6 ms·

I don't think most scientists should blog. In fact, I think most scientists would rather not blog because you have two options: 1. Blog on an academic level:

I don't think most scientists should blog. In fact, I think most scientists would rather not blog because you have two options: 1. Blog on an academic level: Use all the big words, acronyms, and assumptions that go along with your educations level and maximize the academic audience. This feels the most natural but reaches the smallest audience. 2. Blog on a general level: Break down everything so that the general audience will understand it. There is no such thing as a middle ground, and as a general rule, these two audiences are almost mutually exclusive.

angusgr 16y ago
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." — Albert Einstein I think there's no harm in encouraging scientists to be able to explain things in familiar terms, and break the massive disconnect between scientist-level discourse and the kind of "ZOMG Wifi kills trees" interpretations that come out in public discourse. Moreover, some scientists fail even to communicate effectively with other scientists. In many circles there is a culture of bad writing and incomprehensible jargon, even though these things are not prerequisites to effective scientific communication (quite the opposite.)
- ig1 16y ago
  "If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize." -Richard Feynman
hugh3 16y ago
There's plenty of middle ground. Any good scientist is able to explain what they do to various different audiences: 1. A six-year-old 2. An uneducated layman 3. A layman with the general gist of what sciencey things are about 4. A scientist in a completely different field 5. A scientist in a similar field 6. A scientist in your own subfield 7. The three other people in the world who actually understand what you're doing. From a blogging point of view, though, there's an issue. If you're blogging about your own work then there's actually not all that much to write except on level 7, because the details of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis don't change on the higher levels. And if you're going to be blogging about science in general... well, it takes an awful long time to do that kind of thing.
- jules 16y ago
  I think higher level overviews can still be very useful. For example take a physicist working at CERN. He can't explain to a general audience what exactly he's working on, but he can explain about: the world is made of a couple of types of particles, we don't know for sure all these types of particles, and what their characteristics are, with the LHC we're trying to find out. Then he can maybe explain a bit about the things his own research is about. If you relate the things you write about to reality from time to time (e.g. "electrons are what makes electricity work, but they are also inside all the matter around you") then the general audience won't understand everything, but they will still get something out of what you write.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    I agree it's a great idea for scientists to write, and to do it regularly, and for a variety of audiences. But for the most part I don't think a blog is the right medium. Blogs just create a huge obligation to update them regularly whether you have something to say or not. They encourage you to bury your the few good things you have to say under a mountain of regularly-updated rubbish. The internet is filled with blogs updated a few times and then abandoned... heck, I think I have a few myself.
    - jules 16y ago
      I agree. A better model is "articles" or "essays" like PG does.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        Exactly. I don't have the patience to maintain a blog, but I can see myself cranking out a few essays a year whenever inspiration strikes. This actually gives me an idea, though, because the trouble with me cranking out essays is that I have nowhere to publish them. Sure, I could put them on my own personal website, but it's too much effort to create one and then find somewhere to host it... and besides, nobody would ever find it. Alternatively I could get a Wordpress blog to host my very occasional essays, but all the blogging sites are set up with blogs rather than essays in mind, so they're really non-optimal. So here's a startup idea for someone: a wordpress clone optimized towards the writer of occasional long pieces rather than frequent short postings.
cing 16y ago
Even if there isn't a middle ground, I'm not sure why that means a scientist shouldn't blog. You may not be able to "kill two birds with one stone" with a scientific blog post, but there's nothing stopping you from writing two posts. Both academic and general level blogging have advantages. A science blogger can do no wrong!

angusgr 16y ago

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." — Albert Einstein I think there's no harm in encouraging scientists to be able to explain things in familiar terms, and break the massive disconnect between scientist-level discourse and the kind of "ZOMG Wifi kills trees" interpretations that come out in public discourse. Moreover, some scientists fail even to communicate effectively with other scientists. In many circles there is a culture of bad writing and incomprehensible jargon, even though these things are not prerequisites to effective scientific communication (quite the opposite.)

ig1 16y ago
"If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize." -Richard Feynman

hugh3 16y ago

There's plenty of middle ground. Any good scientist is able to explain what they do to various different audiences: 1. A six-year-old 2. An uneducated layman 3. A layman with the general gist of what sciencey things are about 4. A scientist in a completely different field 5. A scientist in a similar field 6. A scientist in your own subfield 7. The three other people in the world who actually understand what you're doing. From a blogging point of view, though, there's an issue. If you're blogging about your own work then there's actually not all that much to write except on level 7, because the details of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis don't change on the higher levels. And if you're going to be blogging about science in general... well, it takes an awful long time to do that kind of thing.

jules 16y ago
I think higher level overviews can still be very useful. For example take a physicist working at CERN. He can't explain to a general audience what exactly he's working on, but he can explain about: the world is made of a couple of types of particles, we don't know for sure all these types of particles, and what their characteristics are, with the LHC we're trying to find out. Then he can maybe explain a bit about the things his own research is about. If you relate the things you write about to reality from time to time (e.g. "electrons are what makes electricity work, but they are also inside all the matter around you") then the general audience won't understand everything, but they will still get something out of what you write.
- hugh3 16y ago
  I agree it's a great idea for scientists to write, and to do it regularly, and for a variety of audiences. But for the most part I don't think a blog is the right medium. Blogs just create a huge obligation to update them regularly whether you have something to say or not. They encourage you to bury your the few good things you have to say under a mountain of regularly-updated rubbish. The internet is filled with blogs updated a few times and then abandoned... heck, I think I have a few myself.
  - jules 16y ago
    I agree. A better model is "articles" or "essays" like PG does.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Exactly. I don't have the patience to maintain a blog, but I can see myself cranking out a few essays a year whenever inspiration strikes. This actually gives me an idea, though, because the trouble with me cranking out essays is that I have nowhere to publish them. Sure, I could put them on my own personal website, but it's too much effort to create one and then find somewhere to host it... and besides, nobody would ever find it. Alternatively I could get a Wordpress blog to host my very occasional essays, but all the blogging sites are set up with blogs rather than essays in mind, so they're really non-optimal. So here's a startup idea for someone: a wordpress clone optimized towards the writer of occasional long pieces rather than frequent short postings.

cing 16y ago

Even if there isn't a middle ground, I'm not sure why that means a scientist shouldn't blog. You may not be able to "kill two birds with one stone" with a scientific blog post, but there's nothing stopping you from writing two posts. Both academic and general level blogging have advantages. A science blogger can do no wrong!