Chris Mooney will be visiting Union tomorrow (I’m picking him up at the airport in a couple of hours). He’ll be speaking to a couple of classes and then giving a presentation about science and politics in the evening. If you have any questions that you’ve been dying to ask Chris, and haven’t been able… Continue reading Questions for Chris Mooney?
Category: Blogs
That Kind of Week
I went to an evening talk last night by Brother Guy Consolmagno (about which more later, maybe), and one of my colleagues said “Hey, congratulations on your blog appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education.” Being quick on my feet, I said “Hunh?” So, of course, I checked it out when I got home. And,… Continue reading That Kind of Week
Science Blogging: What Is It Good For?
I got some interesting comments on last week’s post about the science blogging bubble, and there were two in particular I wanted to highlight. Bee wrote (among other things): But what I think are further obstacle to blogging is the inappropriateness of the medium to science. E.g. blogs put by format an emphasis on novelty,… Continue reading Science Blogging: What Is It Good For?
What’s the Matter With Biologists?
Paul Ginsparg, the founder of the arxiv preprint server for physics, has a very nice article at Physics World reminiscing about the rise of the Internet, particularly in physics. This also serves as a nice counterpoint to his talk at the Science21 conference (video, microblogging), which included a wealth of fascinating information about the current… Continue reading What’s the Matter With Biologists?
The Science Blogging Bubble Ends?
Over at Nature Networks, Timo Hannay has posted a conference talk in which he questions the future of science blogging: “Science blogging is growing” I confidently wrote in an essay a few months ago. Then, like any good scientist, I went in search of evidence to support my prejudice. But I couldn’t find any beyond… Continue reading The Science Blogging Bubble Ends?
The Blogging Papers
Two new articles appeared yesterday on the topic of science blogging and academic science: GrrlScientist posted the text of an article she wrote titled “Science Blogs Can Advance the Academic Process”. ScienceBloggers Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith have a new article in PLoS Biology, titled “Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between… Continue reading The Blogging Papers
Cocktail Party Variance
With the LHC starting up last week, this week’s Saturday science video on bloggingheads.tv had a physics theme, with Sean and Jennifer getting together to chat about physics, calculus, and poker. It’s good stuff, and I was surprised to hear my own name appear in the middle of it. Unfortunately, the idea Jennifer cites me… Continue reading Cocktail Party Variance
Virtual Science Debate
As you might have guessed from yesterday’s tease, the folks at ScienceDebate 2008 have now managed to get answers from the McCain campaign (to go with Obama’s froma few weeks ago). Which means that while you may never see them answering science questions on a stage together, you can put them head-to-head on the Web,… Continue reading Virtual Science Debate
A Longitudinal Study of Blogging Traffic
Back in March, I noted that I had inadvertently done an experiment to see what kinds of posts bring the most hits. That week, I posted one peer-reviewed post every day, along with a bunch of other articles, and I looked at the traffic stats to back up my contention that hard-core science blogging is… Continue reading A Longitudinal Study of Blogging Traffic
Talking to My Dog About Science: Weblogs and Public Outreach
I gave my talk this morning at the Science in the 21st Century conference. Video will eventually be available at the Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive site, but if you’d like to get a sense of the talk, a few people were live-blogging it in the FriendFeed room for the meeting. You get a pretty… Continue reading Talking to My Dog About Science: Weblogs and Public Outreach