Postdoc Carnival

"The Daily Transcript is smart, well-written, highly-informed, and driven, but ultimately, for most readers, it's too technical."

Exactly the reasons why I'm a daily reader. Keep up the good work.

I must second micromagnets (do you work with Miltenyi's system oe Dynabeads?). I especially appreciate the well written reviews of interesting papers I would have missed because I work in another field of biology.

It's life from inside the ivory walls from a man in a lab coat, but unless you yourself are involved in the academic pursuit of Cell Biology, it won't compute.

To a degree this may be right. However, the public still views biologists either as weired guys running around in nature searching insects or plants or as kind of too clever CSI guys (why are labs always depicted in blueish light?). The Daily Transcript describes exactly the work of a lab scientist with all its fun and excitements (indeed, reading papers and joining seminars can be exciting) and without excluding the frustrations one may experience during experimental work.

Add me to the list of people that appreciate a scienceblog that is primarily a *science* blog.

sparc, i work with magnetotactic bacteria so maybe a more appropriate name would be nanomagnets. but we use the miltenyi columns to purify magnetosomes from cell extracts.

as someone who is at the edge of the cell biology/microbiology divide i enjoy reading about topics that i may not encounter on a day to day basis. i feel that i've become broader by reading dt.

"i feel that i've become broader by reading dt."
. . . you should cut back on the pizza.

Seriously, Alex himself says

"But this blog [...] is not just about science, but art, food, music, citylife and other mental stimuli" (see 'about') and on http://scienceblogs.com/channel/about.php I read

" Our mission is to change the way the world sees science -- from a separate island on the periphery of culture to the central driver of our times. We believe that science literacy is necessary for all modern societies. At a time when public interest in science is high but public understanding of science remains weak, we have set out to create media and entertainment products to improve science literacy and to advance our science culture."

So for someone who is not a scientist to review these weblogs, and complain that they are too technical, well, I think it's a valid criticism (I'm not necessarily saying I agree. I'm a scientist myself so I can not judge whether Alex is too technical for a general audience. Perhaps you should discuss this on your secret back-channel). I do not understand why all the sciencebloggers who have been reviewed are taking such exception to this chap. He is merely judging you by your own standards.

Stop being so bloody defensive and see what you can gain from what he has to say.

BK,

I have to admit that my reviews of the scientific literature have become more and more technical. Partially because it actually takes time to "dumb down" the analysis of a paper for the lay person (or for non-biologists), and partially because I've come to realize that most people who read this blog are biologists themselves. So it's a combo of laziness and catering to my readership (as small as it is). But I've posted some basic stuff too (take for example my Cytoskeletal Gestalt entry) but I'll have to do more of that.

As for "culture ..." I do post quite a bit, but it tends to be personal ... a trip to NYC to visit my favorite haunts, music at the NEC, a book quote, a comment on the American vs Canadian outlook on life ...

What I don't like is just headline grabbing + culture wars stuff that many fellow Sb blogs tend to do. Most of the science stuff on some blogs is straight from the NYTimes/Science/Nature headlines. I enjoy reading some deeper analysis of science and not just knee-jerk reactions.

*nods* I'm glad you posted that last para.

I also empathize with the problem about finding time to 'dumb down' (I hate that. Let's say 'make accessible') our science. My own weblog has been rather quiet of late, ultimately because I have not had the time or the inspiration to make what I do accessible to a more general readership. This is a shame, because for some reason I seem to have a lot of arty types reading. And I do not want to insult my readership by writing half-arsed, thoughtless and pointless posts.

The time/inspiration thing -- for me at least, one of those is getting better. Time is always in short supply.

Quoting apalazzo: ... "it actually takes time to 'dumb down' the analysis of a paper for the lay person (or for non-biologists) ... So it's a combo of laziness and catering to my readership (as small as it is)."

This statement, which probably reflects how you tend to think about others, doesn't make you sound too smart. That should be clear to you, no?

"too technical"

they must be idiots!

This statement, which probably reflects how you tend to think about others, doesn't make you sound too smart.

Hmm. You took that the wrong way. It's always easier to describe scientific findings in technical terms because your vocabulary is expanded and you do not have deffine every single term or concept. But to explain a phenomenon to someone who does not have this vocabulary, or doesn't know these basic concepts, takes much more time and effort. It's not that I think that non-biologists or lay people are dumb, but that they need the extra bits that are harder to write. I guess that I shouldn't have used the term "dumb down" and as BK suggests use "make accessible". Sorry.