Ouch, Chad calls me out on the use of science blogging
Last night, after giving a talk on science blogging, I posted a rather frustrated rhetorical question on whether science blogging has done any good.
Now, I specifically asked this excluding science policy and science communication, not because I think these are no good, but because of the context I was working with.
I had been talking specifically with working scientists about what was involved in blogging and why they might consider it. The public outreach possibilities are obvious although I am not sure that much outreach blogging has been effective; and there are some clear impacts on science policy with possibilities of substantial further impact.
But, this excludes the third component of science communication, in NSF language, the "inreach" - what is the contribution to peer-to-peer communication?
Is blogging enabling collaborations?
Is blogging leading to new initiatives? New directions in research? Providing connectivity which would not otherwise have happened? Conveying information that is important to research and otherwise hard to obtain?
Is blogging generating papers? New research?
It ought to be able to, blogging is social networking, and science has known for centuries about the importance of social networks, which is why we ship our students around to other institutions, write laborious letters in latinterse never read e-mails, and go to interminable conferences and workshops.
But in science, I don't see blogging enabled science happening, yet.
Maybe some internal blogs with restricted access are doing this, although all the cases I know of have fizzled because of poor structuring.
I don't know.
I just find it frustrating that we have this very powerful social networking tool and we seem to be under utilizing it, and talking to that audience and doing the background numbers made me look at it a bit more carefully.
And I don't have the answer, though it seems tantalizingly close, but that may just be hyppnotic delusions from staring at too many hyperbolic mappings of semi-scale free social network graphs.
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Well, I have one side project going which started thanks to people who read my blog pointing me to papers. . . maybe something good will come of it. And the n-Category Café seems to be going strong.
A nice example of a research-heavy astronomy blog is David Hogg's. He's usually very terse, but good enough to see what sort of problems he and his collaborators are thinking about. I can't say anything about it producing "results" though. If nothing else it effectively conveys his utter disdain for PCA.
I do think there needs to be some network of astronomers on twitter. I think it would be fun to watch, regardless of the usefulness, but maybe I'm just easily amused by the minutiae of astronomy.
Personally, not being a scientist, these blogs have helped me develop critical thinking. I don't think that I would think as I do now without you people doing what you're doing. I suspect there are more of us out there who have had their brains boosted by your posts. All of you. Thanks.
My experience with social networking tools is in business, not science or academia. What I've seen to date is that tools can improve existing networking or networking that will have to occur (example - a new project with a geographically-distributed team). However, I've also seen most attempts to "generate" new networking fizzle out after a promising start.
I've yet to be convinced that there's much (or any) innate power in the tools to generate new activity and new benefit. Improved speed of communication/networking, certainly, but that's a mixed blessing.
I think this is also another argument for getting actual LaTeX support on this site. How are we supposed to generate science when we can't talk science like the scientists do, dammit?
I might write a paper based on an idea I got by reading the Secret Blogging Seminar. And I tend to use the $n$-category cafe' as a reference for, well, higher categories :-).
I also second Blake Stacey's LaTeX request. Can we also ask for LaTeX on google documents, while we're at it?
I think we need to get more scientists into the blogosphere - at present only a small fraction is here, so you're less likely to "meet" someone with sufficiently similar interests.
Two comments:
1) Some researchers are participating in the blogosphere and finding collaborators, colleagues, etc. without necessarily detailing their research. That's a really positive thing and a good reason to keep participating.
2) As for doing science with Web2.0 tools it is early days still but there are projects out there. We are collecting experimental values for solubilities of compounds in non-aqueous solvents using wikis for lab notebooks and GoogleDocs to summarize results.
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/
Chad tore you a new one because you and he mis-communicated about the intention of your original query. And you're wondering why people don't use blogs as a device for research communication? Blogs, including the economics blogs, are a great tool for, um, getting inside the mind of the people who are comfortable talking the loudest. And the people who are most comfortable engaging in public contention.
I'm not arguing for peace, love, and supportiveness - working scientists have to be able to defend their ideas - but social interaction tools on the internets are capable of rewarding the worst aspects of professional behavior (or misbehavior). If I wanted more of that, I could go to more conferences.
To be fair to Chad, I did phrase my original post badly
But, yes, he clearly understood me to be dismissive of the successful aspects of blogging - namely science policy influence and outreach - whereas my intent was to skip over them as "solved problems, at least in part", and ponder why the "inreach" wasn't working so well.
I agree with the problem of blogs, which they inherited from other open forum structures.
One solution that was attempted is the closed forum blogs, but every single one of those that I have encountered has died from lack of participation - caused by structural reasons that I think I understand on a case-by-case basis.
Now blogs are not the be-all-end-all of web 2.0 structures, as Chad noted other formats like wikis are actually better suited, and I know of successful collaborative wiki like structures.
But, given blogs' strengths, it feels they ought to be more useful for inreach.
And I am starting to think of possible examples and future models and possibly ways to structure the blog interactions better to enable this.
Maybe I'll try it out, given my infinite spare time.