AAAS10

Stuff I showed on my panel at AAAS

clock — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:37:36 +0000

Stuff I showed on my panel at AAAS

Since I don't do PowerPoint but use the Web for presentations instead, and since the recordings from AAAS are not free (yes, you can buy them, I won't), and since some people have asked me to show what I showed at my panel there, here is the list of websites I showed there. I opened them up all in reverse chronological order beforehand, so during the presentation itself all I needed to do was close each window as I was done with it to reveal the next window underneath.

I started with http://www.scienceonline2010.com/ to explain the new interactive, collaborative methods in science journalism we discussed there.

Then I showed this series of tweets:
http://twitter.com/cassierodenberg/status/8119288328
http://twitter.com/BoraZ/statuses/8119311288
http://twitter.com/cassierodenberg/status/8120191410
http://twitter.com/BoraZ/statuses/8120374985
http://twitter.com/cassierodenberg/status/8120268454
http://twitter.com/cassierodenberg/status/8813079426
as an example of how that system can work:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2010/01/hints_on_how_science_journalis.php

I then showed how I filter my Twitter stream to eliminate much of it and only get to see what people I trust deem important:
http://twittertim.es/BoraZ
http://bora-science.hourlypress.com/
http://bora-media.hourlypress.com/

I pointed out that some people got jobs on Twitter:
http://younglandis.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/firstpost/

I showed how some people - including myself - got jobs on their blogs:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/04/i_want_this_job.php
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/04/i_want_this_job.php#comment-410506
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/its_official_1.php

Then I showed an example of a PLoS ONE paper, as a center of an ecosystem, and the comments and links as an outer shell of that ecosystem:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
http://www.plosone.org/article/related/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005723;jsessionid=2009BD9E7195AADA6D62474B19ABA3FE

I particularly showed the links to the blog posts aggregated on http://researchblogging.org/ to show the reputability of science blogging in the current science publishing ecosystem.

Then I discussed http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2009/04/new_journalistic_workflow.php
and as example showed how I collect important links about Dunbar Number from Twitter to FriendFeed for a future blog-post:
http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22tag%3A+Dunbar%22
A blog-post or a series of them can lead to an MSM article, and perhaps a series of articles can lead to a book contract. But even without that, one can potentially have a blog post published in a book, e.g., in the Open Laboratory:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-open-laboratory-the-best-science-writing-on-blogs-2007/2234830

Finally, if one gets a book published, there is nobody organizing the marketing and the book tours any more, so I showed how Rebecca Skloot organized it herself, by tapping into her online community:
http://scienceblogs.com/culturedish/
http://rebeccaskloot.com/events/

clock Sun, 04/18/2010 - 09:37

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AAAS10

Blogging

Media

PLOS

science reporting

Technology

workplace

On organizing and/or participating in a Conference in the age of Twitter

clock — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:44:04 +0000

On organizing and/or participating in a Conference in the age of Twitter

This is the first time ever that I cared about SXSW conference or was jealous for not being there. Watching the blogs and Twitter stream, it appears to have been better and more exciting than ever. I guess I'll have to figure out a way to finally get myself there next year....

But this post is not really about SXSW. It is about presenting at such conferences. More specifically, how the back-channel (on Twitter and elsewhere) affects the way one needs to approach an invitation to speak at meetings where much of the audience is highly wired online: to say Yes or No to the invitation in the first place, and if Yes how to prepare and how to conduct oneself during the presentation.

A great example of this was the Future of Context panel at SXSW, with Jay Rosen, Matt Thompson and Tristan Harris, moderated by Staci Kramer.

After the meeting ended, Jay Rosen described in great detail all the things they did to prepare for the session and how that all worked - go and read: How the Backchannel Has Changed the Game for Conference Panelists. I will be sending the link to that post to all the speakers/panelists/presenters/moderators at ScienceOnline2011 once the program is set. That is definitely a post to bookmark and save if you are organizing a conference, or if you are ever invited to speak at one.

This includes people who tend to speak at conferences that are not filled to the brim with the Twitterati. Even at such conferences, a small but loud proportion of your audience WILL tweet. Be prepared! Even if you are speaking at the AAAS meeting.

There are other important things to think about - both for organizers and presenters.

First, public speaking is for some people the most terrifying thing they can ever be asked to do. But even those who are not completely terrified, may need some training in order to do well. Have new people be mentored by experienced speakers (I mentioned how we do that at ScienceOnline at the end of this post) by sharing the panel. As an organizer, work hard to help the new speakers to alleviate their fears, to make crystal-clear what is expected of them, to provide them support before, during and after their sessions.

Many organizers are hoping to increase diversity (of personal experiences and approaches, not just in terms of gender, race, age, ethnicity and such, though the diversity in the latter usually brings along the diversity in the former as well). They need to remember that announcing this intent is not enough. People who were not welcome at the table before have no reason to believe that they will be welcome now - so why bother. You have to do more - actively reach out and engage them. And, as your conference (like ScienceOnline) goes through years, if you are successful at bringing in the diverse groups to the table - they will notice. They will invite others to come next year. The meeting gains reputation, over the years, for being open and inclusive (nobody is a superstar and everybody is a superstar). Instead of being tokens, they become an integral part of the conference and help shape it. This takes work.

Second, the Back-channel should never become the Front-channel!!!! Never display tweets on the screen behind the speaker. Never. On the other hand, please make it easy for the speakers to monitor the Twitterverse on their own computer screens if they want to.

Third, if you are organizing a conference, think hard about the format. At a typical scientific conference, the speaker is a scientist who is presenting new data. The talk is likely to have a level of complexity (as well as an arrow of the narrative) that is not served well by constant interruption. In such cases, a traditional format, with a Q&A period (long enough!) at the end is just fine. TED and TEDx conferences are similar. Quick presentations, like Ignite or storytelling events are similar - the presentations are too short and too well-rehearsed to be able to withstand interruptions. But you have to have a Q&A at the end - it is irresponsible not to have it.

For example, many sessions at the AAAS meeting are three hours long! Including my session. And in each one of those that I attended, the moderator announced at the beginning that the Q&A will be at the end. Hmmm, how many people will still be in the room after 2 hours and 40 minutes? They will be either long gone, or brain-dead and eager to leave. So we tried to do the best we could with the format we had - we had 2-3 people ask questions after each one of our presentations (there were six of us at the panel) as well as at the very end. And you know what - at the end of the third hour, the room was still full and we were still getting more questions. Engaging the audience early on got them excited. They wanted to stay in the room and engage some more, 2-3 of them every 20 minutes or so, and several more at the end.

On the other end of the spectrum to the one-to-many lecture is a fully-fledged Unconference format. It is based on the insight that "The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.". This, of course, depends on the topic, the speaker, and the audience.

As I explained at length in this post after ScienceOnline'09, and at even more length in this radio interview after ScienceOnline2010, our inaugural meeting in 2007 was a pure Unconference, but that we since decided to move to a hybrid format for a number of reasons I explained in both of these places.

Think, for example, of Workshops. We had a Blogging101 workshop at a different day, time and place in 07 and 08. We expanded the number of workshops in 2009 and had them as a part of the main program (just tagged as workshops), and then in 2010 we again moved them all to a different day, time and space to make it clear that these sessions are different - not Unconference-y in format, and for a good reason (we'll do the same next year).

A Blogging101 workshop, for example, will have an experience blogger at the front. The audience will be full of people who have never blogged and want to learn how. The moderator is an expert, and acts as a teacher or trainer or 'fount of wisdom' to the audience who came to get exactly that - instruction. The audience expects to learn how to start a blog, how to post the first introductory post, how to make a link and insert a picture, how to build a blogroll and change the visual design of the blog from an existing set of choices. They also expect some sage advice on what is regarded as proper blogging behavior so they do not get instantly slammed when they enter the blogosphere for "doing it wrong". The kinds of questions such an audience asks are going to be calls for help and clarification, perhaps for more information. They are unlikely to insert their own opinions and information, or to challenge the session leader. It is more of a classroom lecture (or lab) than a freewheeling discussion. Yet is has its own usefulness and should not be looked down upon because it is not in an Unconference format.

Actually, a Blogging102 workshop, where the audience already has some experience in blogging and is looking for tips and tricks for making their blogs better, looking better, and promoted better, there will be additional insights from the audience - which we saw at Scio10: that workshop was quite participatory and interactive.

Then, there are demos. A demo is just 12 minutes long with additional 3 minutes reserved for Q&A. The presenter is showing off his/her website or software or what-not to people who have not seen it before and would like to see how it works. Again, interruption of such a short and carefully prepared presentation would not be a good thing. If you have more to discuss - grab the presenter in the hallway afterwards. We are thinking of moving the Demos (both 12-minute presentations and potentially stations or booths) to a different day/time/space next year as well. Nothing wrong with that format, but it is not in an Unconference spirit.

Yet, the bulk of our conference is an Unconference. And we have seen that well-prepared presenters can turn even large 4-5 person panels into lively discussions off the bat. I have described one such 2009 panel in this post and there were several this year (most notably the Rebooting Science Journalism session). What we tell both moderators and participants is that the name of the session is not a title of a lecture but the topic of the conversation for that hour.

People who already have experience with the unconference format lead the way (we try to have such people lead the first morning sessions to set the tone for the rest of the event) and n00bs follow. Once everyone is in the swing of things and participating freely, it is easy to have a session be very informal. For example, last year Pete Binfield and Henry Gee started off their session with the question "Our topic is "A" - what do you want to talk about?". And that worked brilliantly as people who decided to attend that particular session already had questions and comments prepared in their minds and were ready to start discussing the topic right from the start. Other sessions require more of an intro, and that is OK as well.

So, the bottom line is that there is a spectrum of potential formats and each format has its pros and cons. The duration (from 5 minutes to 3 hours and everything in-between) will dictate how participatory the session can be. The relative difference between the expertise of the people on stage and the people in the audience is also a factor - more even they are, more participatory the session should be. As an organizer, always strive to have the sessions as participatory as the format/topic/people allows it, not less. Having less will diminish the experience - it will be seen as preaching down and trust will be lost.

And keep the Back-channel in mind - people in the room are not the only people participating. Make sure that the people following on Twitter, or Ustream or SecondLife can participate to some extent as well - perhaps let the people/audience in the room (all of them or a few chosen individuals) be moderators of Twitter chatter, and ask the cameraman to introduce questions from the Ustream audience into the room. We did both at ScienceOnline2010 and the feedback from virtual audience was positive. We'll try to do even better next year.

clock Tue, 03/23/2010 - 05:44

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Why it is important for media articles to link to scientific papers

clock — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:09:21 +0000

Why it is important for media articles to link to scientific papers

You may be aware that, as of recently, one of my tasks at work is to monitor media coverage of PLoS ONE articles. This is necessary for our own archives and monthly/annual reports, but also so I could highlight some of the best media coverage on the everyONE blog for everyone to see. As PLoS ONE publishes a large number of articles every week, we presume that many of you would appreciate getting your attention drawn to that subset of articles that the media found most interesting.

So, for example, as I missed last week due to my trip to AAAS, I posted a two-week summary of media coverage this Monday. And that took far more time and effort (and some silent cursing) than one would expect. Why?

I don't think I am a slouch at googling stuff. Some people joke that the entire Internet passes through my brain before it goes to the final audience. After all, I have been monitoring the Web for mentions of 'PLoS' and 'Public Library of Science' on blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and elsewhere for a few years now. If I don't catch a mention within minutes of it being posted, you can bet one of my many online friends/followers/subscribers is bound to quickly let me know by e-mail or Direct Messaging somewhere. If someone says something nice about PLoS, I am quick to post a ThankYou note. If someone asks a question, I try to answer or to connect the person with the appropriate member of the PLoS staff. If someone is publicly musing about submitting a manuscript to one of our journals, I am right there to give encouragement. If someone makes a factual error, I gently correct it. It is very, very rare that I need to raise the Immense Online Armies because someone is wrong on the Internet ;-)

So, why is it difficult then to compile a collection of weekly media coverage? Let me walk you through the process....

First, as you probably already know, PLoS makes no distinction between Old and New media. We have bloggers on our press list who apply/sign-up in the same way and abide by the same rules as traditional journalists (and, unlike mainstream media, bloggers NEVER break embargos, not once in the past three years since we started adding bloggers to our press list). For the kind of coverage we prefer to see, we point bloggers to the ResearchBlogging.org criteria. In return, bloggers can send trackbacks to our articles, their work is showcased side-by-side with the traditional outlets in our weekly posts, they can be discovered via Google Blogsearch, Postgenomic and ResearchBlogging.org links directly from each article, and one blogger per month wins a t-shirt and special recognition.

So, I start with blog posts first. The first thing I do is take a look at ResearchBlogging.org. Those are the best of the best posts - not merely mentioning our articles, but adding analysis, commentary, critique, context and additional information. How do I find them? I just search the site for the phrase 'journal.pone'. That search brings up every single post that mentions a PLoS ONE article because that phrase is a part of every possible form of the URL of the article (including the shortest one, which includes just the DOI). If a post links to our article (and that is the only way to get aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org) I will find it this way. Needless to say, this process takes just a few minutes per week.

Knowing that there are some good blogs out there that are not registered at ResearchBlogging.org (which is strange and unfathomable why - RB.org is a 'stamp-of-approval' place for science blogs recognized by the outside world of journals and media, as well as a nice way to get extra recognition and traffic, and even awards), I then repeat the same search - for 'journal.pone' - on Google Blogsearch. This may bring up a few more posts that I did not catch yet. Occasionally, some of these are good. Another couple of minutes. Blogs are now done. Move on to traditional media....

And this is where the Hell starts. Try searching Google News for 'journal.pone'...?! All I get are a couple of prominent blogs that I have already counted, e.g., those blogs that are listed by Google News (scienceblogs.com blogs, Ars Technica, Wired blogs, etc.). Where are the others?

The problem is, nobody in the mainstream media links to papers.

So I have to search for PLoS and for Public Library Of Science and then figure out which ones are covering specifically PLoS ONE articles (sometimes they don't specify, sometimes they name the wrong journal - last week an article on PLoS Current-Influenza was reported to be in PLoS ONE by a number of outlets copying the error from each other). Then I have to search for keywords for individual articles I suspect may have received some coverage. Last week, for example, I searched for "swallows+antioxidants" and "St. Birgitta", among many others. This lasts for hours! And at the end I am still not 100% sure I caught everything. How frustrating!

Not just is there a big difference in time and effort spent between finding blog posts and finding media articles, but there is an even bigger disparity when one considers what results come out of these searches. I have been doing this for a month now. I expected that there would be poor blog posts and poor media articles, that there would be good blog posts and good media articles, and that there would occasionally be some excellent blog posts and excellent media articles. So far, that is true.... except I have yet to discover an excellent media article. As a rule, the very best coverage of every paper in the past month was done by a blogger or two or three. Then there are some other, good pieces of coverage in both the New and Old media, and then there are some really bad pieces in both realms as well (not all blog posts I count here are really bad - they may just be too detailed, technical and dry for lay audience because the blogger is intentionally targeting scientific peers as audience, which is fair thing to acknowledge).

So, every week, it takes me a few minutes to find the very best coverage (which is on blogs, usually those aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org). And then I spend hours looking for remnants, in the traditional media, which turn out to be so-so, some OK, some not so good, some horrible. If I wasn't paid to do this, I would not do it - it cannot be good for my long-term mental health.

The resistance to post links is an atavism, a remnant of an old age before the Web. I know (because I asked many times) many good science journalists keep trying to add links, but the editors say No. The traditional media has still not caught on to the Ethic of the Link, which is an essential aspect of ethics of online communication.

I can think, off the top of my head, of three good reasons why everyone who publishes online should include a link to the scientific paper described in the article (just post the DOI link that comes with the press release if you are on the press list - if it does not resolve immediately, it is not your fault, you can always blame the journals for being slow on it - though this should never happen with PLoS articles):

Reason One: I will not go crazy every week. I am assuming that every scientific publisher has people on the staff whose task is to monitor media coverage and each one of these people is cussing and cursing YOU, the Media, every day. Try to make friends with people who provide you with source material on a regular basis.

Reason Two: Media coverage is one of the many elements of article-level metrics. Furthermore, links from the media affect the number of views and downloads of the article, and those are also elements of article-level metrics. Number of views/downloads then, in the future, affects the number of citations the work gets which is also and element of article-level metrics. Thus omitting the link skewes the ability of readers and observers to evaluate the papers properly.

The current ecosystem of science communication has a scientific paper at its core, additions to the paper (e.g., notes, comments and ratings, as well as Supplemental materials, videos posted on Scivee.tv, etc) as a shell, and incoming and outgoing links - trackbacks, cited papers, citing papers, links to other papers in the same Collection, links to other papers with the same keywords, and yes, incoming links from the media - as connections building a network: the entire inter-connected ecosystem of scientific knowledge.

By not linking to scientific papers, traditional media is keeping itself outside of the entire ecosystem of empirical knowledge. By doing this, the traditional media is fast making itself irrelevant.

Reason Three: if an article in the media discusses a scientific study, that scientific paper is the source material for the article. If the link is missing, this is an automatic red flag for the readers. What is the journalist hiding? Why is the article making it difficult for readers to fact-check the journalist? Something does not smell good if the link is not provided (or worse, it is impossible to figure out even who are the authors and in which journal did they publish - yes, that is more common than you think).

The instant and automatic response of the readers is mistrust. Every time you fail to link to the paper, you further erode whatever trust and reputation you still may have with the audience. You soon cease to be a legitimate source of information. Sure, most readers will not go hunting for the paper to read it in order to fact-check you. But two or three will, and they will let everyone else know if your article is trustworthy or not, either in the comments under the article on your own site, or on their blogs which will be quickly picked up by Google (remember: Google loves blogs).

So please, media types, hurry up and catch up with the world. The 21st century is already a decade in - you really need to do some very fast learning. Right now. Or you'll go extinct in a nanosecond. And despite my reputation, I never said that I'd consider that result to be a Good Thing. We are in this together, you just need to do your part. To begin with, start linking.

clock Tue, 03/02/2010 - 19:09

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Excellent post, Bora --

I think this can be extended to include links to any researchers who are quoted in an article. Let the readers see their qualifications easily.

Access is an issue that influences linking. The majority of my readers have trouble accessing articles, because the majority of articles are in restricted-access journals -- even I can't get some of them. I can understand why a media outlet would hesitate to include links that very few of their readers will be able to use.

Of course, that doesn't apply to PLoS journals, which is a tremendous vote in their favor. It's also a reason why the current NIH open access requirement doesn't go far enough -- most people who would like to read an article won't return or remember six months later.

agreed, it's a pain having to look up the article because they don't mention the name of the paper, usually just the journal and author. i hadn't even bothered to consider that this practice was a holdover from the days of print, it just seemed obstinate and inconsiderate.

Agreed. Good post, B. I know you
mentioned this but don't underestimate this as a reason why MSM doesn't link. When the articles are
written, the paper isn't online. The DOI solution you (and I) propose is the best workaround but it does piss off readers. There need to be some larger systemic
fixes before article linking becomes standard practice.

Also links need to be standard in MSM op/eds too. As you say, it's a question of trust and legitimacy. I was struck recently, when reading an op/ed on journalism in Nature, that the complete lack of supporting links made the piece less valid in my eyes.

Totally agree about linking to original sources. One of the worst offenders is, sad to say, the BBC (of which I am a strong defender usually) Too may of their science pieces are anonymous too. I made this point at almost the same time as you (in the process of making a complaint, at http://www.dcscience.net/?p=2813 )

Good point. Although I think a) some papers are written in a manner that is not easily accessible to the casual reader, so they just cover somebody elses coverage without checking the original and b) a lot of writers, especially freelance ones, might not have fully paid up access to a large body of scientific journals and may again rely on secondary sources.

From then on it becomes like Chinese whispers. I suspect few reporters actually read even easily available reports from end to end, simply because many are quite long and involved.

Cite the original work? Duh.

Hi Bora,
Excellent points. So actually I have a really ignorant question for you... On the science podcast site, we always link to the studies that we talk about, or at least the abstracts for closed-access papers. But does the format of the link matter to its searchability? We just make the words "The study," clickable, but don't show the DOI or long ugly link on our page. Does it make any difference?
Elsa

@John Hawks: Of course, more links the better. We in the blogosphere have always intuitively understood that. Having plenty of links gives immediate perception of reliability. Clicking on links and seeing that the author has actually interpreted them correctly, boosts the trust up from perception to reality.

But since the media is so averse to linking, I am suggesting in this post to start small - just add that one key link: the paper itself. Hopefully that one step would show them that linking out is a good thing, increases their reputation, and then they would start linking to other stuff as well.

Access is an issue. But as I noted in the post, it only takes one or two people (those who have access) to read the source material to report to the others if the journalist has done a good job or not. Trustworthy members of the community can evaluate the trustworthiness of the journalist for the others.

@razib: it is both. Because the time of the print was the Golden Age (as they were gatekeepers) they are now obstinate to change their ways, as each step towards transparency puts them in danger of having their errors (and it is human to err, but journalists do not buy that - they have built their aura of absolute omniscience before the Web could check them) exposed. They are not having any of that!

@Ed Yong and @Ed Yong: The DOI solution is a technical solution which, in theory, should work. But it places the onus on journal publishers and their IT teams and thus journalists can wash their hands and say "not our fault" and appear like saints (and they like to appear like saints). This is also a chicken-and-egg question. Since DOI resolving often does not work, media has the (easy and false) excuse not to link. Since media never links, the techies who should be fixing the DOI resolution problem are in no rush to do it - no incentive.

@Laura: it is important to distinguish between beat reporters who are given assignments on tight deadlines to cover an occasional science story on one hand, and on the other hand the specialized science journalists who are often freelancers and often excellent. I'd say, from my knowledge of the people in the business, that freelancers do a better job than newsroom folks who are contantly under pressures of time and multiple assignments. Freelancers are usually on press lists of journals so they have access to most of the stuff. If not, they are REALLY good at bugging authors and/or journals and/or online buddies, to get a copy. Freelance science journalists, unlike their always-in-a-rush newsroom colleagues, actually tend to read the literature carefully.

@Pascale: yes, it should be Duh. Not in their world, unfortunately. Read the link under the text "essential aspect of ethics of online communication."

@elsa: I don't think it matters much. If the link, in whichever form, brings the reader to the paper (OA or TA, then hopefully some will be able to access it), I think the exact form does not matter. I am not sure how it is for other journals, but every possible link to PLoS ONE articles always contains the string 'journal.pone'. I suspect that this is the case for most journals.

Remember, Bora, that a lot of time the problem is less the journalist than the journal. I file stories with links and blogrolls -- but just try to get a publication to run those links and rolls, even with the online version of the story. Frustrating and crazy-making. Also inexplicable, yet there it is. Save us, Bora.

Yes, I noted in the post that good journalists keep trying to supply links, but the editors (or whoever is the boss who decides these things in the media) refuse. Keep asking, until they start relenting. Or send them this post ;-)

This is also a chicken-and-egg question. Since DOI resolving often does not work, media has the (easy and false) excuse not to link. Since media never links, the techies who should be fixing the DOI resolution problem are in no rush to do it - no incentive.

This is an excellent point. Both parties should just pull their fingers out and get on with making it better.

I agree they should get on with the technical solution. To elaborate on what I wrote in my article (there's a link on my name for the source!)

I canât imagine that there is a technological reason that DOI link canât be routed to a standard placeholder page until the time the embargo is lifted and replaced with the actual article at the moment the embargo is lifted.

What I was thinking was that if people are using relational databases (and I really, really cannot imagine them not), it shouldn't be hard to code it so that each article has a release date & time associated with it. If a request for the article comes in prior to this date/time, the server responds by throwing up a standard not available page (or a ânot such articleâ if they want to hide it). If the request falls even a second after the release date, the reader gets to see it. Seems pretty obvious to me, at least the server aspect of it.

Reading quoted portion again, what an ugly use of a double negative (and incorrectly at that, 'is' should be 'isn't'). No! No!! One thing I can't stand and about writing blog posts is that I haven't time to put the articles aside for a bit before giving them a once-over with the up-shot that my blog writing is far below my own standards. Ugh. Double ugh. Excuse the rant, it's an issue that's increasingly frustrating me.

('no such' for 'not such')

Yeah! This is really annoying. My local newspaper ran the cannibal bonobos story yesterday. Of course, I wanted to know more about it. But not only didn't they link (they never do), they didn't write the title of the original article, nor the name of the magazine/journal. Nor the names of the researchers. Nor the name of the university. All we were said was that German researchers saw it.

Yeah, at least we know that.

Of course, going to John Hawks' blog, I found it within seconds. But still, it's disappointing. And it's not the first time. I'm making the stats up, but I'd say that 90% of their science "news" are directly taken from professional press agencies, without editing, which, in turn, use the press release and make it even shorter and less informative.

And after that, I'm bound to have arguments with people around me because most of the time, I track the original and, of course, have to disagree with the way it's been presented. And, of course, everybody blames me for thinking I know better than they do.

My life is ruined because of science journalists (or their bosses)!!

Of course, this doesn't apply to people like Ed Yong who does a wonderful job. Problem is, I don't think the people who read newspapers articles are the same than those who read his blog or the likes. I'm subscribing to the ScienceNow page on Facebook and, god, are most of the comments boring or plain stupid.

Newspapers like to be consistent. If they add lists of cited references to some science articles, then readers will demand references for all articles in the paper and how could a newspaper justify refusing those reasonable requests? Then newspapers will become equivalent to scholarly journals and be priced accordingly. Every article will have a $49 price and a "Purchase Now" link to your shopping cart. It'll be worth it because you'll know they are not hiding anything.

"Every article will have a $49 price and a "Purchase Now" link to your shopping cart." Not if they are all Open Access. As they should be. As they will be sooner or later. That is another element in the chicken-and-egg game: more there are papers that are OA, more easily it will be to persuade MSM to link to them; more the MSM implements links, more the journals will feel the pressure to make their papers OA.

Here's a good example of this.

This media report from Thursday has attracted over 12,000 comments so far:- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100304/sc_nm/us_dinosaurs_asteroid

but there is no link to the AAAS Manuscript itself:- http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?src=hw&site_area=sci&fulltext=schu… (requires free registration to access the PDF in question).

Why oh why is there no direct link?

My last comment did not appear here. Please however see this thread on FriendFeed:- http://ff.im/h3wvV

This is discussing a recent media report with over 12,500 comments thus far, but there is no link to the AAAS Manuscript in question. The Manu is almost OA as you do need to sign in with a free registration to access it.

I also wanted to say that last week, I was speaking to BBC Scotland's chief health correspondent who I have known for several years. When I mentioned PMC (PubMed Central) I was advised that they hadn't even heard about PubMed until I mentioned this resource to them a few years ago.

In this instance, the message is getting through, but very slowly....

I agree wholeheartedly. Since study details are rarely disclosed in journalism, linking to source material is a simple, clear way to build credibility and allow those readers who are interested to delve deeper into the research.

Research can be a very secretive process though, its the openess of a document and its resources that really drives a wider audience to push a subject. The inclusion of links to associated subjects can take any subject to a whole new level.

One aspect that can be confusing though is moving from research link to research link and then not documenting the path, in fact I know of some medical researchers who start with the initial resource material and follow the trail from one link to another, when they have finished they could save a lot of time if there was a cronology of resources compiled with bullets. It helps then if you need to to expand the subject.

SciBlings at AAAS10

clock — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:25:15 +0000

SciBlings at AAAS10

Four Sciblings (and three ex-Sciblings - Sheril Kirshenbaum, Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer - but once a Scibling always a Scibling rule applies, so we hung together some...) went to the AAAS meeting last week in San Diego. There is a lot of coverage in the MSM (and a little bit on blogs - it's hard to blog when you are not given tools, access and respect and thus AAAS will get much less, and much less positive coverage than they would have otherwise) - but here I just want to link to what my SciBlings have posted so far (I will post some more myself later - just watch the AAAS10 category here):

Jennifer Jacquet: Do Scientists Want to Bridge Science and Society?

So much of what the scientists do is less relevant than it could be. This was the motivation behind the theme at the 2010 AAAS annual meeting, Bridging Science and Society....

Josh Rosenau: Highlights from TIMSS 2007 at AAAS:

A message in lots of the science communication and science policy sessions has been that scientists and senior science educators need to be better communicators. Learning what works and what doesn't should be of interest to all of them, so I have to agree it's a shame to see the room so empty.

Josh Rosenau: Called out:

The organizer of this education session caught me blogging her remarks, but I didn't get sent to sit in the corner.

Josh Rosenau: Lubchenco:

Who has two thumbs and met NOAA administrator, jetsetting ecologist, and hero to policy-loving scientists Jane Lubchenco?

Oh, btw, I got to briefly talk to Jane Lubchenco as well.

Josh Rosenau: AAAS Day 3: Social media in science:

The existence of quacks on blogs doesn't invalidate the enterprise of good bloggers, any more than Fox News invalidates TV journalism or the Washington Times invalidates the New York Times. In any media, you choose your sources based on their expertise and their track record.

Matt Nisbet: Remarks at AAAS Conference on Climate Change Literacy:

There are plans to make available online the various presentation materials, so I will post again when those are ready. In the meantime, I have pasted below the text from remarks I gave as part of a panel on framing.

It is unfortunate that Matt's session was a part of a pre-conference of which I was not aware until a couple of days before the conference started when I already had the tickets and hotel set. Thus I could not go early to attend his session. It is also unfortunate that he did not stay for the proper AAAS meeting - he left town before I arrived - so he could come to my session. Thus, there could have been two opportunities for Matt and myself to discuss these issues in public, in front of the media, scientists, policy-makers and bloggers. From a couple of e-mails we exchanged, I think that Matt also felt it unfortunate we could not cross swords in public there.

Matt is pretty despised around these quarters (i.e., science blogs in general). The thing is, most of his premises are correct. He just draws wrong conclusions from the premises and thus wrong prescriptions from conclusions (and many, many bloggers have explained, a long time ago and in excruciating detail, where he is right and where he is wrong).

But people who see how obviously wrong his conclusions and prescriptions are, tend to also think that the premises are wrong - and that is just as dangerous as Matt is dangerous when the academic community takes his conclusions and prescriptions seriously. When the 18th century mindset hears mid-20th century ideas, they seem excitingly new - how are they to know that mid-20th century ideas are misguided and already outdated?

I wish we could have used this very visible venue to discuss these issues. Very civilly and politely of course (which has nothing to do with anonymity, as you all know). But, sometimes discourse that seems very civil on the surface, can be devastating. I wish I could have had a chance to employ it. That would have been good for the cause of science communication and the scientific community at large,

clock Sat, 02/27/2010 - 10:25

Tags

AAAS10

Dear BZ,

I really enjoyed your talk at AAAS -- I repeated one quote of yours to several colleagues later in the meeting: when you noted that scientists had at first resisted including email in their daily workflow, and that blogging is now at that same "initial resistance" point, but will eventually become a standard part of our work day. I also really liked the Jennifer Jaquet post that you highlighted -- although I missed her session as it was the same time as mine ("Science in the Theatre"), which I also blogged about here on scienceblogs in The World's Fair: "Science in the Theatre at AAAS"
Thanks!

Some AAAS links

clock — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:07:33 +0000

Some AAAS links

Links in this post are those that pertain to me or the session I was in - I will link to some others later (and I already did on Twitter):

Columbia Journalism Review: Online and Overseas: Less hand-wringing over state of science journalism

Physicsworld.com: Researchers! Join the Twitterati! Or perish!

Thoughts From Kansas: AAAS Day 3: Social media in science

Scientificblogging.com: Science Journalists Have Met The Enemy, And They Are Bloggers

UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering: Interesting session at AAAS

john hawks weblog: AAAS

A Blog Around The Clock: AAAS 2010 meeting - the Press Room....why?

Interesting how each of these posts has its own spin and neither one of them actually describes the session and all the six panelists and what we said....perhaps later someone will do that.

clock Thu, 02/25/2010 - 10:07

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AAAS10

Using Multimedia to Advance Your Research

clock — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:51:15 +0000

Using Multimedia to Advance Your Research

This was the slideshow of the presentation Dennis Meredith gave at the AAAS 2010, just before me on Sunday morning - this was pre-recorded. The live presentation was even more fun:

Using Multimedia to Advance Your Research

View more presentations from Dennis Meredith.

clock Tue, 02/23/2010 - 04:51

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AAAS10

AAAS 2010 meeting - the Press Room....why?

clock — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:01:24 +0000

AAAS 2010 meeting - the Press Room....why?

I arrived in San Diego on Thursday night and checked in my hotel that was 6 miles away, almost in Mexico - I could see the lights of Tijuana from the hotel. I had to take a cab each morning and evening.

On Friday morning, I got up bright and early and came to the convention center, lugging my huge and heavy laptop with me. And that was the first surprise of the day - there was no wifi anywhere in the Convention Center, and almost no power outlets anywhere: something I am not used to as the meetings I tend to go to are pretty techie and take care of such details.

Not even speakers/panelists had free wifi. Nobody noticed, as they all used PowerPoint anyway (did you see the Bad Presentation Bingo cards?). But our session was about the Web and we wanted to use the Web to show our stuff, so our panel's host PAID for online access for us to use in our session.

A journalist wanted to interview me after lunch so we went to the press center to see if there was a free interviewing room there. Aha! There is a press center there! Power! Wifi! Free coffee! Yee-haw!

Oh! No! They had employees standing in front, letting in only the people with green name-tags - the Press tags. How quaint! I had a blue one, just an Attendee (though that was an error as well - I should have gotten the Speaker one, but it really did not matter for any practical purposes). So, the only way I could get in was if led by someone with a Press badge, leading me in as an interviewee. That was, again, a surprise to me as I have been using press centers at meetings for years, most recently at the Lindau Nobel conference in Germany and FEST Trieste in Italy.

So, I was there, with the journalist. In the press room. I used that opportunity to ask if I could also get a Press name-tag. I also wanted to use that moment to get into the press center in order to get online and perhaps blog something about the first sessions I saw, etc.

The AAAS employees manning the desks in the press room were unsure what to do about me - they did not belligerently say "No, you are just a blogger", they just did not want to risk making their bosses mad by making an inadvertent mistake of giving me a press pass. After all, I was not officially affiliated with any traditional media outlet, they said. I did not want to make a scene so I just said 'OK', but used the opportunity to sneak into the press/computer room next door and set up my laptop. I went straight to Twitter and wrote:

"#AAAS10: 8000 people (incl.1000 journalists). No wifi anywhere. No power outlets. Bloggers not counted as press."

As you can see, I was just stating the facts with no adjectives or emoticons, though anyone knowing me could guess how I felt about it. But then others retweeted and/or replied - and some of them did voice anger and disappointment. And for the rest of the day and the next day many asked me about it, or commented, or approached me and commiserated, and agreed that all three of the statements were right and that they were a bad sign about the state of mind of the AAAS leaders, demonstrating how behind the times they were. I agreed with them in these personal conversations.

Later that night, in my hotel room (with free wifi - small hotels, like Days Inn, are much more up-to-date on this than the fancy hotels) I also mentioned this fact on my blog. Others added comments on FriendFeed and Facebook (where my tweets and blog posts are automatically imported). Not too much noise, but there was some.

On Sunday I did not bother bringing the laptop with me, but in the afternoon I wanted to go to the Press cocktail party. Journos are "my crowd" much more than scientists these days, and I wanted to meet many of them and share a drink. But I could not, not having the press pass.

So, one of the bloggers who did have a press pass (for also writing for a "real" media outlet) got quite agitated, took me into the press room again and, instead of asking the employees/volunteers again, asked to see the boss. The boss (Engle? - I did not catch his name - edit: his name is Earl) came out and we asked him for a press pass for me. I was trying to be nice, but the other blogger was quite agitated (an effective Good Cop Bad Cop strategy, it turned out). She said stuff in pretty strong words about AAAS not giving me the press pass.

I trotted out the names of four organizations I am affiliated with that can be counted as 'media' in one way or another. But my Attendee pass said my institution is PLoS. ~~Engle?~~ Earl said that journal editors are not really press. I agree, but I said I was not an editor but on the Communications team at PLoS, as well as a blogger for PLoS, for ScienceInTheTriangle.org, for Seed Media Group, and an advisor for the science programing for PRI/BBC/WBHG The World. He said something about AAAS having to rethink these things in the future and told one of the ladies manning the tables to issue me a press card. He was very nice about it throughout, and apologetic, but I am not sure he really grokked the problem.

Afterwards, I tweeted that I got the pass, and many others on Twitter cheeered and gloated in my name.

I think employees/volunteers at the desk were initially just not sure if giving me a pass would be OK. Perhaps it was the PLoS connection (and AAAS is a publisher of 'Science' so perhaps they perceive these things as important). I did not push much so did not get much of a response the first day. I think everyone interpreted me not getting the pass as "for being a blogger" but on the other hand Maggie of BoingBoing was issued a press pass, so this is not clear. It was clear, though, that I was not easy to classify - in that world, I am not an accredited journalist for a traditional media organization. That was so confusing to them.

So I would really like to know what was the AAAS' real reason for this - it could have been just mis-communication. But an out-dated worldview certainly played a part or there would have been zero confusion. Expecting wifi everywhere it never occurred to me to apply for a press pass in advance, just in person once there. I also did not have a clue in advance that press center would be so closed to non-press-tagged people - those were all very novel situations to me. I am used to freedom to roam and blog from everywhere in the building PLUS access to special amenities for the press in those rare cases when I may need them (e.g., information, interview access to VIPs, press releases and fresh fruit).

So, there is no clear track of events that one can point to, something like "Bora officially asked" (no, Bora wandered in and kinda asked), then "AAAS declined" (no, they were unsure what to do and did nothing as I did not push any further), then "Bloggers rebelled" (no, a few tweets a revolution do not make, and I doubt anyone at the top of AAAS ever read them or was aware of the issue), then "AAAS finally gave in" (no, ~~Engle?~~ Earl was nice about it once it was explained to him).

There is a lot of play of perceptions here - and some of them are true e.g., that AAAS is behind the times on this, not having heard much that the media ecosystem has dramatically changed over the past ten years or so.

But, keep in mind that it is the Convention Center, not AAAS, that has no free wifi or power outlets. So it is really the Center that is behind times. Of course, if AAAS was up-to-date on such things they would have certainly thought about this and could have fixed the obvious problems by bringing in a lot of power strips and hiring a company to provide free wifi like we did with paying SignalShare at ScienceOnline2010.

In today's world, everyone is potentially a journalist. Out of 8000 people there, perhaps 1000, perhaps 2000 would have wanted to report from AAAS in some form. Some would write stories for traditional media, some for New Media, and some would write for personal blogs. There is really no distinction between these. And it is almost impossible to predict in advance who will blog - anyone can just get inspired on the spot, or a blogger can come in, find it boring, and not write anything (not being able to blog on the spot, I am not sure I will have energy and inspiration to do much post-hoc blogging now that I am back home).

Some people were paid to come to AAAS and write stories for a particular media outlet. But many others would have done some kind of reporting as well. A few blog posts. An avalanche of tweets. A bunch of good pictures on Flickr. Perhaps going around with a digital audio recorder or video camera, interviewing people and posting the files online. Some would do a lot of this. Some very little. Most would do nothing. The best of the best would do ALL of this.

So what every conference needs is a lot of power outlets and the free wifi everywhere. That way both traditional and new journalists can do their jobs everywhere in that space. Neither old nor new journalists really need a press center for anything any more, except for free coffee (which should be provided for everyone anyway). There is no need for a room full of computers. People prefer to work on their own laptops anyway. And often prefer to write their stuff in some secluded corner, not surrounded by the noise of 100 keyboards on fire.

What did the decision to have a press room accomplish? It limited the power outlets and online access to a very small part of the space. The Fire Marshall decides how many people can fill that space. Many more people, not being able to get online outside of it, would want to enter that space. This then introduces a problem for the organizers - how do they limit the use of the space to only the number of people that can legally occupy it? So they pick an arbitrary criterion: allowing the entrance into that space only to people who are officially working for organizations that in the last century were called "press".

So, not having wifi everywhere, while having such a thing as a "press room" in the first place, is quaint and outdated and leads to these kinds of problems. This is a structural problem that leads to the artificial division between "journalists" and "bloggers" (and bad feelings that come from the enforcement of this division).

If everyone can send/post all their stuff from everywhere in the building, there is no need for a designated room. If there is no designated room, there is no need for designated name tags, no need for applying for press passes, no need for credentialing, and no need for anyone to make arbitrary decisions who is press and who is not.

I hope AAAS has learned from this year's experience and will grow up by the time of next year's meeting in Washington DC. I hope their scouts are looking for a venue that has power outlets everywhere and free wifi for everyone. So we don't need to worry any more about the definition of "who is a journalist" for the coverage of conferences.

clock Mon, 02/22/2010 - 19:01

Tags

Agree entirely. At least AAAS didn't repeat the ASCB fiasco.

Here's hoping for a wifi-enabled 2011 meeting.

Well said!

Thank you.

If there was wifi+power everywhere, there would be much fewer people wanting to use a special "press" space at any given time. Thus, the pressroom could be reduced to a booth or two and be open to everyone who needs to come in and quickly get materials, or use a small quiet room for interviews.

"I hope their scouts are looking for a venue that has power outlets everywhere and free wifi for everyone."

Free wifi doesn't exist - at least not at convention centers. And you can't bring in outside companies to provide it, as you did when ScienceOnline 2010 was held at Sigma Xi. To get wifi, the event organizer has to pay the convention center for it - and the price is steep. The cost is likely to be passed along to attendees in the form of higher reg. fees. So while it is understandable to expect wifi at a major meeting in this day and age, you also need to realize that it comes with a price tag.

Of course. When I say 'free', I mean free for attendees. This has to be a part of the budget of the organizer, just like free drinking water and free bathrooms are a necessity. Free Wifi is just such a necessity for conferences today.

That's my point: Wifi isn't free for attendees. Drinking water and bathrooms are included in the main facility charge. Wifi is a big extra, so if it is provided, then attendees have to be willing to pay higher conference fees.

Is it big or little extra depends on the venue, the meeting, the size. But it is an essential, thus I would not call it an "extra" at all. It is the mindset that this is an "extra" that makes so many conferences so dinosaurian. Wifi is an essential amenity, just like bathrooms. It should be, like bathrooms, included in the main facility charge. If the facility is incapable of supporting thousands of people getting online simultaneously, then the organizer of the meeting should have a free hand to hire a company that can do it. It is an essential part of organization, not an extra. This is not caviar for the VIPs, it is something without which a conference cannot function.

I haven't attended a conference in years, from before days of the web, and I'm shocked (yeah, apalled too) that they didn't have at least wifi throughout the conference. It's bizarre that they could be that far behind the curve.

I went to a Keystone meeting recently and the hotel really struggled with the wifi - the "free" conference wifi not being available but the $10 a day one in our rooms being fine. But on this the Keystone guys kept the pressure on the hotel and in the end they waived the charge for everyone - though we still couldn't get access from the lecture hall. Surely AAAS should have put some pressure on the conference center to reduce their wifi costs?

For scientific conference, I usually email first to request a Press Pass -- as a freelance science writer. They usually have me fill out paperwork at the Press Room, so I bring examples of publications of mine in Science, Scientific American, whatever. One gets access to infrastructure, interview opportunities, and sometimes free sandwiches and coffee. Of course you're in The Press. But it will take legislation or Supreme Court opinion to nail that down. Wish I could have gone to this one, but I'm behind schedule on some $110.00/hour writing as a consultant.

I filled out a request for a press pass for the American Chemical Society Meeting - and posted the post that ended up in Open Laboratory from the press room!

At the ACS, press get in free to the meeting, hence the guardians of the pass.

As someone who writes in two worlds - science/medical communications and travel writing - I LOOOONG ago gave up on the concept of "free" WiFi. Especially when doing travel writing, the major annoyances of "free" WiFi, such as slow connections, frequent drop-outs, configuration problems and the like were just not worth it.

I pay the $60 a month for a 5 gig mobile broadband modem. If the hotel has "free" WiFi, I'll plug in. If not, no worries. I attend a handful of medical conferences a year and am on the road traveling for that part of the business about 1/4 of the year. To me, it's part of the cost of doing business.

I've also been a dead-tree journalist with press-pass privileges. And I have to say that I almost never used the facilities provided by conference organizers. I would participate in press conferences organized for the ink-stained wretches, and appreciated getting the pile of press releases (mainly to ensure names and affiliations of sources were verified).

I do see the value in having "press only" facilities, especially for press conferences. But the free fruit and coffee and computers? Meh. I can buy my own coffee.

If you go back to a conference at the San Diego Convention Center, make sure you set aside a morning to have breakfast at Cafe 222. The pumpkin waffles are world-class. Expect a wait - the place is tiny, but worth it.

Kevin, do you remember the time when you packed soap and shampoo and towels when you traveled, because you could not know in advance if the hotel will be providing those? Wifi is at that stage right now. Let's hope that very, very soon free wifi will be ubiquitous aspect of conferences, hotels, etc. included in the price (just like soap and towels are included in the price of your hotel room today) so people like you and me do not have to invent work-arounds and pay for them out of our own pockets at full, undiluted price.

AAAS 2010 meeting - quick update

clock — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:42:15 +0000

AAAS 2010 meeting - quick update

AAAS meeting is in full swing. Follow hashtag #AAAS10 on Twitter. My session is tomorrow at 8:30am. It will be recorded, I think, so you'll be able to see it in a day or two after.

Sorry for no (live)blogging but there is no online access in the convention center.... I will wait until I am back home and write a summary post after the event is over.

clock Sat, 02/20/2010 - 20:42

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AAAS10

I think if you signed up to blog for them you could have had press/wifi access. They did want more 'seasoned' science bloggers to participate in the new bloggy effort.

Why blog for them, when I already blog for four other places?

AAAS 2010 meeting - arrived in San Diego

clock — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:18:53 +0000

AAAS 2010 meeting - arrived in San Diego

After four uneventful flights and a crazy night in Vegas (no, not crazy in that way), I have finally arrived in San Diego. Checked in a hotel that is far away from the convention center. Exhausted.

Pretty much impossible to get online, use the iPhone, check mail anywhere in Las Vegas. The only means of communication I could (sometimes) use was Twitter, using Twitterific!

The wifi at the hotel is slowish but works. I hope it's better at the convention center where I'll spend most of the time over the next three days.

I am a notorious coca-colic. Yet, all I could find in Vegas, or at the Vegas airport, or at LAX airport, was Pepsi. Yuck! Thus Coke was the first thing I bought when I arrived in San Diego...

The day before I left, I finally managed to get my Gmail down to Inbox Zero, for the first time since January 10th, 2005. Now, when I finally managed to get online (security layers on my PLoS-issued laptop make it difficult to troubleshoot and finally get to work various hotel wifis), there were almost 100 messages there. Got them down to ten really quickly...

Off to sleep, will start blogging AAAS tomorrow...

clock Thu, 02/18/2010 - 19:18

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AAAS10