Five years as a science blogger – my experiences and how it began
Establishing intellectual friendships, meeting interesting people, fighting fierce academic debates – when I was invited to join the German SciLogs team in 2007, I had no idea what to expect; nobody had. Now SciLogs has merged with Nature Blogs and suddenly I realize that five years of science blogging have passed. A new beginning: time for a reflection.
Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.
Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.
According to recent polls, only 7% of internet users in Germany read blogs at least occasionally (Busemann & Gscheidle, 2011). For the US, 32% have been reported (Pew Research Center, 2010), for Japan an astonishing 80% (comScore, 2011). When Carsten Könnecker, editor in chief of Gehirn&Geist Magazine, the German edition of Scientific American Mind, told a couple of others and me in 2007 about the preparations to launch a blog portal on philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific topics, I belonged to this huge majority of internet users hardly visiting blogs.
Why should one spend time blogging anyway?
Because I enjoy writing and also discussing these topics with others I was stupid enough to set up my own blog – “stupid” because I was in the middle of my PhD period then, where one would expect not to have too much spare time for other activities. Besides, when you already spend much of your time sitting in front of a computer screen and analyzing neuroscience data or thinking about their philosophical implications, who then would voluntarily agree to spend even more time on these topics? Compared to today, and I suddenly realize that almost five years have passed since since I published my first post on the influence of genes on behavior on September 27 2007 (Die Macht der Gene?), I would have to say that I still had relatively much spare time then compared to my academic duties as an assistant professor nowadays. While I managed to write one post every one or two weeks back then, now I often can only write one per month, or even none at all.
Nevertheless, multiply this by five years and you can get the 129 posts with 3442 comments in my German blog Menschen-Bilder (loosely translated as human images) most of which received somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 hits, with some outliers like the guest post on epigenetics and the inheritance of acquired properties by a German biology professor that already received more than 13,000 (Epigenetik: Wie erworbene Eigenschaften vererbt werden können). My primary motivation used to be and still is to share my thoughts with others and ideally also to learn from them if they point out some flaws in my reasoning.
I might be a bit more pessimistic on the outlook of the latter possibility after these more than 3,000 comments (actually about two per day on average), because most people rather seem to reinforce their own views instead of openly reflecting those on others, particularly on such rather philosophical issues such as causal determinism of the universe or the neuroscientific reduction of mind and psychology. I should add that what I wrote about “most people” perhaps also applies to myself, but in case that you shall continue reading my future posts and discussions in Psychophilosophy (for a motivation of why I chose this title, please see this about page), you will be able to draw your own conclusion.
Unexpected Benefits
When I started blogging and probably still today some academics in Germany, particularly in leading positions, regarded public communication as a waste of time. Even worse: A scholar who has time for this extra activity might not be a good scientist at all, for he or she could have spent this additional time on research, right? With the increasing importance of public relations and acquiring research funds, some of those people might eventually change their mind, but from the compliments that I got for my blogging activities in these five years, few came from colleagues. Perhaps this might also be explained by the fact that similar to German internet users in general, only 8% of scientists read blogs at least occasionally (Studie Digitale Wissenschaftskommunikation, 2010-2011).
However, my own blogging activities motivated me to take a look at what others blogging in related as well as different fields are doing – and there, indeed, a couple of helpful thoughts and references has been dropped and a couple of inspiring high-level discussions occurred. I also found it an interesting opportunity to offer people with whom you disagree to write a guest post for you (Guest posts in Menschen-Bilder, German) – a more direct invitation to challenge one’s own views. So look forward to similar initiatives here in my new English blog.
Let's have fun and gain new insights!
Finally I would like to express my gratitude to the supporting team that made writing for the German SciLogs platform such a nice experience, notably Lars Fischer (see his German blog Fischblog, one of the most read German science blogs overall, if I am not mistaken), Martin Huhn, Carsten Könneker (see his German blog Gute Stube), Richard Zinken and also the other ones who have helped us less visibly but not less importantly. One of the traditions they established and which have significantly contributed to making the SciLogs experiences worthwhile have been the yearly meetings in Deidesheim (e.g. Sci12: Sie wählten nur den Bundespräsidenten, wir den Blogger des Jahres), a small village well-known for its wine tradition. I hope that we will be able to have similar meetings among the bloggers of the new portal, though, admittedly, traveling might become a bit more difficult and expensive.
I hope that all bloggers, commentators, and passive readers alike will have a lot of fun on this new platform, and that all of us will be able to increase our knowledge and gain some new insights.
Credit: Thanks to Merja Mahrt and Cornelius Puschmann for providing us with the figures on blog publicity and Germany beyond at the Deidesheim Meeting 2012.
Hi Stephan,
very interesting post. Indeed, I hope that we find a way to have something like "Deidesheim" and with the spirit of Deidesheim for the international SciLogs project!
Now for something completely different. It might sound a bit nitpicking but for the accuracy of statement: While Spektrum der Wissenschaft started as the German edition of Scientific American, it was the other way round with Gehirn&Geist: Scientific American Mind started as the English edition of G&G.
Best
Richard
You mention that academics have been reticent to blogging when you first started five years ago. I wonder how they are now? Still reticent or a little more accepting? I was in Melbourne, Australia for the whole of last year and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the research community there is very accepting—and dare I say encouraging—of science blogging. Perhaps that's a trend which will be spreading? I'm hopeful.
Hi Stephan, Hi Khalil
Khalil, I don't know if it's some kind of European trend but I can totally relate to what Stephen is saying about the reluctance of academics. In France, not that I want to make it "dramatic" or anything, but based on my very young experience it seems that over here, the reluctance applies to ANY kind of writing that can't be associated with any metrics. I guess that the fact that our English skills are not exactly the best you can find is not helping but honestly, the way I see it (and I can be wrong, of course), it's a lot about inappropriate haughtiness and ignorance. Because actually they know pretty much nothing about what's going on with science on the Internet. But again, I don't really have anything to back up my point besides my own experience.
(Sorry Stephan, I mispelt your name once and also should have commented as a reply to Khalil actually. See how clumsy we are when it comes to use the Internet properly?)
@Richard, I know and I agree. Sometimes I write "Gehirn&Geist, the German precursor of Sci Am Mind", but I found this a bit too cumbersome in this case. Good that you clarified this.
Anyway, I think it does not matter so much who was first, but that both magazines provide high-level science journalism. We are all dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, after all.
@Khalil: Well, I don't know of any representative data for the case of blogging, but I do remember some science communication studies reporting the stance (or prejudice) that colleagues who are often in the media can hardly be good scientists.
Regarding science blogging, you might want to ask the people next time whether they are tenured faculty or PhD students/PostDocs. I would expect a notable difference here.
@Audrey, there are indeed some colleagues who are driven by impact factors and other measures that will be directly rewarded for their career assessments; and I cannot really blame them, if they are looking for permanent positions in academia, since these assessments are very competitive.
It's a pity that science communication is hardly valued; for example, in my university's tenure track criteria it's not even mentioned. I submitted a respective comment for my upcoming evaluation and I do feel that people at my faculty value my efforts (as long as my other duties do not suffer from my communication activities, that is); but making it mandatory in general would cause trouble for colleagues who don't have such experience or who perhaps do research on a topic that is too complicated for/remote from any social aspects.
P.S. Calling me "Stephen" is okay, as long as you don't say "Steve". Do you come from France? "Stefané" would also be acceptable.
Oh well, yes, of course I totally agree: people have every right to worry about impact factors if it matters for them to accomplish their professional goals. And science communication/blogging shouldn't be made mandatory, I agree on that too. But those who are not interested in such activity are unfortunately not very neutral about it either. If they want to neither get involved in it nor even have a look at it, that's fine, really. It's just that it feels like "hardcore" academics indeed think that scientists who enjoy sci comm & blogging are not those of highest quality. That's really weird that scientist valuing science so much jump to such conclusion, no?
(I think you are right about the studies you are referring to in one of your replies ; they do ring a bell to me as well)
PS: I do come from France. As a matter of fact the "frenchization" of your name would be "Stéphane" which is close to the original version so I don't really have any excuses! Full disclosure: I even come from East of France actually, not too far from Germany so I wouldn't DARE say "Steve"! I should probably say something like "Schtééfan" instead, right?
So it sounds like we agree with each other about something, but neither of us really has any idea what to do about it, besides blogging and leaving comments.
Perhaps that's the best thing one can do sometimes.
And regarding the French, I have to apologize that I always failed these classes because I happened to have them in a period when I had no intention to learn yet another foreign language. Something I regret this nowadays.
I had a feeling that "Stefané" might be wrong and actually was afraid after posting my comment that it might even be the female version. Thus, to clarify, "Stéphane" is most welcome and particularly the "éé" in your reply would rather be representative of what the Dutch made of it, although the "Sch" is indeed very German and particularly representative of the area I come from (the state called Hessen).
Could anyone have a solution against people being judgmental, even when they are (theorically) driven by scientific method and rationality?
But I'm hoping that when "we" are the seniors, things will be easier. Because as you also said, present PhD students and post docs are certainly way more comfortable with the idea of sci comm & blogging not necessarily making the quality of science suffer (OR not being necessarily made by the "worst" scientists). The way I see it, we are "making" the transition. At least I'm hoping that those of us who will eventually turn into the mentors after having been the mentorees won't forget to stress such a point as sci comm being a facultative yet "honorable" thing to do.
And as we are discussing important stuff, let's talk about your skills in French: shame on you! But I shouldn't tell! Although I used to be pretty good at German, not practising enough ruined all of it!!! So you shouldn't blame yourself for the failing
(And don't worry the female version would be "Stéphanie" so you were fine. And as to the pronunciation, I'll keep it easy for me and say it the French way in my head if you don't mind!).
(Sorry, "theorically" is not a word. "Theoretically" is. Please blame my French DNA!)