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Posts Tagged Science communication

Science blogging aggregated and streamed Grant Jacobs Aug 22

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There’s two new circuses in town.

Not science bogging carnivals, ways of following science blogging.

The first is a new site that pulls the most recent five posts from a long list of science blogging sites (via RSS feeds), presenting them on a single page for easy access. (I’d like to think most of my readers have already stumbled onto this one way or other, but if not, now you know.)

scienceblogging

It lists 54 different science blogging groups, including quite a few I’ve never seen before. They also host a list of science blog carnivals, and a blog that includes instructions for those wishing to have their blog added, requests for suggestions for improvements, and so on. There is also a twitter account (which is not a stream of the posts, but for discussion about the site) and an RSS feed. Built by Anton Zuiker, Bora Zivkovic and Dave Munger.

The second, which has available for a few days now, is a science river, a stream (erm, no pun intended) of posts from a wide range of science blogs, developed by Dave Winer. This is more like a twitter stream or a PR release stream or individual blog posts with a brief lead-in to the article.

science-river

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A selection from Lord Robert Winston’s 12 aphorisms about science Grant Jacobs Aug 18

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Food to invite discussion: comments about science and the public

Robert Winston’s recent book, Bad Ideas?: an arresting history of our inventions, closes with chapter 12, Scientists and Citizens: Twelve Aphorisms and a Manifesto.

bad-ideas-cover-120px

I saw this book at the university this morning and thought I might offer a few of his aphorisms or manifesto points as an invitation to discussion. (I haven’t read the book itself, as I haven’t enough free time to read for leisure currently.) Giving away a few of his aphorisms or points of his scientists’ manifesto shouldn’t be a spoiler for those who have yet to read his book.

Most of his aphorisms will be familiar in one form or other to those who have some basic idea of what science is “about” and are thus will be uncontroversial to most of you.

A few are a little more intriguing:

  • We constantly reinvent the same technological advances and rediscover the same discoveries.
  • Even ‘good’ governments frequently misuse scientific knowledge
  • Scientists are no better than anyone else at forecasting the future. In fact, their predictions are usually wildly inaccurate.

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Media7 Spotlight on Science and Technology special Grant Jacobs Aug 16

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New Zealand Readers* should watch Media 7 on Thursday 19 August at 9.10pm, TVNZ 7, which will

[…] explore some of the many problems that journalists face in dealing with developments in science and technology. It will also consider some of the frustrations that scientists experience when they have to explain their work to journalists.

Media7’s on-line blurb closes with

Media7’s special will seek to bridge the gap between the scientists and the journalists, and will be looking at some of the spectacular communications failures.

Should make for entertaining viewing!

Host Russell Brown will be joined by Dr. David Haywood (writer), science journalist Alan Samson, Radio New Zealand Science producer Phil Smith and our own Peter Griffin (of the Science Media Centre) and Dr. Rebecca McLeod (marine biologist).

If what Russell Brown is saying on his blog is anything to go by, the topic of NZCSC’s stunt of challenging NIWA’s climate data in court is likely to come up. See also Hot Topic for a more complete take on this. (And far too many other blogs…!)

Footnote

Updated to correct Rebecca’s name (see comments).

* It’s been brought to my attention that you can view TVNZ7 on-line. (I haven’t verified this. Work calls…) Overseas readers, and local viewers without a Freeview™ decoder for their TV, may be able to access the show this way.

Other articles on Code for life:

Opinion: Wanting to “resolve” (climate) science with legal games…

Preserving endangered species – of gut microbes

Autism genetics, how do you copy?

Consumer brain-computer interface

Temperature-induced hearing loss

Know the history of your field, be it science or pottery Grant Jacobs Aug 11

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Knowing the history of your thing — whatever it is — helps you understand why things are the way they are, by showing you how things once were and what made them change.

Frequent readers will know I am a fan of science history — at least the fun bits!

Archimedes (c.287–212 BC), by Domenico Fetti (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

Archimedes (c.287–212 BC), by Domenico Fetti (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

Not too long ago I wrote that I wanted to explain one reason why I thought more people learn the history of science.

In the first of a series of posts* bringing you a video series showing a (very) brief history of science I wrote:

I’d also like to offer some thoughts on why scientists and science writers should bother learn the history of science, but they’re for another day.

Alison suggested (in the comments):

Top of the list of why learning the history of science is a Good Thing: it gives you an (enhanced) understanding of how science actually works :-)

I replied:

Absolutely, that’s one reason. I’m thinking of another for my later post ;-)

Alison is right that this is a key reason to learn the history of science.

This is that later post, so let me share with you my other reason.

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A brief history of science, part 2 Grant Jacobs Aug 06

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How did we come to see the world as we do? What changed the way that we look at things and brought a more accurate understanding of the world around us? That’s the history of science.

SisyphusRedeemed continues his short histories of science, this time covering the Renaissance to the Copernican Revolution. The previous part of this series covers the work of the ‘ancients’ up to the early Renaissance.

Part two includes a better appreciation of method — the beginnings of working towards modern scientific method — some of the major discoveries and inventions of this period, and shifting the earth away from the centre of the universe, which he explores in more detail (it’s great stuff, there’s a few interesting twists to that story).

Enjoy it:

YouTube Preview Image

For more history of science, check out Michael Barton’s list of history of science blogs. One I’m particularly looking forward to is History of Science, one of several new blogs at the Royal Society of London.

More from Code for life:

An history of ancient science in less than ten minutes

Preserving endangered species – of gut microbes

Epigenetics and 3-D gene structure

Rex and The Wrong Trousers – uncanny resemblance?

Consumer brain-computer interface

Blogimmuniqué: Scientopia, a new blog collective Grant Jacobs Aug 03

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A brief heads’s up to my readers, saddle up because there’s a new science blog collective in town: Scientopia.

I will update my list of other science blogs when I get time to work out who has moved.

Scientopia is in town... (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

Scientopia is in town... (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

(While I’m writing, this list has grown since I first wrote about it. It now includes most of the larger (biology-oriented) collectives, a few of the lists of science blogs and more independent blogs. You’re welcome to recommend more to add to the list.)

Among those that have moved from scienceblogs to Scientopia include Book of Trogool, Scicurious, Janet Stemwedel’s Adventures in Ethics and Science, Christina’s LIS Rant, GrrlScientist (and her partner Bob, in addition to his Nature Network blog) under This Scientific Life, Good Math/Bad Math, The Questionable Authority, White Coat Underground, and Drugmonkey among others.

They look a good collection of bloggers, about 25 of them, with several I regularly follow. With the numbers they have from the onset and the mix of people, I’d say they’ll make a fist of it. Best of luck to those over at Scientopia, and welcome to your new home.

You can follow them on twitter or RSS.

Updates:

Bora already has some thoughts on the new collective up. Also, from John Rennie.

Introductory posts are appearing all over the science blogosphere, as might be expected. Some with a few thoughts in addition to the welcome include:

  • Brian Switek has an excellent piece, Back in the Saddle that discussions a lot of what has happened over the past month, ending with Scientopia. (If you’re into dinosaurs — who isn’t? — I can thoroughly recommend his blog.)
  • Jason Goldman: A (New) Blog Announcement
  • PZ Myers: Say hello to Scientopia & quibbles about the word ‘respect’. (That it is not some to be earned, not granted, is a pet peeve of my own, too. Haven’t looked to see how it’s used in this context or had time to think about it’s use in this context either.)

A noisy welcome, indeed!

Other articles on Code for life:

Epigenetics and 3-D gene structure

The roots of bioinformatics

An history of ancient science in less than ten minutes

Rex and The Wrong Trousers – uncanny resemblance?

Consumer brain-computer interface

An history of ancient science in less than ten minutes Grant Jacobs Aug 01

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Well, you can’t really tell the history of ancient in science in just ten minutes.

There’s just too much of it.

Some truly colossal textbooks that cover a fraction of the period covered in this video — Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages — would take you weeks to read. (Or maybe days, if you’ve very fast.)

But you can drop a few names and point to key things they did.

YouTube Preview Image

(Ignore the title on the first slide; this video is part of a longer series, this first one covers up to the 12-13th century, not 1900.)

I hope is that this video might, in a small way, encourage some to learn more about the history of science.

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Mid-week links and a milestone Grant Jacobs Jul 27

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I have too many interesting articles to read and too little time to write… here a few articles I can recommend, and a milestone. Of sorts.

  • Holt milestone (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

    Holt milestone (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

    It’s officially sex week over at the Loom. Given Carl Zimmer is one of several science writers who also blog that last year brought us far more than we really needed to know about duck penises, so this is worrying. He starts out with fungal sex; reading between the lines viruses may turn up somewhere along the way. (You’ll have to ask him if he is going to include Aves.)

  • Science writer Deborah Blum, who blogs at Speakeasy Science, has a piece in Slate, The Raw Milk Deal, about the health issues of drinking raw milk. New Zealanders, being the big milk drinkers we are, might want to compare an American science writer’s perspective.
  • Ben Goldacre has put up a podcast of the British government’s response to homeopathy, a topic I’ve frequently written about in the past. It’s long (30 mins), so try this when you have time.
  • Dave Munger writes about plagiarism, science writing and blogging, including what happened to Brian Switek’s article. I fairly regularly get posts copied by the robot plagiarists that he mentions in passing. (These copy posts in their entirety onto websites set up to show off advertising.) I’ve also had an advocacy group copy an article wholesale, which I was less impressed with. (I let them know that I didn’t approve in my comments but got no reply. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday photo, links and video (16th July 2010) Grant Jacobs Jul 16

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The end-of-the-week round-up of those open tabs…

But first the photo of the week, the rings of Saturn in the distance behind Lutetia photographed in Rosetta’s flyby of Lutetia. For more details see the Rosetta blog.

(Source: The Planetary Society blog.)

(Source: The Planetary Society blog.)

OK, now those links:

And a video, from NASA, Interstellar Clouds And Dark Nebulae (great viewing):

YouTube Preview Image
Other articles in Code for life:

What famous writer do you write like?

Describe your fantasy institute

Honey’s anti-bacterial properties found?

Temperature-induced hearing loss

Boney lumps, linkage analysis and whole genome sequencing

Framing the post Grant Jacobs Jul 16

1 Comment

(Not that kind of framing.)

Late night-night thoughts on ensuring that readers come away with the message of the article.*

Jeremy Yoder writing from Denim and Tweed, following Dave Munger’s lead, frets about how

online publishing and dissemination methods can strip the nuance from scientific news

Yoder notes Munger’s point about

careful consideration of both the nut graf sent out via Twitter and RSS and the audience receiving them

He agrees (and I do too), but goes on to argue that some subjects may be less suited to blogging, writing

But the longer a post is, the more possibility there is that some fraction of the readers will quit reading before the end, and maybe even pass on links or comments based on that incomplete understanding.

Munger’s original concern (as I read it) was readers taking away over-simplistic, even mistaken, meanings from a story.

While taking Yoder’s point that short articles fit with blogging, I have to side with Munger on this issue, who points to a well-constructed dek, or sub-head, as a point that makes a difference. In particular, I see this as overcoming some of the limitations of longer articles and I can’t help think that for some (not all) types of articles the absence of a sub-head, or a poorly-written sub-head, is a key issue with longer on-line articles.

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