giving a talk on blogging at Harvard tends to make one think,
in particular, what is the use of science blogging, and why are economists so good at blogging
it was a fun talk, for me at least,
decent turnout, considering I was squeezed in between the 12:30 seminar and the 4 o'clock talk, some good question
the occasion caused me to do some review of blog statistics and the general state of the blogosphere. The growth has definitely slowed, but science blogs in general and scienceblogs.com in particular are actually quite well positioned, considering their relatively niche position
but, has science blogging done any good?
I can think of science policy issues where blogging has made a contribution, and the general spread of information and communication done by blogs has probably had some impact, but has any actual science been directly impacted by blogs, or discussion on blogs? I am hard pressed to think of concrete examples.
What is disturbing is realising how effective a use the economists are making of blogs.
As an outsider, my perception is that economic blogs are much more effective at communicating technical information and policy differences, possibly because the readership is less intimidated by economics. I also get the sense that economists use their blogs for actual inter-blog communication and resolve differences (or agree to disagree) in public, and possibly even generate new concepts on-blog.
I don't see that in the sciences, certainly not in the physical sciences, and arguments about the landscape in string theory do not count...
Is this a difference in how work is done in the fields, timidity by the natural scientists, or just lack of imagination and bravado.
I don't know.
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One difference between the fields appears to be that economists will go public with working papers - drafts of work they will publish later after further refinement. Would you put on your blog preliminary results or the draft of an idea ?
Is this a single- versus multiple-author thing? Blog posts are generally single-author, scientific papers are almost always collaborative in a way that I imagine economic publications aren't. It would be fun to blog about my ongoing research but getting everyone else onboard might be pretty hard.
I have thought about it, and I will generally not put preliminary results or drafts on the blog.
Partly because some preliminary things have to be backed out, they just don't work out, and partly because if an idea is really interesting, a sufficiently predatory researcher or group with resources (like funded but untasked postdocs) can move faster than any individual researcher or small group.
This is not necessary, there are far more ideas than people and a lot of things to work on.
But, a fair number of the more topical and interesting stuff is piled on and the most fun ideas are definitely in the "damn, wish I had thought of that", precisely because the initial insight is the most valuable, the follow through is work but typically something any number of people could do.
Are mathematicians blogging research ideas?
I confess I do not know. Their research tends to be of the variety where most of the work is the actual work in producing the research. At least in some fields.
Anyway, it bothers me, blogs are such good information conduits they ought to be better used.