For my money (what little of it there is), good science communication starts with the familiar and gives it a twist. People connect with the familiar and are compelled by the twist. If you are doing it right, you don’t even have to bother telling people that you are educating them. Brian Switek gets it right in his article, “Why Margarita Can Purr, but Can’t Roar” for Wired: Continue reading “Good science writing makes me purr”
Tag: Science Communication
Faculty of 1000 going arXiv
In math and physics we have the arXiv, but nobody referees those papers. In biology and medicine, a board called the Faculty of 1000 chooses and evaluates the best papers, but there’s no archive: they get those papers from traditional journals.
Whoops—never mind! That was yesterday. Now the Faculty of 1000 has started an archive!
• Rebecca Lawrence, F1000 Research – join us and shape the future of scholarly communication, F1000, 30 January 2012.
I’m all for giving this a try, but I still have a hard time seeing how some type of arXiv thing would work in the life sciences, simply because the life sciences are so damn big. Life scientists in academic research make up more than one third of all academic scientists. There are more than twice as many academic life scientists as physical scientists, and more life scientists than all academic physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, chemists, and earth scientists combined. As far as I can tell by my anecdotal observations, life scientists publish many short papers, as opposed to fewer and longer papers, which is the norm in other fields.
My trip to Science Online 2012
Here is an incomplete list of my impressions:
- Jeremy Irons
- John Wayne
Sorry, wrong impressions list. Here we go now. My impressions from Science Online 2012:
- My friends from cyberspace are cool people and not Turing AI computers.
- The depth and complexity of online interactions in science communication means these individuals act the same online and off.
- It was pleasant to go to a conference that did not involve getting lectured at or deal with posturing competitors.
- The correct spelling of the Canadian pronunciation of “about” is ab00t[1]. Continue reading “My trip to Science Online 2012”
Carl Zimmer likes eBooks
Carl Zimmer is not just one of my favorite science writers, he’s also someone who is constantly experimenting with new ways to reach readers in the rapidly evolving online ecosystem. He’s got a short comment in Nature on eBooks (subscription required). What I find interesting is his enthusiasm for mini-books, or, if you’re a glass half-full kind of person, long-form essays (the writing of which is a rapidly disappearing art):
Continue reading “Carl Zimmer likes eBooks”
The Pipettes
Why did no one tell me there was a group called “The Pipettes”? Scientist need to know stuff like this. We find it funny. Because we don’t get out enough.
*I know what you are going to say about the pronunciation. My reply is “poTAto, potaTO, you’re wrong”.
The Finch and Pea 