{"id":3093,"date":"2008-10-29T09:30:50","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/29\/what-is-the-use-of-academic-di\/"},"modified":"2008-10-29T09:30:50","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T09:30:50","slug":"what-is-the-use-of-academic-di","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/29\/what-is-the-use-of-academic-di\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is the Use of [Academic Discipline] Blogging?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steinn asks a provocative question<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

has science blogging done any good?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a badly framed question. That is, I think it’s a mistake to define “good” for science to exclude science policy questions and the general spread of information. It’s a very common mistake, mind, and indicative of the pernicious attitude among academics that technical research within a discipline is the only thing that counts.<\/p>\n

In fact, I’m not even sure that Steinn’s counter-example is a good one. He contrasts science blogging to economics blogging (economics, of course, is not a real science, but rather the astronomy of the social sciences):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Steinn probably reads more econ blogs than I do, but my even-more-outside perception is that most of the issues discussed on economics blogs are closely tied to policy questions. That is, people debate the meaning of various changes in policy, and their effect on the host of indicators that economists talk about.<\/p>\n

Economics blogging looks more successful than science blogging only because it’s harder to draw the arbitrary boundary that Steinn does between policy questions and disciplinary research. If you were to restrict “success” to only those blogs leading to scholarly publications in peer-reviewed economics journals, I’m not sure they’d look all that much better than blogs in biology, math, or theoretical physics.<\/p>\n

But this is really a side issue. The bigger question, here, is how to really understand what should count as “good.” I would argue that it’s pure folly not<\/strong> to consider effects on public perception and questions of policy. Modern science is simply not possible without large amounts of public funding, so positive effects on issues of policy and funding are<\/strong> good for science, in a much more concrete way than yet another publication in the Journal of Arcane Subfield Physics<\/cite>.<\/p>\n

It’s also true, alas, that this is not the usual definition used by academics (he says, knowing that he needs to fill out his annual activities report). I would argue, though, that the failure to consider larger contexts when evaluating the success or failure of the activities of scientists is a significant factor leading to the marginalization of science in our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steinn asks a provocative question: 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… Continue reading What Is the Use of [Academic Discipline] Blogging?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,5,33,7,42,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-astronomy","category-blogs","category-in_the_news","category-physics","category-policy","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}