So I’m cruising the blogosphere, and I see a lot of blogs have chicklets, those little rectangles at the bottom of their sidebars that link to other bloggy things. I have a few; they go to Technorati, or Blog Hot or Not, or Feedburner.
A lot of blogs link to award sites; “best of”, “top blogs”, things like that. So I go there to see how well some of my favorite blogs are rated. There are lots of categories: sex (duh), humor, politics. But only very rarely is there a science category. Most have a “technology” category instead, which just ain’t the same thing (BlogTopSites, for example).
A little while back, the Weblog Awards 2005 got a lot of attention, and — you guessed it– no science category. I emailed the proprietor, but never received an answer. I’ll note that The Bloggies didn’t have a science category either.
I read quite a few blogs, including those dealing with politics, tech, humor. But my favorites are the science blogs. I have several blogrolled in my sidebar. Give them a look. If you like them, add them to your feedreader, or bookmark them. Visit them! Scientists are quite capable of excellent writing, and you just might learn something (hmmm, come to think of it, blogroll me too if you have a blog!).
And if you see some blog award site without a science category, let ‘em know how you feel. Now more than ever in our history, we need to be aware of science and what scientists are thinking. Blogs are a great way to find out.
March 21st, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Phil, one thing I’ve learned is that sometimes we need to do things ourselves. I say we (I’ll help if you wish) should have the “Science Blog Awards!”
Now, you would have to recuse yourself. But, you should already know you are a winner.
March 21st, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Darn right! I’ve said it before, this is a good niche for you to fill. I’d be willing to help, Phil.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Oh, I don’t have enough time to do the stuff I already have to do! I could never take on something like that. I’d just like to see science as a category on already-existing big-name awards. But thanks.
March 21st, 2006 at 11:26 pm
You are doing a great job, Phil. On the other hand, the status of science in the blogosphere mirrors that in the popular culture and its about time the scientific community embraces blogging as a method to popularize science and critical thinking.
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 am
OK. I’m all blogged out. Time to ban that word.
Science blog (shudder) awards could backfire, with ID or astrology or lunar hoax sites getting nods. Who will be doing the judging?
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:26 am
F($*&%! blog awards, people! Blogs have the potential of being a completely unfettered cross section of the state of our species. Rather than getting information from a single entity like Fox News or the Daily Show, we now have the ability to get news on literally ANYTHING one can think of. Try it… think of a topic, any valid topic, and I guarantee you that there is someone out there blogging about it. How awesome is that? Once people start saying which of these are good and which ones aren’t, they will inevitably start tailoring themselves to win said awards instead of just saying it like it is.
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Right. And if the awards reward good writing and proper fact-checking, isn’t that what we want?
March 22nd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
To BA: check the Wikipedia entry for “Science blog”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_blog
March 22nd, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Wow. Well, it’s nice to see it in Wkipedia.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:46 pm
“Right. And if the awards reward good writing and proper fact-checking, isn’t that what we want?”
You can “if” my opinion to death if you wish, but all I’m saying is that handing out blog awards is analog to running around on the street giving people “Nice T-Shirt” awards.
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Dave Becker:
When your objective is to get people to wear nicer T-shirts, that’s what you do. Nice T-shirt, by the way…
Since we want more literate science writing within the blogosphere, we should undertake to reward those that do it well… Simultaneously, one might consider passing out anti-science awards for some of the sillier notions trying to pass themselves off AS science… yeah, the PseudoScience Awards…that’s the ticket!
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:58 pm
PseudoScience Awards… now there’s an idea. Seriously.
I think the value of the blogsphere is not in its grammar or its ability to check itself; its value lies in the amount of diverse information it provides, correct or incorrect, fact-checked or not. Once you start saying, “this blog is good, but this one is bad” then you’ve tainted the information with your subjective opinion. If you’re handing out Mars bars to the blogs you think are good, then more blogs will want you to think they are good and start changing themselves so that you think they are good, and you’ll give them a tasty treat.
I am also well-aware that this is a personal opinion that I probably don’t share with many others.
I am very grateful for well-written blogs about science like Phil’s here and the Planetary Society’s blog, and the handful of others, and I think that the purveyors of these fine periodicals certainly deserve a pat on the back for sharing all this great information with us free-of-charge. However, I think that with awards come boundaries (e.g. “this blog is a science blog, and this blog is a philosophy blog”) and with boundaries come regulations (”to qualify for the science award blog, you have to post X words a week relating specifically to scientific issues”), and then you just have another regulated medium with filtered content that you have to take with a grain of salt anyway. I would much rather do my own fact-checking on the information I am given, since that what scientists are supposed to do anyway.
Certainly no offense meant to anyone — just sharing my thoughts. Cheers!
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:32 pm
why dont we start a science tag group then?
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:56 pm
“I think the value of the blogsphere is not in its grammar or its ability to check itself; its value lies in the amount of diverse information it provides, correct or incorrect, fact-checked or not. Once you start saying, “this blog is good, but this one is bad†then you’ve tainted the information with your subjective opinion.”
But if the blog is properly fact-checked, then you can’t taint the information. Facts are facts. Incorrect information is of far, far less value than correct information (I hesitate to say worthless, because if we know that the information is wrong, it an lead us to correct information).
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:33 pm
I got a pretty big boost in hits from the bloggies. If there were a science category, how many more readers would see the great sciblogs out there? I like I write, and I think others do as well. I don’t need an award to affirm my own self-worth, but it does help when I’m making a pitch to a publisher, or to a magazine. So there is some value to them.
March 24th, 2006 at 9:42 am
People in general tend to believe that only certain talented humans have the ability to master SCIENCE as a life long discipline. They do not realize it’s just a method of verifying our ideas about reality. Prior to the insight of that crazy/supremely talented Persian Sufi that combined the experimental/engineering discipline of the Romans with the logical/theoretical ideal of the Athenian Greeks and developed the Scientific Method, the only esoteric source of power in the world was wizards and magicians, another discipline assumed to be the realm of Talent only. Wizards and sorcerors seemed to have power because they could, by the “magic” of music and language, create imagery in the minds of their audience that seemed real to them. I would guess this was a direct result of the bicameral mind, when most had not the ability to differentiate between internal imagery and external. Both were “real”.
Evolution continues, but I wonder how much of our trouble today with the dichotomy between science and religion is because many humans are still unable to differentiate between subjective and objective phenomena?
Science blogs are one way we can beat down that wall between our minds and continue the evolutionary process.
Keep on blogging,,,
Gary 7