Science Blogs

 
The latest issue of Cell has an opinion piece on science blogs by Laura Bonetta. Laure did her homework. She interviewd many of us and distilled the results into a pretty good summary of what science blogging is all about [Scientists Enter the Blogosphere].

I'm pleased that she quoted me on the trade-off between writing a blog and the amount of time it takes away from doing other things.

Moran, at age 60, is somewhat unique among bloggers. Most bloggers, regardless of what they write about, tend to be younger. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project more than half of all bloggers in the United States are under the age of 30. “Most of my colleagues think what I do is strange. Partly, that's because they are not into the technology. I happen to have grown up with the Internet and understand its culture,” says Moran. “I think the younger people who are blogging now are likely to be doing it when they are 60.”

The age barrier is not the only thing keeping more scientists from blogging. The biggest impediment is probably lack of time. According to most bloggers, posts can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to research and compose. That may not seem like much, except that a critical factor for a blog's success is that posts are updated frequently, ideally at least once a day. “If I ever stop doing this, it is because of time commitment,” says Moran.

This is an important point. I don't know how some of my blogger friends can keep on posting several things every day. It takes me hours to write up a scientific posting. I just can't do it every day.

On the other hand, it takes me only a few minutes to post an opinion piece. Perhaps that's why those postings are more common, even on science blogs. Here's the conundrum. Does a science blog need to have controversial opinion pieces in order to attract enough readers to make the science postings worthwhile? I think the answer is yes.