This is the first of three posts detailing my experience of the Science Blogging Conference held at the Royal Institution, London, on 30th August.
In the television series Californication, David Duchovny's character—a previously successful novelist now suffering from writer's block—is embarrassed when his agent tries to interest him in writing a weblog for a magazine. The implication is obvious: blogs are for pictures of my cat, not for serious writers. Similarly, there seems to be a widely held perception that a scientist who keeps a blog in any degree of 'professional' capacity can not be serious about science, quite apart from the issue of writing personally about one's day job.
Nature Network's blogging conference, the first of its kind in Europe, was intended to bring together members of the science blogging community to discuss issues in science, science communication, publishing and education. Places were limited to 130 people and it was rapidly overbooked. Most delegates were from the UK and Europe, with significant numbers coming from the US. Attendees included scientists who blog 'professionally' and 'personally', senior editors at Nature, a representative from the American Chemical Society ("We have bloggers but we don't know what they're doing") and professional journalists from the Guardian and Times Higher Education.
With support from the Faculty of Science and the School of Molecular and Microbial Biochemistry I was able to represent the University of Sydney and participate in the concluding panel session. Although I was the only delegate to travel from as far as Australia, a combination of 'live-blogging', Twitter, FriendFeed and Mogulus enabled the sessions to be followed in more-or-less real time across the world, which appears to have been greatly appreciated.
Matt Brown welcomed everyone (reminding us that in the nineteenth century the Royal Institution's public lectures were so popular that Albemarle Street became London's first one-way street), and introduced Ben Goldacre: medical doctor, writer, broadcaster and 'Bad Science' blogger.
Ben, after applauding the University of Sydney for paying most of my airfare, railed against the 'over-popularization' and dumbing-down of science, particularly noting the inanity of 'Einstein BMX'. He made the point that there is an economic and social cost to ignoring bright children (he actually said 'geeks'), and that science blogs are useful for stimulating future scientists.
Science blogs have in-built peer review; anything said in public will be fact-checked by 'an army of bastards'—readers who are experts in their fields. This forces the writer to think carefully, develop their ideas over time, and in many cases provide access to original documents. This contrasts with science and medical journalism in the mainstream media, where trained journalists often write apparently very convincingly on something they actually know nothing about. Science bloggers play an important role in policing the mainstream media for specious claims, uncovering the truth behind so-called 'miracle cures' and exposing sloppy journalism.
Bloggers are invaluable in uncovering source material and making it available, and can cover science news much more effectively than career journalists. Perhaps more importantly, bloggers are able to publish the negative aspects of medical and science stories usually ignored by the mainstream media. Because they are written and commented on by experts, science blogs potentially provide direct access to world-class knowledge, peer-reviewed literature and discussion in any discipline.
The first panel session of the day saw three science bloggers with very different styles talk about their experiences in writing about life as a scientist. Most people actually do not know any practising scientists, and science blogs can help to rectify unrealistic impressions of science and scientists that are gleaned from television and other mass media. Science is not scary, and despite the jargon necessary to our trade and the somewhat esoteric nature of much of our research, science is actually performed by 'real' people.
In general, people's view of science and the scientific process is shaped by the media. As Ben said, mainstream media reporting of science is unsubtle, and most people do not realize that science is not about facts as such, but about how we generate knowledge[1]. The debate and division within any scientific field, that we as scientists view as healthy and necessary, tends to make non-scientist members of the public very nervous, and they need to be convinced that this evolution of scientific thought is normal. Blogging about the scientific process as it happens could address this in a way that conventional media can not.
Different bloggers write for different audiences. Seed Magazine's blogs tend to go for a more populist approach, but (to me) seem to be deliberately and sometimes unnecessarily provocative. They are also very bad at linking out to non-Seed blogs. The blogs hosted by Nature Network (where the bloggers receive no income for this activity) are in a more 'closed' environment—one has to sign up in order to comment, for example—although they can be read by anyone. They tend to be written with other scientists in mind, but are usually pretty accessible to the lay person.
The panellists disagreed on the necessity for anonymity: one had been threatened with loss of her scientific career if she went ahead with writing a blog. This ties in with the issue of respectability alluded to earlier, and we returned to it in the last session of the day. On the other hand, using one's real name lends an air of credibility and accountability that might otherwise be missing, but it is imperative that one then takes care not to embarrass or inappropriately identify colleagues.
Related to the issue of anonymity is the problem of dealing with hostile commentators. Nature Network is 'preternaturally friendly' according to one of the panellists, and destructive flamewars never seem to get going. The consensus was that being on the internet seems to bring out the worst in people even if they use their own name, and that the best way of dealing with hostility is to ignore bad behaviour.
Blogging can be a 'support' activity: it is a means of talking with people who are experiencing similar situations, and it can be useful to find someone else who has gone through the same difficulties. The problems of doing science, managing careers and families, etc., in general are not discussed in more conventional channels in academia. On the other hand writing about problems, about how things are not always great, can be viewed by peers as letting the side down.
The issues of perception and support were discussed briefly. One panellist said that her boss reads her blog and enjoys it, although she did not know about the Head of her department or her funding body. She voiced a concern that if anyone appeared less than fully committed to their career in a blog post that this could have negative effects if it was read by the 'wrong' people.
All panellists seemed to agree that although educating the public about science through blogs was valuable and worthwhile, it was irresponsible to encourage children to become scientists themselves because there are already too many scientists! This contradicts Ben and media reports that there are too few science graduates coming up through the education system (although it is probably a fair reflection on the current state of science funding).
