Is the Chemical Blogosphere Gaining Legitimacy?
Posted by Paul on December 5th, 2006
Conventional wisdom suggests that everything on the Internet is factually incorrect and that blogs are cesspools of lies written by smelly, house-bound agoraphobes. Several events this year, including one this morning, have caused me to reconsider this notion:
First, the New York Times cited “chemistry blogs” as having broken the story of the Dalibor Sames-Bengu Sezen scandal.
Next, Chemistry World offered revered chemistry bloggers Derek Lowe and Dylan Stiles their own regular columns.
Now, the managing editor of C&E News has left a comment on our own humble Web site (scroll two posts down).
What’s going on?! Is the Internet actually becoming a trusted source of information and reliable venue for discussion?
Naaahhh…
December 5th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Yes, Paul, there are a number of us in the science journalism/communication world (including many of us at Nature) who are looking to the web and the blogosphere as a legitimate place for real discussions on scientific topics. It’s just not clear to me yet whether many other scientists, other than the very small minority of you who blog and comment on blogs, feel the same way. What will it take to convince more scientists to talk online and take blogs/forums seriously?
December 5th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
No thanks to me!
December 5th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Most professors are old. Ever tried to teach your parents to set the time on the VCR? As more tech savvy graduate students become professors you’ll see more professional online discussions.
Mitch
December 5th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
What’s a VCR? Does it have something to do with those “a-tracks” or “8-tracks” that I keep hearing old people talk about?
December 5th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Mitch wins.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:55 am
Yep, Mitch wins. It’s the same reason why gay marriage will be legal and racism will be much less of a problem in fifty years.
I think some online/blog-like system will be a popular venue for science discussion within ten years. It’s more likely that such a site will be started by a legitimate organization like Nature, Science, or ACS Pubs than by a no-name guy on the Internet. Why? Because people really don’t trust other people on the Internet. If you want evidence for this, compare Bloglines subscription counts for chemistry blogs versus legitimate science news organizations. They (generally) differ by 2-3 orders of magnitude.
Another alternative is for a famous chemist or a partnership of famous chemists to start a site and promote the hell out of it. These would have to be A-list chemists, so that the site would have instant credibility and attract the attention of science news outlets.
December 6th, 2006 at 3:55 am
Paul,
The gap is actually smaller then you may think. If we look solely at Alexa data.
View this link: ACS vs. RSC vs. Chemical Forums
ACS is grabbing roughly 200 users per million internet users, RSC is grabbing roughly 70 users per million internet users, and Chemical Forums is grabbing roughly 20 users per million internet users. That’s only 1 order of magnitude between ACS and some far-flung site by a no-name guy on the internet.
The field is wide open…
Mitch
December 6th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Speaking of the Sames-Sezen story, I read the article in this week’s C&EN and will have a post ready by tomorrow. Try to hold on, kiddies.
December 7th, 2006 at 6:19 am
I think the recent explosion in the number of chemistry blogs is making the (chemistry) world more equal in many ways. I can think of two ways to begin with:
1) anyone can have their say, and what they say at least should be jugded objectively based on the facts they provide, not based on who they are or where they are
2) people in smaller and less well-known universities have better access to news and knowledge not available in journals and such. What I mean by this is that when somebody in Harvard, Cambridge, MIT or any other place filled with really good chemists has a problem, he can probably find someone in the campus who knows a lot about the subject of the problem. My campus, for example, isn’t filled with really good chemists but the internet is and the chemistry blogs provide a way to get in touch with them.
To put it shortly, the chemistry blogs are really cool :p
December 7th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
OK, this ageism thing is not pretty.
Yes, I know what is was like to program CNDO calculations by punch card (I still have my last set). Yes, I know what a continuous wave NMR instrument was like. For all that, we dinosaurs still rule the Earth and until the comet hits you want to show us some respect.
The issue here is time. Where does a graduate student (or faculty member) find the time to monitor 15 blogs (let alone create and maintain one)? They take it from research time (ha!), they take it from social time (ha!) or they take it from thinking / reading time (oh - oh). As it stands right now the blogosphere is a combination street corner / seminar room.
If you apply the usual social - statistical growth models to the blogosphere and assume a Darwinian selection, Warhol will be proven right and we all be famous for 15 minutes but eventually there will rise a few important, well connected blogs that everyone can tap into for 10 - 15 minutes a day and feel that they are current in terms of gossip and chemistry. Sort of a CNN for chemistry and the rest of the blogs will either be withdrawn or continue on in a sad “I ate an apple for lunch” repository of the mundane.
On the other hand, I am just an old dinosaur with a little time on my hands so what do I know?
December 8th, 2006 at 12:53 am
Liberal Chemist, you’ve been reading my blog, haven’t you?
December 8th, 2006 at 12:56 am
Huh, what happened to my first comment? It looked OK when I typed it; it was supposed to say:
Oh well.
December 10th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Liberal Chemist,
Or you could just read a quick digest of all the major ones: http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?page=rss
Mitch
December 30th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
As my dear old grandmother - an even mightier “dinosaur” - used to say: “One can always find time, you only need the will to do so!” (apologies for my bluntness)
December 6th, 2007 at 12:56 am
emm.. why this page loading so slow?
December 7th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
why only ? normal people are rare at Harvardm you need to understand…
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