
Would this differ between research universities where the main focus is certainly not teaching, and a liberal arts college?
Should I become anonymous? Is it going to affect my job search in a few more years?
What do YOU think?
Comments
A Department that looks negatively at my blogging is not he atmosphere I want to be in for the rest of my career.
A Department that decides to hire me because, everything else being equal, I am at a cutting edge of online technology in teaching, research and disseminaton of information is a forward-looking Department I'd be glad to join.
Posted by: coturnix | December 11, 2006 1:44 PM
I would totally like to agree :) but realistically some departments are just the way they are. like harvard would laugh at a 2 body problem while illinois would try to solve the issue (and pay more as well...) I don't think this is ever going to change.
Posted by: steve | December 11, 2006 1:52 PM
There are so many reasons to say "No" to Harvard in the MOST unlikely event they would ever be interested. If nothing else, it is damn cold up in Boston and I sugger from SAD even this way South so the long nights of winter in New England are a no-no for me.
A large land-grant state university in the South or South-West that can provide me with lots of lab space, has a less-than-fascistic IACUC and likes the idea I am a blogger would be a great place to work.
Posted by: coturnix | December 11, 2006 1:56 PM
That's "suffer"....
Posted by: coturnix | December 11, 2006 1:58 PM
I've actually been assuming I was going to end up at a large mid-western/southern type school lately for some reason.
Posted by: steve | December 11, 2006 1:59 PM
Yeah, you don't want to be junior faculty at Harvard, anyway. Unless you're Marc Hauser, they ain't gonna give you tenure, and you're going to have to move in 5 years anyway.
Posted by: Chris | December 11, 2006 2:48 PM
When I started my blog a few weeks back I thought quite a bit about this. I don't think any university would be opposed to blogs on principle, my main concern is more about some admissions person coming across that post where I outline my complete failure to grok maths...
There's also the way that things that go online have a way of staying there - even if you take the post down, google has thoughtfully cached it. There's an interview a friend did with me when I was 13 online somewhere, and it's not exactly flattering... Fortunately, it's in Swedish, which limits the damage it can do. :)
So yeah, blogging under my own name has definitely led me to be a bit more cautious with what I say.
Posted by: Johan | December 11, 2006 2:50 PM
Apart from the fact that you may say something that you wish you hadn't said (and someone sees it before you can erase it), in an hypercompetitive environment, why take a chance? There is bias against "populizers" but it could also be the non-scientific content that gets you into trouble. Some people can get away with anything - a combination of being in the right place and having the right personality to pull it off. The rest of us never catch a break.
I maintain that the mighty Gould himself was a blogger. He just wrote in a much more erudite manner and in a lofty popular mag (Natural History). But again - the kind of guy who could pull it off. At least one of your SciBlog Sibs got grief because of a blog.
And - is there really a lack of dissemination of scientific info to the public? I don't think that's at all true. Scientists tend not to see how much is out there because scientists don't read those magazines and don't watch those TV shows. People who are interested in science have plenty of places to get it in a form that is accessible to the layperson.
Finally - do you really think any significant part of the general public reads sciblogs?
Posted by: Ellen | December 11, 2006 7:01 PM
Coturnix - you mean you don't buy the premise that the IACUC system is a peer-peer system and that everything they say is intended to help you? How are things at Duke, anyway?
Ellen
Posted by: Ellen | December 11, 2006 7:02 PM
No idea - I was never at Duke. And IACUCs are different at every place, but from most of what I hear from friends in other places, I do not think that ours is such an outlier - everyone has a share of horror stories.
Posted by: coturnix | December 11, 2006 9:09 PM
I'm not anon, but I trust that it will not matter.
I feel (cognitive) science has many things to say in informing public policy, and if I choose to I'll highlight those. It might make people slightly uncomfortable, but I always figure the science is on my side. But mostly I don't talk about those things - except I have tried to be strong about discussing the issue of the underrepresentation of women in science.
I talk a few times about what I'm trying to accomplish in my classes, but never with any sort of specificity about individuals, so again, I have to trust that reasonable folks won't take issue with that.
Posted by: Michael Anes | December 11, 2006 10:40 PM
I'm anonymous for most everything I do online, and have more than a few times been glad of it. Stalkers, bosses, mothers, do you want them reading?
Jokes have a funny way of changing flavour over time and won't always be appropriate, while caches keep them fresh for every new person searching your name. I've cringed at early posts of mine.
Be safe, be anonymous.
Posted by: Sandra | December 12, 2006 1:53 AM
Ah. Michael. Public Policy. Now you are on my turf. Trust me on this one - to the extent that you can get policy makers to consider science when they make decisions - they are NOT getting it from blogs. And let's admit it- that's a good thing. Think about some of the blogs out there that say all sorts of weird things about science. Now you and I know they are joking - but does the busy politician know that? You would think that it would be obvious - when a blog says something hilarious like "no such thing as evolution" - but they just don't get the joke.
Posted by: Ellen | December 12, 2006 6:49 AM
Sorry - I know that one of the big NC universities has drawn all sorts of heat for AWA violations...but it was NC State, not Duke.
There was a paper in SCIENCE recently about IRBs focusing on the minutia, the paperwork, and the procedure, and not actually achieving increased safety for patients. Sound familiar?
Posted by: Ellen | December 12, 2006 2:54 PM
I know that's the general feeling around here. We're all very annoyed by the review process. Although I've gotten really good at getting things approved.
Posted by: steve | December 12, 2006 3:37 PM
I blog under my real name about science and technology. If anything it had a positive effect on my life as a PhD student. I was invited by Nature to attend the first SciFoo and I have included my interest in scientific blogging on my CV for postdoc applications so far with positive consequences. I am sure it helped me get the position I will be taking in January as a training editor.
In a future world populated by MySpacers that have grown up with most of their lives in the open and archived what does it matter if we did say something silly some time ago ? Everyone learns by making mistakes. The only difference will be that those mistakes are a bit more transparent.
Posted by: Pedro Beltrao | December 12, 2006 4:07 PM
Aha! I finally found something wonderful about being my age. I will be out of the workforce when the MySpacers come along. I know lots of really smart, cool kids - and they all regard MySpace and Face Book as a waste of time. I have this theory that in every generation, there are a few - maybe 10%? maybe more? - who are really on the ball, smart, willing to learn and work - and the rest are protoplasm. I am sure that's true of the MySpace generation, too. What gives me hope is that it is finally ok to be a nerd - the smart kids now know they will end up better off than the popular kids, and they have their own subculture where they are accepted instead of scorned.
Posted by: Ellen | December 12, 2006 7:02 PM
True story reported in today's Washington Post. High school art teacher appears in a youtube video. He's shown demonstrating his special painting technique, which involves slathering paint on his tushie, and then applying said tushie to the canvas (EEEEEWWWWWW). He's wearing a disguise, and has changed his first name, but he's recognized, and the school suspends him.
So, whatever you do, don't show your tushie on youtube.
Posted by: Ellen | December 14, 2006 7:13 AM