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Can blogs reshape the way science is made?

Published by Esteban Glas on June 20th, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: Blogs, Science

There are several scientific blogs out there in the wild. Some of them are really excellent, outstanding, well written and educational. Most of them are aimed at scientific spreading, something that is most needed nowadays. As the gap amongst what ultra-specialized scientists and the rest of us mere mortals know on specific subjects broadens, extra and massive means of communication are needed to try and keep the population out of ignorance. For instance I know enough about biology in order to keep away from trying to deeply understand anything about it. That being said I feel I need to know at least the wider concepts in todays science in order not too feel too dumb.

A very prominent characteristic upon many scientists is their lack of capacity to get down to the level of those not introduced in the dark arts of science. Thus my admiration for the few who can both understand the deep abysses of specialized knowledge in an area but can still transfigure their thoughts and wisdom into concepts everyone can understand.

But this post will not focus on those spreading the word, but rather on scientists communicating with other scientists and how they currently do it and how it could be done.

Quite some time ago I wrote a post “So much for scientific method” (it was so long ago I was single at the time!!. One of the points I covered on that occasion was “Publications”. I’ll quote myself:

As a Scientist you spend 4 years, a decade or your whole life working on the same line of investigation. While you (alegedly) make progress you publish your stuff in the form of “papers” in more or less recognized scientific journals. This magazines review what’s submitted to them and approve or decline the papers. The more respected the publication is, the harder it getts to get something published in it, at least so the say.

Now publications are the measuring stick for science and scientists. To be able to make advances you need money; in order to get funds and scholarships you need to publish. For scientists to publish they need to get results right? Wrong! Since there is so much pressure to publish, most of the time publications are just a collection of missleading, retouched figures and test protocols with results no one swill ever reproduce.

This leads to a vicious cicle of people who start their experiments on other people’s work which is, to say the least, wrong. You follow their protocols, reproduce their exact methods and get… absolutely nothing.

Well, if you happen to know a Scientist try to get their opinions about publications. Chances are that they’ll rant about it (unless, of course, they belong to the elite that gets published with eyes closed).

Bibliometrics are a way to measure the impact, relevance and importance of a Scientific publication. Yet, with the bulk of publications happening and the restrains and anachronisms scientific journals love to live with, getting noted (and much less cited) is an utterly impossible task for some obscure laboratory. How many times have we heard the words “his/hers/their findings went unnoticed for X years… yadda yadda”. This is a fair proof that traditional bibliometrics and citations don’t work well. (I sort of feel something similar towards Technorati… but that is something for a different post)

Yet everything could change. And the tool to do so is available and widely spread, both in and out of the scientific community: blogs.

Blogs have many advantages. You can easily find content through the various search engines. You can password protect things or make them public. You have no intermediaries. It is just you and your “audience”, and discussions can happen almost live. You could, potentially, get in touch with other scientists in similar lines of work just by posting on a blog or doing a search. Sharing information is easy and immediate “conversations” can happen and you don’t have to wait three months until the next issue of “Science” gets published.

Scientists of the world, are you taking advantage of this?

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