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The roles, reasons and restrictions ofscience blogs
John S. Wilkins
Department of Philosophy, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Over the past few years, blogging (‘web logging’) hasbecome a major social movement, and as such includesblogs by scientists about science. Blogs are highly idio-syncratic, personal and ephemeral means of publicexpression, and yet they contribute to the current prac-tice and reputation of science as much as, if not morethan, any popular scientific work or visual presentation.It is important, therefore, to understand this phenom-enon.Introduction
A blog is fundamentally a continuously updated web page,with entries (‘posts’) that have date, time and, if many authors contribute to the blog, author-name stamps(Figure 1). Each post may be commented upon by thereadership, and the discussions can range from a fewhumorousone-linerstocomplexandwell-writtenrebuttalsor contributions, and everything in between. Blogs typi-cally have a general theme, and most blogs are personaldiariesorganizedaroundthese.Manyarefocusedonsingleissues, such as politics, religion or scientific topics. Scienceblogsareblogswhosemainfocusorintentisdisseminating or commenting upon science.Many science bloggers are graduate students, but anumber are practicing teachers and researchers. It isunclear so far how the scientific and educational commu-nities regard blogging. Some graduate students and early career researchers have complained that they are being told by advisors and supervisors to stop blogging andconcentrate on ‘real’ work, whereas others have draftedup later-published papers on their blogs, and takenadvantage of an informed and enthusiastic readershipfor critique and suggestions. At times, readers offer refer-ences the author might not have found otherwise, especi-ally from cross-disciplinary fields. In this article, I arguethat there are also many other reasons for scientists toenter the blogosphere (Box 1).
Readerships and reasons
Thereare,itseems,severalreasonspeoplehaveforscienceblogging, each of which, in my opinion, is enough to justify it. One is the obvious concern of science communication. Incomparison with the usual modes of science communi-cation (e.g. magazines, newspapers and television), blog-ging is more intimate and responsive. It gives a rapid andtimely account of news in science, and relies not merely onpressreleases,whichcanbeterriblymisleading,butonthepersonal knowledge and expertise of the blogger. Papersthat would otherwise be missed can be described and evencritiqued within days. Some journals even send notifica-tions to bloggers to ensure that their papers are seen andcommented on.Blogging is also a way to demythologize science. Unlikelaws and sausages, the public should see science during itsmanufacture, butthe lay public is generallyill-equipped tointerpretwhattheysee,andsciencebloggersplayacrucialrolehere.Bloggerswitha deeperknowledgeofthetopic,orof science in general, can place studies in a context of priorwork,therebycorrectingoravoidingthemythsandpigeon-holes of science journalism. In addition, readers can com-ment immediately, making correction possible. Thisprovides a contrast to science magazines and columns inthe mainstream media and shows that science and medi-cineare not always about major breakthroughs orimmedi-ate applications. Science bloggers can also discuss sciencepolitics(boththepoliticsbetweenthescientiststhemselvesand the role of wider politics on science), which are fre-quently not touched upon in popular science publishing.Occasionally, major scientific politicking occurs on theblogs, as when Jerry Coyne attacked Olivia Judson onCarl Zimmer’s
The Loom
over ‘hopeful monsters’ (http:// scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/01/24/hopeless_monstersa_guest_post.php)(Box 2).
Blogs regarding ecology and evolution are often estab-lished to counter opposition to these sciences in the publicdiscourse, especially after the politically motivated so-called Gingrich contract with America that used obfusca-tion to undercut confidence in the findings and theories of various sciences (details of this specific case of a widerantiscience attitude in the West can be found in Ref.[1]).Blogs are used by both professional scientists and thosewho support science to counter this opposition. Examplesof this include the
Real Climate
Bad Astronomy
blog (http://www.badastronomy.com).However, to become a strong blogging presence, onecannot focus on science all the time. For instance, a Min-nesota professor of developmental biology, Paul Z. Myers,blogs about religion and politics at
Pharyngula
(http:// scienceblogs.com/pharyngula), and these topics attractthe bulk of his massive readership of over 300 000 visitorsper week. In between these populist posts, his scienceposts, usually on developmental biology, are works of art. By contrast, as a philosopher of biology, my blog
Forum
Corresponding author:
*
John blogs at
Evolving Thoughts
Seed Magazine
stable of bloggers known collectively as Sciencebloggers (orSciblings). All links active as of 16 May 2008
.
0169-5347/$ – see front matter
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attracts a mere 10 000 visits per week. Still, the well-known philosopher Paul Griffiths once remarked that thiswas a massive readership for a philosopher of biology, so‘success’ is a relative thing. In any case, the purpose of sciencebloggingisnottocompetewiththepoliticalpunditsor bloggers of popular culture.
The benefits of blogging
Blogging also has personal benefits for the blogger. A blog thatrepresentsascientificcommunityorsubdisciplinewillbecome a community in itself. Through back-channel for-ums, personal contacts, and commenting, an isolatedresearcher can become part of a wider social network.Occasionally, conferences result, such as the NorthCarolina Science Blogging Conference (http://www.scienceblogging.com) that has now been held twice. Andscience bloggers can even find jobs via their blogging. Atleast three members of the blog community at the
Seed
Figure 1
. The life cycle of a blog. Sources include other blogs, news services,journal articles, popular media and the personal knowledge of the blogger. In thecase of science blogs, posts are often based on recent science announcementsand, more rarely, recent articles. Sometimes science bloggers blog about theirown research, whether science research or research about science (e.g.philosophy, history or sociology of science). Political and policy influences of science are often discussed; for example, the ‘ScienceDebate08’ campaign aims toget either presidential candidates or their campaign representatives to present firmpolicies about scientific research (http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/ index.php). Blogs can be deleted when their authors decide to stop maintainingthem, but the convention is to leave them available for as long as the serviceprovider allows. At least one blog that contained a considerable amount of usefulinformation, a Philosophy of Biology blog at Florida State University (http:// philbio.typepad.com/philosophy_of_biology), was deleted when it ceased to beactive, and it has now been taken over by a ‘cybersquatter’ who uses it to sellmerchandise.
Box 1. How to start a blog
There are both commercial and free blog site providers. Of the freeones, Blogger (https://www.blogger.com/start) is the most widelyused. To start a blog, the user logs on, creates an account andnames the blog. Thereafter, entries are written and posted usingeither the web browser interface or a blogging tool. Only very IT-proficient persons should try to set up a blog server themselves.What skills does a blogger need to get the message across?Basically not more than what is needed to teach freshmen students,although one should not presume that the readership will knoweven the basics of the field. Some argue that science communica-tion requires training, but as authors like E.O. Wilson show, ascientist can be an excellent communicator without specialtytraining. All kinds are needed, and none should be excluded.However, a blog is not written like a science paper or a lecture. Ithas to be engaging, if not entertaining, as well as opinionated.Although there are group blogs, this is a personal medium, and the‘voice’ of the blogger, their personality and obsessions, has to comeacross. One excellent example of this is Moselio Schaechter’smicrobe blog,
Small Things Considered
(http://schaechter.asmblo-g.org/schaechter), which features ‘Talmudic questions’ such as‘Why haven’t protists become multicellular?’ And to get the reallybig readerships, controversy is essential.What is the most efficient way to reach the audience? There is anongoing fight over a technique of popular science communicationknown as ‘framing.’ Proponents of this technique argue that scienceshould be tailored to the audience. The argument is based oncommunication theory and on observations of how the neoconserva-tives in the United States have skewed science to their own ends.Whereas proponents of framing think that one should fight fire withfire,othersarguethatweshouldpresentthescienceasitstandsinourprofessional opinion, without special concern for the readers. In mymind, this debate stems from a difference in opinion of what scienceblogging, and communication in general, is for. It is my view that onecannot make up for bad science education through popular media; atbest,onecanonlyinspireandrebut.Andofcourseonemustnotspeakabove the level of comprehension of one’s audience. But I am a firmoptimist on this matter—if you challenge the popular audience, it willoften rise to the occasion. Many science enthusiasts will recall beingsimilarlychallengedbythebestcommunicatorsoftheiryouth.SoIdonot think we should trim the message when the message is relevant.
Box 2. A hopeful monster controversy
In a
New York Times
blog and opinion piece on 15 January 2008,entitled ‘The Monster Is Back, and It’s Hopeful’ (http://judson.blogs.-nytimes.com/2008/01/22), Olivia Judson revived, in a way, Gold-schmidt’s Hopeful Monster. Citing upstream regulatory genes thatcan mutate with large effect downstream on morphology andgeneral phenotype, Judson proposed that many changes occurredin a single radical step, with no intermediates. Immediately, thescience blogger community leapt upon the topic. At Carl Zimmer’sblog,
The Loom
, biologist Jerry Coyne attacked the idea in a guestpost (http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/01/24/hopeless_monster-sa_guest_post.php), calling her post ‘inaccurate and irresponsible.’He and others (e.g.
John Hawk
’s
Anthropology Weblog
;http:// johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/links/links_012708_2008.html) imme-diately rejected the equation of saltationism with evo-devo. Asone geneticist noted (http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/01/jerry_-coyne_smacks_down_olivia.php), ‘[It is] [i]nteresting that Coyne, aserious contributor to evolutionary scholarship, has gotten hishands dirty and reached out to the public so directly to correct whathe perceives is journalistic malpractice.’The increasing activity of leading scientists on the internet ingeneral and the blogosphere in particular indicates that a novel wayof doing science debates is arising, one that might in fact be moreimmediate, but less ‘official’ than, say, letters in the
New York Review of Books
Cladistics
or
Science
.The ephemeral nature of such debates might make the task of thehistorian of science more difficult.
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Trends in Ecology and Evolution
Vol.23 No.8
412
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