science reporting
clock | April 6, 2007My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science"
Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers, Mike Dunford (also check the comments here), John Fleck, Larry Moran, Dietram Scheufele, Kristina Chew, Randy Olson, James Hrynyshyn, Paul Sunstone and Alan Boyle have, so far, responded and their responses (and the comment threads) are worth your time to read. Chris and Matt respond to some of them. Matt has more in-depth explanations here, here and…
clock | April 5, 2007I was waiting until the last installment was up to post about this. Revere on Effect Measure took a recent paper about a mathematical model of the spread of anti-viral resistance and wrote a 16-part series leading the readers through the entire paper, from the title to the List of References and everything in between. While the posts are unlikely to garner many comments, this series will remain online as a valuable resource, something one can use to learn - or teach others - how a scientific paper is to be analyzed.
As you can see, it takes a lot of time to read a paper thoroughly. It also…
clock | April 5, 2007Scientists, as a whole, are very reluctant to write novel ideas, hypotheses or data on blogs, and are very slow to test the waters of Open, Source Publishing. Most of what one finds on science blogs is commentary on other peoples' ideas, hypotheses and data found in journals and mass media.
On the other hand, people in the humanities/literature/art/liberal arts side of campus have long ago embraced blogging as a tool to get their rough drafts out, to refine them upon receiving feedback from commenters, and subsequently publish them in peer-reviewed journals. If you follow History Carnival,…
clock | April 3, 2007The April issue of The Scientist contains a good article on science blogging, titled Scooped by a Blog by David Secko (Vol. 21, Issue 4, page 21) focusing on publishing data on blogs, running an Open Notebook lab online, and the way blogs are affecting the evolution of science publishing.
The main story of the article is the story about the way Reed Cartwright's quick comment on a paper led to his co-autorship on the subsequent paper on the topic. But you can read all about it on his blog, including the article excerpt on the story.
Others interviewed for the story are Larry Moran and…
clock | March 29, 2007Heureka is an online popular science magazine in Austria which you should check out, especially if you can read German. But some things are in English, including this interview with yours truly...
There also blurbs about it (in German) in derStandard online and hardcopy, as well as on their science blog Sciblog.
clock | March 29, 2007On The Scientist website you can find their new experimental feature - an article with questions to the public that will be used in forming the articles for the print version of the magazine next month. Go see Special Feature: Stem cell cloning needs you: In a unique experiment we're inviting you to participate in a discussion that will help shape our next feature on stem cell research and post comments:
We're inviting people to give us their thoughts and questions on whether we need to rethink the scientific and ethical approach to stem cell cloning to help shape a feature that we'll be…
clock | March 28, 2007And in the marketplace. Jean-Claude Bradley was one of the people interviewed for a segment on Open Science on NPR's Marketplace this morning. You can read the transcript and hear the podcast here. Thanks Anton for the heads-up.
clock | March 16, 2007The fourth issue of Science In School online magazine is out. It is full of cool articles. Let me just point out a couple:
Eva Amsen wrote about Science Fairs.
There is a nice review of Kreitzman & Foster's book Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks That Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing.
Finally, how to use the movie 'Erin Brokovich' to teach about chemistry and environment.
clock | March 15, 2007I got my rejection letter from EurekAlert earlier today. Apparently, the wording of the letter is somewhat different from what Hsien Li got a few days back and she has now posted both versions for you to compare.
clock | March 14, 2007Earlier today (or was it late last night?), I made separate posts about new work on aquatic microbial diversity, on the copyright issues when reporting on science on blogs and on general relationship between science publishers and blogs. Now, via Dileffante, I have learned about a combo of all those questions: when you are dealing with an enlightened organization, such as PLoS, magic can happen. Jonathan Eisen, author of one of the microbial genomics papers has, with no fear of copyright infringement, copied the entire paper on his blog. It is a first, isn't it?
clock | March 14, 2007Pedro did some digging to figure out what are various journals' policies regarding use of images - figures from the papers - in blog posts. It is all very vague and most journals do not have anything specifically targeting online republication, but the Fair Use rules should apply.
I have often used images from papers in my posts, usually only one, sometimes two from a single paper, which should be OK under the Fair Use system. In some cases I used figures that are many decades old, reprinted in every book and textbook in the field, used in every chronobiology college course in the world,…
clock | March 13, 2007Hsien reports that the CEO of b5media (organization that hosts her blog) left a comment on Panda's Thumb (why not on her blog which is, after all, a b5media blog?) in which he states that:
All it takes for us to issue bloggers accreditation is that we - are you ready for this? - issue them press badges and register those badges with one of the two dozen journalist associations in north america.
That's not how it sounds from what the AAAS person said, but OK, we'll see how it all develops.
So, if I want to get a paper that is under the embargo in order to have sufficient time to read it and…
clock | March 8, 2007Regarding my yesterday's post about EurekAlert! dismissing blogs as irrelevant and refusing to disembargo articles to bloggers, I suggest you read what Reed Cartwright wrote about this.
If we all - hundreds of science bloggers - simultaneously go to EurekAlert! registration form and request being taken seriously (additional e-mails with links to appropriate articles about the importance and power of science blogs can also be helpful), perhaps they will start scratching their heads and rethink their position. I just did it myself.
clock | March 7, 2007EurekAlert which is run by AAAS is a useful and timely (though not foolproof) source of science news that many science bloggers use to keep up to date on what's new. However, they seem to be behind the curve in at least one way - they categorically do not disembargo the papers to blogs of any kind, not even blogs affiliated with scientific or journalistic organizations. How do they think they will start entering the 21st century and remain competitive?
clock | February 19, 2007But, apparently, that is the least of the problems of this study of sexuality in West European menopausal women.
BTW, a "visual analogue scale" looks like this:
You jot a mark where you feel is the best spot that reflects your answer. The researcher than uses the ruler to put a number on it. Perhaps once iPhone is out in July, this kind of research will be possible.
clock | February 7, 2007Darwin Day - his 198th birthday - is coming up soon, on February 12th. Are you planning on writing a post on that day?
Last year I put together a linkfest of all the notable blogospheric contributions for the Darwin Day. Although the number of science blogs has increased greatly since then, I intend to make this year's linkfest as well. I'll use Technorati and Google Blogsearch to find the posts, but you can make it easier for me by e-mailing me the URL.
Don't forget that two years from now - the 200th birthday - there will be many celebrations around the world. There will be conferences…
clock | February 4, 2007First, PZ, now Phil Plait (aka Bad Astronomer) - the science bloggers are starting to invade the pages (online and hardcopy) of Seed Magazine. The lines are blurring. The old media model is crawling slowly towards the ash heap of history....
clock | February 4, 2007Alan Sokal (famous for attacking the Lefty postmodernist abuse of science in the 1990s) and Chris Mooney (famous for attacking the Republican War on Science in the 2000s) sat down and wrote an excellent article in LA Times that came out today:
Can Washington get smart about science?
The article gives a historical trajectory of the problem, how it moved from political Left to the Right and what the new Democratic Congress is doing and still can do to bring back the respect for science, or for that matter, the appreciation for reality (which, no matter what the Bushies wish, they cannot make…
clock | February 2, 2007I guess I will bug you about this for the next ten days - my personal pet cause if you want. No takers yet....
Here is the e-mail newsletter about it I got today:
Dear All,
Beagle Project updates:
⢠We are now a UK registered company and have applied for charitable
status; now that we officially exist and are accountable we have
started fundraising,
we have paypal donate buttons on the
Homepage and weblog page:
www.thebeagleproject.com
www.thebeagleproject.com/beagleblog.html
we're asking individuals for a Darwin (£10) or a Jackson ($20 - he was
US President at the time of the voyage.…