Why Write a Science Blog?

You may ask, “Owen why are writing a blog on environmental issues?” Easily, you could also not ask that question. I don’t really care if you ask the question or not, I’m going to tell you either way why I’m doing this.

First, it seems like most people who inform the public about the environment are biased. A majority of reporting comes from non-profit organizations with stated environmental objectives. Even governmental organizations report of what they’ve done or hope to do, not what’s important. A minority of reporting on the environment comes from objective media outlets, like newspapers.

Secondly, science and environmental blogs are rare, compared with other academic and societal disciplines. Here is what I wrote in my Schubel Fellowship application about the need for science blogs.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in 2006, 39% of Internet users or 57 million Americans read blogs regularly, a number that is growing rapidly. However, Americans looking for a scientific perspective on topical environmental issues may be out of luck. While blogs about politics, business and sports are abundant, blogs about science are exceedingly rare, and blogs about environmental science even rarer. Furthermore, in a preliminary search for environmental blogs I found that the majority of environmental blogs had a strong geopolitical bias in one direction or another and were authored either by individuals or non-government organizations with well documented biases. At present there are no blogs focusing on Long Island’s environment. There is a need for a subjective scientific discussion of key environmental issues that the public can trust, especially one that discusses environmental issues on a local level.

I would like to create such a blog, with the intentions of updating it about three times a week. The blog would focus on environmental issues affecting the New York metropolitan region, but many of the blog articles would be general as to attract a much larger crowd. I would like to keep a healthy mix of environmental theory (e.g. population growth, global energy needs and sources), discussion of basic scientific facts about topical environmental issues, local environmental issues (e.g. Broadwater, The Long Island Wind Farm) and major research findings that have environmental impacts (highlighting in particular work done by SoMAS personnel). As is traditional in the world of blogging, the created blog would link to a number of outside blogs, journalistic articles and academic articles, thus not only connecting the general populous with my take on the issues, but encompassing the broad scientific consensus.

Third, it seems like the people reporting on science, aren’t necessarily the experts on the issues they are writing about. While I’m far from an expert, a bachelor and masters degree along with a few years of graduate school does give me a bit of insight into a lot of issues, that I’d like to share.

Fourth, most scientists communicate poorly with the public. I am hoping to have a career in science at some point in the near future, and I’d like to be able to successfully communicate my research results with the public. While my writing so far has been relatively poor, with most subjects poorly described (wait what valley? There’s a city in the valley?!?), full of grammatical errors and poorly constructed metaphors, I am hoping to get better an improve my written communication. To that effect, consider yourself guinea pigs.



Fifthly, sometimes the public needs a translator from “science research talk” to “plain English.” Often with good intentions many authors can do good research that is completely incomprehensible to the public. (See as an example the image to the right, which is a figure in a scientific journal article summarizing how science blogs work). I’d like to do my part in translating good work from “science” to “English” so the public can use the research (because what are we doing science research for if not for improving the quality of life for everyone).

Lastly, I think the general public really wants to understand science. I truly believe it. Many people have a negative perspective on science research because they feel like scientists are talking down to them or that scientists are coming up with nonsense because they don’t understand how scientists could do the research they perform. Or perhaps the public doesn’t have a good grasp of basic environmental science theory, and misinterprets results.

I bring up this point because of a scientific paper that Lee forwarded to me sometime last month. The article entitled “The roles, reasons and restrictions of science blogs” by Dr. John S. Wilkins, a philosopher from the University of Queensland in Australia, discusses the role of science blogs in society and in science academia today. (It should be noted here that Dr. Wilkins himself is a blogger, so his views may come from his own personal experiences.) It’s a very interesting read and I encourage all you loyal readers out there to download it and take a gander.

Dr. Wilkins, first describes what a science blog is and who typically does this blogging:

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 the readership, and the discussions can range from a few humorous one-liners to complex and well-written rebuttals or contributions, and everything in between. Blogs typically have a general theme, and most blogs are personal diaries organized around these. Many are focused on single issues, such as politics, religion or scientific topics. Science blogs are blogs whose main focus or intent is disseminating or commenting upon science.

Many science bloggers are graduate students, but a number are practicing teachers and researchers. It is unclear so far how the scientific and educational communities regard blogging. Some graduate students and early career researchers have complained that they are being told by advisors and supervisors to stop blogging and concentrate on ‘real’ work, whereas others have drafted up later-published papers on their blogs, and taken advantage of an informed and enthusiastic readership for critique and suggestions. At times, readers offer references the author might not have found otherwise, especially from cross-disciplinary fields. In this article, I argue that there are also many other reasons for scientists to enter the blogosphere.

Here is a short list of motivation Dr. Wilkins gives for scientists having personal science blogs:
• Blogs are “intimate and responsive,” often addressing recent publications nearly immediately, offering a response very different than hyped up press releases.
• Science blogs are a mechanism by which to “demythologize science”. If those writing about science are the ones performing it, they are best able to discuss the manner by which research was done and what the limitations of the work are.
• Bloggers are able to identify science politics, and make clear to readers why some research is covered by traditional media in the way that it is covered.

Dr. Wilkins also notes that there are certain benefits to blogging, that I greatly appreciated reading:
• That blogs, if archived can represent a history of the evolution of scientific thoughts and knowledge on a particular issue.
• That bloggers can bridge the ever growing gap between science and humanities, and in some cases lead to policy changes by making clear to those outside of science (i.e. politicians) what the practical results of government spending on research may be.

Blogging also has personal benefits for the blogger. A blog that represents a scientific community or subdiscipline will become a community in itself. Through back-channel forums, personal contacts, and commenting, an isolated researcher can become part of a wider social network. Occasionally, conferences result, such as the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference (http://www.scienceblogging.com) that has now been held twice. And science bloggers can even find jobs via their blogging. At least three members of the blog community at the Seed Magazine Science Blogs (http://scienceblogs.com) have reported that they have been offered or gained positions partly on the basis of their science blogging.

Not all things blogging are a positive to Dr. Wilkins he notes:

There are also downsides to blogging. Quality control, rewriting and editing are usually lacking, and some blogs that purport to be science based are often merely apologetics for pseudoscience or quack medicine, especially when issues are politically charged (e.g. anti-global warming, anti vaccination, creationism, homeopathy and so on). Many blogs also act as ‘vanity publishing,’ that is, self-serving outlets for ideas the author is unable to get past peer review. Blogs fall prey to the same failures as websites in general, with much of the ‘information’ being false or one-sided. For example, if you google ‘evolution,’ most of the top hits are creationist sites such as the Discovery Institute.

This blog was recently a victim of such “fake science” when someone put a link in the comments to an anonymous web-blog that seemed to evoke an extremely anti-scientific tone.

Dr. Wilkins concludes with:

In conclusion, blogging remains an individualistic, sometimes anarchistic and convention-breaking form of communication. There are gems in the rough, but there will always be a lot of rough. Sites that continue to deliver interesting reports will tend to survive, but ultimately it is up to each blog reader to find the blogs they like and trust. The academic research and teaching communities for science and related fields need to see blogging as more than a casual hobby, as core outreach for their science. It is an effective way for scientists to counter the misunderstandings, deliberate and otherwise, of popular culture. Not only graduate students, but more tenured professionals, need to engage in this to ensure that their science, and the science of others, is in the public eye (for an example, see Massimo Pigliucci’s blog at http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com). In this way, we can ensure that the quality of the science that is communicated to the public is high, while the personality of working scientists humanizes science.

There is a certain irony to Dr. Wilkins journal article, that I find most humorous. While describing how and why science blogs should exist, he relies on antiquated science article clichés, including a flow chart (see image above, and an aside box in which he describes how to start a blog like a physicist describes the methodology of their experiment).

No matter how you look at it, we need young scientists to get out on the web and write about science in ways that their peers could understand. If anyone out there wants to write an “editorial” or “letter to the editor” on this blog, we’d love to share your thoughts. If anyone out there wants to start your own blog, we’d love to give you a link and a shoutout to get people reading your stuff. Those articulate folks in the shadows, step out and share your knowledge and love of science with the rest of us!