> The reason scientists don't blog a lot, or comment on blogs, is that there aren't reputation metrics associated with that kind of contribution to the scientif

> The reason scientists don't blog a lot, or comment on blogs, is that there aren't reputation metrics associated with that kind of contribution to the scientific canon. Scientists often present their unpublished data at conferences, even when the presentation has little prestige, and in fields where citing conference abstracts is rare, so the effect on one's reputation can't be quantified. The reason that most scientists don't blog or comment on blogs is that they don't perceive these activities as contributing to scientific progress. This might be because these aren't a good format for presenting original research, because appropriate publishing platforms don't exist, or simply their fellow scientists wouldn't read their blogs. This is quite different from peer review, which most scientists recognize as an integral part of the system. It makes little sense to create a "reputation" metric to index contributions that the scientific community does not believe are meaningful. First, focus on figuring out why scientists don't think blogging is science, and the rest will follow.