The Voltage Gate

Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.

-Eugene V. Debs

For those that don't know, today is International Webloggers Day, celebrating and appreciating blogging as a viable and necessary medium for expressing ideas and sharing information:

Blogging has changed from being simply a personal journal designed to give us a sense of our past to becoming a medium, a channel through which words work to change things, be it ourselves, those around us, or the world beyond.

It gives me a rare opportunity to wax philosophic and generalize.

This year's theme is solidarity, an absolute in the blogosphere. The more you become involved in the community and reach out to like minded bloggers, the more you will be recognized and appreciated. I guess you could say that no blogger could survive and be heard as an island. Our address books, blogrolls and inboxes are stuffed.

In the science blogging community, this is especially important. Scientific progress is dependent on the proliferation of published research - getting new information and ideas to other scientists so that the next batch of questions can be answered. Science blogging can help this process. By reviewing research in our "pet" topics, we are able to bolster the presence (and hopefully the influence) of the ideas expressed, making it more likely that a Google search will turn up information that leads a scientist to relevant background literature.

The science blogging community supports the scientific community in other ways. We are and have been useful in debunking pseudoscience, not only in pointing it out, but also explaining why it's wrong. Traditional media has a spotty track record when it comes to explanations and background. Editors/producers have a deadline and a limited amount of space/time for stories, and usually the "how exactly" is, at best, glossed over.

I witnessed the meta-solidarity of the science/nature blogging community this past spring. Dozens of bloggers from around the world signed on to the first Blogger Bioblitz, taking time out of their busy lives to find out what kind of life lives in their local parks and backyards, all in the name of citizen science and biogeography. The ideals of science were alive in these folks, even if our results were not a hard source of data.

We realize that science and therefore society is on the cusp of an important transition. We are supporters of the freedom of information within science, encouraged by open notebook science and open sourced publications like PLoS One. We want children to know the beautiful truth about their evolutionary heritage. We see the potential for a great suppression of suffering in stem cell research. We recognize what we have done to this planet's ecosystems through pollution, habitat destruction and global warming, and are prepared to take solid, evidenced steps to remediate these problems. We may be an arrogant bunch, but our ideals are sound and purposed.