How Blogs Are Changing the Scientific Discourse

quax writes "Mainstream media always follows the same kind of 'He said, she said' template, which is why even climate change deniers get their say, although they are a tiny minority. The leading scientific journals, on the other hand, are expensive and behind pay-walls. But it turns out there are places on the web where you can follow science up close and personal: The many personal blogs written by scientists — and the conversation there is changing the very nature of scientific debate. From the article: 'It's interesting to contemplate how corrosive the arguments between Bohr and Einstein may have turned out, if they would have been conducted via blogs rather than in person. But it's not all bad. In the olden days, science could easily be mistaken for a bloodless intellectual game, but nobody could read through the hundreds of comments on Scott's blog that day and come away with that impression.'"

"climate change deniers"

[cascadingstylesheet]

"climate change deniers"?

Ah, where would we be if we couldn't put others down ... makes you feel good, huh?

Blogs != scientific discussion

[deleveld]

I don't agree with the premise. Yes we hear about the conflicts more than we used to because conflicts are what people tend to talk about. Modern media devotes attention to the disagreements, even when there are lots of agreements. There are serious considered discussions taking place, but you don't hear about them because modern media ignores them. I imagine that there are thousands of conversation every day but only 1% of them are vocal disagreements. Now fill all the blogs with that particular 1%. Many people would get the impression that its all disagreement and conflict. But that is simply not true in general. Blogs aren't changing scientific discourse. Blogs are pulling disagreements and conflicts on scientific topics into modern media.

Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

I figured there would be a backhanded comment directed at people that don't believe the climate change mantra. First sentence in! Surprised they didn't use the old standard statement of "those that don't believe the FACT of climate change". Then to say it's a small group that doesn't believe in it? Ah yes. The old "this is how it is, but don't research it, because then we will have to shout you down, cause that's how science works!"

Journals are failing

[beaker_72]

The peer review system for scientific journals is broken. It was supposed to ensure that only valid research which takes a field forward would actually get published. Techniques such as blind and double blind reviewing were supposed to help in ensuring that there was no bias towards specific researchers such as those who were considered to be leaders in the field. However what happens in practice is usually a long way from that ideal, vested interests and group think often result in new, fresh ideas not being published (older academics pulling up the ladder) and mutual back scratching is very common. Reviewing is rarely blind let alone double blind and so all the abuses those are supposed to prevent can (and do) take place. New approaches to publishing ideas and possibly even research results should be encouraged. Blogs are also far from ideal, but if it helps get ideas out to a wider audience then they're a step in the right direction.

Re:Ah, I see you're in denial about your denial.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you pull your head out of your ass, you'd realize a lot of climate denial comes from skepticism about their methods and as such, being unconvinced by their results. And a lot of us are actually probably more scientifically literate than you are.

Here's the part that probably would be a head fuck for you since you're so smug and think you're so smart. I think we need to find alternative energies and stop the reliance on fossil fuels, but not because of climate impact, but simply because it's going to run out.

And I claim that the "scientists" (and I use that term loosely, and I happen to be one of those "scientists", just in a different field, and know first hand how full of shit "scientists" typically are and how driven they are by money and ego and prestige and how they'd stab their own mother in the back just to get published, and how you have to toe the political line because failure to do so is suicide for your career, seriously, I have friends who left academia because they were sick of "whoring themselves out for a grant" and found industry to be a lot more pure and clean, and then reading through scientific journals constantly to find the 5% that's actually worth anything while, seriously, sifting through bullshit is such a large part of the job it's actually sort of amazing) methods are garbage. They've come to a pre-concieved notion, and now they're trying to find evidence that supports it. They don't have an accurate model, as is proven damn near every week, but they keep trying to cram the evidence into the model rather than maybe considering their model is wrong. That isn't science, that's religion. Also, maybe being more open with their raw data would be a help too. In most areas of science, if a researcher refuses to show their standard deviations, and refuse access to their raw data, they'd be considered two bit at the best and a fraud at the worst. In climate science, that's just SOP.