Image, ironically, from FailBlog
Warning: this post contains sentiment. If you are cynical and/or British, you might want to avert your eyes. Alternatively, read this and then go watch some Charlie Brooker. For those of you still around, bear with me. It is really hard to write something like this without falling into an abyss of clichés.
A couple of days ago, Dave Munger, under a veil of tightest secrecy, told me that I’ve won the big prize in the first ever Research Blogging Awards. Not Exactly Rocket Science is apparently the Research Blog of the Year, as well as Best Lay-Level Blog and home of the Best Post of the Year (for duck sex). The announcements have just been made public and there’s an interview between Dave and myself coming up shortly on the SEED website.
Needless to say, I’m incredibly honoured, especially given that the awards were voted for by a jury of peers and colleages. I’ve been blogging for 3.5 years now. Right from the start, writing Not Exactly Rocket Science has been a labour of love, and often a lonely one carried out in the solitary hours of the night. I certainly enjoy what I do, but it’s always gratifying to learn that other people think well of it.
Plus I get a nice badge (see above), although it’s legitimacy as a blogging award badge is seriously questionable given the use of only one exclamation mark.
For anyone unfamiliar with the Research Blogging Awards, they deal with blogs that describe scientific research, the prizes are sponsored by SEED, the nomination lists were drawn up by a panel of superstar bloggers and the final votes were cast by registered members of the ResearchBlogging community. In my mind, they are a fantastic idea. It is baffling that even now, bloggers often have to justify ourselves against straw-man accusations that we are nothing more than vitriolic agitators, when, in fact, the blogosphere is awash with excellent content. Getting bloggers together to celebrate that quailty can only be a good thing.
I’d like to congratulate and plug the other winners, including excellent blogs like Neurotopia, Highly Allochthonous, Respectful Insolence and A Blog Around the Clock. I’d encourage everyone to check them out as well as the full nominee list, which is full of writers that deserve your attention. To steal a phrase, customers who like Not Exactly Rocket Science might also like Laelaps, Observations of a Nerd, The Lay Scientist, Neurophilosophy, The Primate Diaries, Terra Sigillata, and more.
And finally, to everyone who voted, I offer my sincere and humble thanks. I can only say that I have every intention of continuing with Not Exactly Rocket Science and trying to improve the quality of material that appears here.
And while we’re on that topic, I have a big announceme.. oh look, is that the time?
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:28 am
Congratulations! You write a great blog, so it’s certainly well deserved
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:29 am
Congratulations!!! Very well deserved. Keep up the great work!
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:33 am
Congrats, Ed
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:40 am
Here’s a few of more exclamation points!!!!! So well deserved. Congratulations!!!!
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:41 am
Congratulations, Ed! Well deserved! That Seed interview (which, imho, contains some excellent questions), goes live tomorrow!!!!!!!
There, that enough exclamation marks for you?
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:47 am
Very well deserved awards
Congratulations and I can’t wait for the SEED interview!
(hehe cynical and/or British)
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:48 am
WELL DONE!!!!!!! Well deserved.
From a British Cynic.
Now hand me that copy of the Guardian…
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:49 am
No one’s more deserving, IMO, Ed. NERS became a daily staple in my internet reading the day you posted the hilarious expose on the unveiling of Ida, and you’ve never disappointed.
Congratulations!!!!!!! (a few more gratuitous exclamation points, well, just because)
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:58 am
well done dude!
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:26 am
Congrats Ed! Very well deserved…
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:30 am
Many congratulations, Ed. Of course, any other result would have been an injustice.
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:35 am
Congratulations. I appreciate your work.
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:55 am
Well deserved! Thanks for all your hard work!
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Wow, you really cleaned up! I can’t think of anyone who deserved those awards more, congratulations!
Great to see Orac win the prize for best medical blog, he’s certainly earned that award several times over in the past year.
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:12 pm
I haven’t commented here before, but I read regularly through RSS. There’s so much terrible science writing, and so many papers are locked behind paywalls, and responsible science writing is often sadly kind of boring. This blog rocks: the prose is a pleasure to read, the stories are fascinating, and the critical analysis of the significance of the findings is very welcome. All of which is to say, your award is richly deserved, and I hope to keep reading your work for many years to come.
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Congratulations, Ed! No one deserved it more. (You have certainly set the bar high for the rest of us!)
And I look forward to your forthcoming announcement. Will it CHANGE EVERYTHING?
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Congrats! I’m so glad you won the big prize. You definitely deserve it!
PS Told ya there was no topping duck sex. Hopefully, there will be no crazy penises in next year’s competition… to give me a shot!
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Congratulations! And well deserved. Even at my busiest, I always check your blog.
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Congratulations, Ed! And well deserved! Your blog is one of my favorite blogs, by far. I’m a scientist and I understand how absolutely difficult it is to be a good science writer. You have the gift of explaining things clearly for lay people, but you never dumb things down. I find your writing very balanced and your critiques very thoughtful.
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Congratulations! So well deserved! I love your blog, and link to it constantly. Keep up the good work!
March 23rd, 2010 at 2:31 pm
I stumbled upon your blog (literally) a few weeks ago and it has made it to my bookmarks toolbar at the top of Firefox. I feel like if I had more time I’d love to read more scientific journals, but you find the good ones for me and condense them down to be so readable. Thanks for everything, and I shall continue to follow!
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Major congratulations! Woot! I don’t comment much (if at all), but I do read your blog regularly via RSS feed.
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:16 pm
As long as you’re plugging the best of the best of the competition, let me put in a good word for Small Things Considered, by Moselio Schaechter and Merry Youle and guests over at http://schaechter.asmblog.org/ . (No affiliation.)
March 23rd, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Congratulations!! As a new reader – I have to say that reading your blog is one of the highlights of my internet time (which is plentiful). Keep up the good work!
March 23rd, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Congratulations! Duck sex for the win!
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Thanks everyone. I really appreciate it. And Brian, the announcement will change everything to the same extent that Ida did >:-)
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Woooohooooo! Congrats
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Years ago, as I hacked my way painfully through an article in Nature, I said to myself, “We really need someone to interpret this stuff for us”.
It seemed to me that, if one could assemble the right talent, he could produce a wonderful magazine just by re-writing the most interesting articles from science journals in a way that the general public could follow. Scientific American used to do something like that, before that horrible man wrecked it, and it has never been replaced. Then a few months ago, I stumbled upon your site, where you were doing exactly what I’d imagined and giving it away for free. I was astonished.
Thanks. I sincerely hope that you continue doing what you do so well, but I also think that, should you be so inclined, you have the kind of talent that would play well on a larger canvas.
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Well done! The best blog won. Congrats.
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Congratulations Ed! You have a superb blog!
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Totally deserved!
March 23rd, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Whoo for you!
This was the first science blog I subscribed to (found by google search). Congratulations!
March 23rd, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Fantastic news! I’ve been avidly hooked since finding your blog.
Now someone needs to come up with new prizes for you to win, since you’ve just pwned the blogging scene.
(:
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Rock on Yong! Your blog rules.
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Congratulations. You both should feel very proud. It is always awesome when you are recognized by your peers.
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Super Congratulations, Ed! I agree with the choice 100%.
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Congratulations! Well deserved.
March 24th, 2010 at 2:13 am
I couldn’t think of a more deserving blog. An absolute delight to wake up and read about duck sex in the morning, with a nice bowl of cereal! You’re the best.
March 24th, 2010 at 2:15 am
Agree with the panel. This is a really fantastic blog and one that I recommend to my students.
March 24th, 2010 at 4:03 am
Congratulations!! Truly well deserved, I was hoping you’d win. This blog is beyond brilliant, you really hit the nail on the head every time you and your passion and enthusiasm for the science you write about is infectious.
Thank you Ed, for being just so damn good at what you do
March 24th, 2010 at 4:36 am
Congratulations! Very well deserved! Thanks for your work!
March 24th, 2010 at 5:14 am
Good going Ed. You deserve it for you work-rate alone. Between your obviously well-researched blogs plus all the tweets, when do you sleep?
Now get back to work. I’m hungry for science.
March 24th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Congratulations, Ed! Even as someone who likes my science less, well, alive than most of your posts, I have to say that you do a fabulous job of making me read with great interest your wonderfully clear explanations of some really cool science. Plus, I will never look at ducks the same way again.
March 24th, 2010 at 7:03 am
Amazing news Ed! Well-deserved, and congratulations!
March 24th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Congratulations – well deserved. Your blog and Respectful Insolence are the only science blogs that I follow continuously.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Congrats! A very disappointing outpour of emotions though – you didn’t even thank Meryl Streep!
March 24th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
It’s an honor well deserved. Congrats!
March 24th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Congratulations, Ed! Very well deserved.
March 24th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Heh! Good on ya, mate! (as my dad might say). Well done.
March 25th, 2010 at 2:09 am
you wrote a post on how to sex ducks? Wait. Oh. Cheers!
March 26th, 2010 at 10:19 am
[...] join Discover from ScienceBlogs, fresh from a cool trio of wins at the Research Blogging Awards. I’m looking forward to my tenure here and I hope that you’ll stick around for more. I [...]
March 26th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Congratulations! You deserve it!
March 27th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Yes, this news is so big that it is worthy of partial use of my real name.
Congratulations, Ed – I know that anytime I come to NERS, I am going to be entertained and leave with a well-fed brain. Your writing is crystal-clear and engaging and you have a superb eye for scouring the literature for the most worthy peer-reviewed papers. And while I am somewhat saddened to see you depart ScienceBlogs, the cleaner format here will help my aging eyes become more comfortably enriched by your writing.
Oh, and thank you very much for invoking Terra Sig in your recommendations. We were honored – honoured, even – to be selected a finalist and congratulate our blog-father, Orac, on his win.
And not to harsh on Bora but I thought that you also deserved a fourth RB.org award for your Twitter stream. How you fit such content and personality into 140 characters amazes me.
Lastly, please pass along my gratitude to Alice for sharing your talent with us and tolerating your late nights at the computer. I’m very happy to see you posting a new photograph of her here (and one that isn’t adulterated by your ugly mug).
Well-deserved, my friend…ah yes, I knew Ed way back when…
April 4th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
[...] He’s also the research blogger of the year. [...]
April 19th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Congrats… this is Great news
July 7th, 2010 at 12:49 am
[...] Started, well, multiple times in various ways, the most recent instance thereof is superhero science blogger** Ed Yong resurrecting his own meme. ‘Cause you can do that when you’re [...]
October 18th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
wow!! congrats.
October 26th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
[...] some recent blog posts I’d come across on science writing and journalism. One is by Ed Yong, research blogger of the year (2010), entitled “The value of ‘this is cool’ science stories”. It references [...]