Science and its spam filter

Yesterday, I was part of a panel entitled ‘Blogs, Bloggers and Boundaries?’ at the Science Online conference. You can see an abstract for the panel over on Marie-Claire’s Shanahan’s blog (scroll down to second half of post).

My talk spoke in quite general terms about science and social boundaries. I did this using an analogy I’ve stolen from David Dobbs; a spam filter.

Cast your mind back to the ‘Great Arsenic Bug Saga of 2010’. If you can’t recall the details, I can recommend Ed Yong’s link-filled timeline of the story. In terms of the point I want to make, all you need to know is that some scientists criticised a paper by a team of NASA astrobiologists. Some of these critiques were voiced on blogs. When asked about the critique, a spokesperson from NASA was reported as saying ‘the agency doesn’t feel it is appropriate to debate the science using the media and bloggers’. Instead, they’d keep to ‘scientific publications’.

David Dobbs blogged about this statement from NASA, suggesting it was a call to ‘pre-Enlightenment thinking’. Later, he told the Guardian Science podcast:

I got a lot of reactions saying ‘you can’t just open this process to everyone or there’ll be a rabble, you’ll spend all your time arguing with anti-science people and so on’. Well, you’re trying to have a spam filter here, right? You’re trying to draw a circle within which trolls can’t come in and dominate the conversation. I guess to an extent that makes sense, but you don’t want to draw a circle that boxes out legitimate scientists like Rosie Redfield.

I love this analogy. In some respects, science has always had a spam filter. On one side there’s a commitment to free debate, on the other side there is frustration with those who are seen as at best time-wasting and at worst, mendacious. Science has always sought to break, or at least not be limited by, social boundaries. At the same time science has always needed these boundaries to, and benefited from them.

Another analogy which can help us think about this issue is that of a map. This one I’ve stolen from sociologist/ historian Thomas Gieryn. In his book The Cultural Boundaries of Science, he argues that rather there being one, singular essential criteria for what makes something scientific, this thing we call science is the consequence of many different declaration of boundaries which, over time, have helped define what science is and what it is not. To quote Gieryn in more lyrical mode:

Mount Science, located just above the town of Reason in the State of Knowledge, which is adjacent to the States of Fine Prospect and Improvement, across the Sea of Intemperance from the State of Plenty, all this on the other side of the Demarcation Mountains from the towns of Darkness, Crazyville, and Prejudice, and the islands of Deaf, Blind and Folly (Gieryn, 1999: 6. See also pages 8-9 for actual map)

A Gieryn stresses, this is ‘not idle play with Venn diagrams’ (Gieryn, 1999, 12). Just as a map provides a traveler with physical directions, such ‘cultural cartography’ for science is used as shorthand when faced with a range of practical decisions (e.g. do we get a flu vaccine; is a hybrid car worthwhile?). Modern society is rooted in the advantages of specialist knowledge. We can’t all be specialists in everything, so we have to rely on trust, something Gieryn’s metaphorical map aims to capture.

Gieryn talks about ‘boundary work’; the active process of producing symbolic boundaries which our location in cultural space. We all do this all the time, and it’s not always intentional, neither is it necessarily malign. Educational researcher Basil Bernstein also wrote about the importance of symbolic boundaries back in the 1970s: the positioning of furniture in a classroom to emphasise the authority of a teacher, curriculum divides between subjects, the use of language or cultural references which some children understand but may be lost on others (Bernstein talks about this in terms of social class and the perpetuation of social inequalities through education).

One of the things I like most about the cartographic approach is that maps articulate shared space as well as boundaries. I think it’s worth emphasising that community and exclusion can be  two sides of the same coin. Jargon and in-jokes are nice examples here.  Jargon can provide precision for those who understand, just as it confuses those who do not.  An in-joke makes you feel left out if you are on the outside of it, but can be a lovely expression of friendship if you understand it.  Most importantly though, in-jokes and jargon are good examples of types of boundaries we can put up without realising it.

Keeping to communities we already know is tempting. It’s sometimes said that the various long tails of online communication allow us to surround ourselves with people who agree with us: self-curated bubbles of cozy agreement. This can be useful. It lets us network with others who have similar tastes, interests or worries, allowing us to share skills and information, to build movements (see also my London Science Online talk on ‘the science vote’). Interaction in niche groups can also be rather limiting. In his great book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins compares this to ‘choosing to live in red states and blue states’ (yep, sorry, another geographical metaphor, Jenkins, 2006: 249). Jenkins goes on to argue that we tend to join web communities for recreational interests rather than political ones. So, by hanging out at, say, a knitting blog, you might engage in discussion with someone of a different political viewpoint from yourself, a different religious one, or cultural, generational, professional.

We might argue that the science is one of these recreational interests, and so still suffers from people opting in or out of it. I honestly don’t know how this effects science blog readership. I suspect it varies. I’d like to stress, however, that one of the great things about Gieryn’s cartographic approach is that it helps us view this thing we call ‘science’ as rather heterogeneous in itself. Science isn’t a bubble, it’s a field teeming with diversity.

Moreover, science in all its diversity looks at a load of different topics, in a load of different ways, for a load of different reasons, many of which will have some non-scientific link to peoples lives (or at least non-obviously-scientific link). Another term I can offer you from sociology/ history of science: ‘boundary objects’. This refers to items of shared space that several different groups can – simultaneously – use, spend time with, be attracted to, and find meaning in. Locating this sort of shared space is something I suspect a lot of science writers aim for, or at least science writers who want to draw new audiences into science. Star and Greisemer, who’s paper on Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology I take this term from, note the active work that often has to go into making something shareable. For example, they suggest libraries as an example of spaces built to deal with problems of heterogeneity: ordered piles, indexed in a standardized fashion so that people with a host of agendas can use or borrow from the pile for their own purposes without having to negotiate differences in purpose. Boundary objects do not always simply offer themselves nakedly, and I think that’s an important point.

Star and Greisemer also reflect on the problems of working in shared spaces. They refer to people who have feet in two cultures and stress that managing multiple identities can be volatile and confusing. Such people may resolve these problems by denying one side of their identity, oscillating between worlds, or by forming a new social world composed of others like themselves (Star & Giesemer, 1989: 411-412). None of this is easy.

Boundaries are an unavoidable part of social life. They are useful, and they are limiting. We need to be as clever as possible about them: to keep an open and enquiring mind about who might be on the other side of a boundary; to be careful of accidentally building them and inadvertently seeming standoffish or snobby. We all have spam filters, and we’ve all nearly missed some great email or blog comment because of them. The trick is to keep an eye on them.

Brain bloggers

I’m currently doing some research on brain bloggers. The first stage is a rather basic survey (below). This is open from today until Monday the 10th of January.

By ‘brain bloggers’ I mean bloggers who write about the stuff that goes in people’s heads, whatever we think this stuff is. Such bloggers might focus on neurology or psychology, or another field entirely. It might be the history, anthropology or commercial applications of these fields. It might come under ‘research blogging’, journalism, ‘public engagement’ or some form of political activism (or several of these at once, or something else entirely). This focus might be exclusively brain-y, or brain-ish issues might be topics they occasionally blog about in the course of other work.

I’m being deliberately vague here, hence words like ‘stuff’, so I can, as much as possible, get definitions from the results rather than my own initial prejudices. At this early exploratory stage, I’m also employing a ‘snowball’ method for finding people. I’ve emailed this survey to a few people, but have asked them to pass it on too, and thought it’d be worth pasting it up publicly too.

So, brainy bloggers, can you help a researcher out? Fill in the survey and/ or pass it on.

EDIT (30th Dec, 2010): I should provide a bit more context to the research. I should have done this earlier, and will email it out with other notes to all respondents I have address for after the cut off date of the 10th. I research science writing and science writers, and am interested in blogging as part of this. I think the brain and mind blogosphere(s) are potentially a really interesting case study (as much as blogosphere works as a meaningful term…). The idea of this survey is to get a better feel for the area than I can on my own. I eventually want to do a small number of more detailed interviews with bloggers (probably over Skype). The survey will frame this, but any research papers emerging from the project may mention some details from the survey itself, especially as I have been getting such a great response. Please do ask if you have any other questions: brainblogging@gmail.com.

EDIT (13th May, 2011): update here.

——-

Please email responses to brainblogging@gmail.com. You are welcome to post your response openly to your blog if you want, though please send me the link.

Please feel free to leave any blank if you feel the question is intrusive or you simply don’t have anything to say on the subject. This will not invalidate the response.

If you want to answer a particular question anonymously, please note that next to the answer (otherwise it may be quoted next to your blog’s name).

Your answers can be as long or as short as you like and may contain URLs if you feel you have answered a similar question elsewhere.

Blog URL:

What do you blog about?

Do you feel as if you fit into any particular community, network or genre if science blogging? (e.g. neuroscience, bad science, ex-sbling)

If so, what does that community give you?

Are you paid to blog?

What do you do professionally (other than blog)?

How long have you been blogging at this site?

Have/ do you blogged elsewhere? When? Where?

Would you describe yourself as a scientist, or as a member of the scientific community? Do you have any formal/ informal training in science? (if so, what area?)

Do you have any formal training in journalism, science communication, or similar?

Do you write in other platforms? (e.g. in a print magazine?)

Can you remember why you started blogging?

What keeps you blogging?

Do you have any idea of the size or character if your audience? How?

What’s your attitude to/ relationship with people who comment on your blog?

What do you think are the advantages of blogging? What are its disadvantages/ limitations?

Do you tell people you know offline that you’re a blogger? (e.g. your grandmother, your boss)

Is there anything else you want to tell me about I haven’t asked?

The nerds are on the march

A version of this post initially appeared on the Times’ Eureka blog

The ballad of Simon Singh and his altercation with the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has been told many times before (for example). What I want to focus on here is the way the case inspired scientists, skeptics and bloggers to become involved in a movement to change the law. Or, to put it another way, how libel reform ‘got its geek on’.

Why was it that, sitting in the pub last April, when someone joked about the idea of a calendar of geeks, the first response was “yep, it could raise money for libel!” When did libel reform become the charity of choice for UK science?

The BCA vs Singh case provided a clarion call for those who care about science to start worrying about libel. As Singh himself notes in Greg Foots’ great video, this is not the only time someone’s found talking about science can lands them in court. Indeed, a new story about Peter Wilmshurst broke just after I sent this to the Times.

In many ways, the English libel laws go against a certain ideal of science: a need for free and open debate. It is an ideal shared by much of journalism. In the words of the Times science reporter Hannah Devlin: “English libel laws are undermining the basic tenants of science: that there isn’t any question you can’t ask and there isn’t any hypothesis that can’t be challenged. It is important that we can do these things in journalism as well as in the practise of science”.

Perhaps then, it is no surprise that scientists and science writers are so worried about the issue. Groups such as Sense About Science and the Association of British Science Writers joined the campaign, the latter organising a debate about science journalism and libel law at City University last year (watch the video). Events like this helped promote feelings many in science and science writing felt already, got them talking to one another and helped to foster a sense of a movement.

There was also the work of intersecting ‘geek’ communities of skeptics and bloggers, both with their own history of commitment to ideals of free debate. As Ben Goldacre wrote last April, the scale of online activism during the BCA vs Singh case, often from skeptics,  was “unprecedented”, a point echoed by Nick Cohen, proclaiming after a visit to a skeptics meeting that “the nerds are on the march”. Still, as David Allen Green says, we should maintain perspective. We shouldn’t reduce the story of BCA vs Singh to simply a triumph of the geeks, many other characters, groups and events played their role too.

For me, the key point is the way the libel reform movement has folded into the relationship between science and politics. In the run up to the 2010 election, it was noticeable how libel reform was often packaged alongside science issues. So much so, that when the Guardian asked each of the main parties questions relating to the ‘science vote’, they included libel but not education. That the Guardian should suffer what might be seen as somewhat of a lack of perspective here is testament to how important the cause has become to the UK scientific community.

When that pub idea of a Geek Calendar somehow became real and we held a photoshoot with Evan Harris in quad of the British Medical Association, he echoed the same comments he made in judging the Times’ Eureka 100, declaring Singh his “geek hero”. As Harris put it, Singh’s case has not only “turned geeks on to libel reform”, his articulate handling of the events has helped cultivate political expression in the UK scientific community. Indeed, Singh spoke alongside Harris at the recent Science is Vital rally.

That may be one of the legacies of ‘geekifying’ the libel reform movement. It is not just that scientists, technophiles and skeptics played a role in lobbying for change in the law, but that the campaign itself has played a role in the broader politicisation of UK science. Crucially, the libel reform movement demonstrates a politicisation of science that cares deeply about their work relates to the world outside the laboratory, and are ready to work with a range of people and institutions in trying to achieve its aims.

A lot has been made of what geeks have done for libel reform. Maybe in years to come we’ll also think of what libel reform gave the geeks. Either way, there’s still some distance to go yet.

Do sign the libel reform petition. You can also buy a Geek Calendar online (or, for a limited time, at the Wellcome Collection bookshop).

A brief postscript on nomenclature: I’ve never really liked the word geek. I find it a bit affectatious. Still, it captures a range of characters well enough and many do self-identify using the term. As I tried to say in the Guardian last week, the recent ‘reclaiming’ of geek and nerd perhaps reflects a sense of 21st century celebration of niche interests, something I think is probably a good thing, or at least an inevitable part of social life in late modernity.

Anti-quackery underpants

Something ticked off the lifetime to-do list: I have managed to get the words “anti-quackery underpants” into a scholarly publication. An encyclopedia. This encyclopedia. It’s page 586 of volume two, if you’re interested, part of the entry on Popular Science Media.

It’s these underpants I’m referring to; the ones sold via badscience.net. I noticed recently that SciCurious has just gone into merchandise too, including underwear. This is just a funny and recent example, my broader point is that the popularisation of science exists across a range of platforms and is something (at least some) people like to buy.

The term “popular science” is a bit weird. We might take it quite strictly as a category of contemporary bookselling (i.e. the sign above Dawkins and Hawkin at Waterstone’s), but historically the term means a lot more than that. It has a sometimes uncomfortable relationship with both scholarly and popular media, and in a way, is quite explicitly neither. As such, it can be quite slippery to pin down, but as I attempt to define it in the encyclopedia entry, popular science is:

science to be consumed in our free time, largely for personal rather than professional reasons. It is science for fun: to experience the wonders of nature, learn more about an issue which is important to you, on a friend’s recommendation, or simply because a piece of promotional material caught your eye.

The underpants example help demonstrate the way in which popular science may exist on a range of media platforms, but also how inter-connected popular science media is. It spins-off from one format to another (and has done for centuries): blog to book, magazine to blog, museum to magazine, book to toy, live show to toy, toy to museum, museum to book, documentary to live show, book to documentary, documentary to book, live show to book, book to blog, blog to underpants.

I also wanted to use the underpants to emphasise that popular science as something audiences enthusiastically buy into. People queue round the block for science, they sell out the Royal Albert Hall, they sign petitions because of it. Ok, so we might argue that it’s still a very limited group that do such queuing/ buying/ signing, but science has its fans. Again, this has been going on for centuries. I think this is important to remember this. Scholars in the field often conceive of popular science as if it exists largely to let science show off; that it only invites non-scientists to play so as to reinforce a boundary between those clever professional scientists and everyone else. Read thus, one would wonder why the audiences of popular science would bother. And they clearly do bother. And they come back, again and again. And they buy branded pants (and calendars – the weridos). We might argue that popular science does still patronise it’s audience through it’s very existence, but audiences seem to feel they are getting something out of it too

(For the academically minded, I’m referring to the slight difference between Hilgartner’s take on the subject and Fyfe and Lightman‘s. Personally I both apply and take some scepticism to each of those approaches, and in addition like to fold in Bourdieu’s approach to cultural consumption).

My encyclopedia entry is nothing especially profound. It’s a basic primer. If you are interested in the topic, the entry’s list of recommended readings includes:

• Fyfe, A. & Lightman, B. (eds) (2007) Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
• Gregory, J. & Miller, S. (1998) Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility. New York & London: Plenum. Chapter six.
• Hilgartner, S. (1990) ‘The Dominant View of Popularization: Conceptual Problems, Political Uses“, Social Studies of Science, vol. 20(3): 519-539.
• Leane, E. (2007) Reading Popular Physics: Disciplinary Skirmishes and Textual Strategies. Hampshire: Ashgate.

I also wrote the Communicating Science to Children entry. Obviously, everyone should read that too because <irony> it’s seminal stuff </irony> but I’m aware this encyclopedia is a couple of hundred quid (it’s very much a publication for libraries). I have a paper from 2008 on a similar topic you can download for free (pdf).

The piece on children doesn’t mention underpants, though you can read my blogpost on poo and kids’ books or purchase pro-MMR bibs along with the anti-quack pants from the Bad Science store.

Science blogs (Eureka)

Hidden behind the fuss over the Science 100 in last week’s Times Eureka magazine, I picked six science blogs for them. I thought it was worth re-posting it here, with a couple of added notes.

• Mind Hacks. Thoughtful critique of neuroscience issues, plus various brain-themed cultural detritus Vaughan’s found down the back of the internet.

• SciCurious. Another in the army of brain-bloggers. The 3rd person style isn’t for everyone, but Sci’s funny, clever and writes with irreverent curiosity.

Along with Mindhacks and SciCurious, I could easily added Neuroanthropology, Neuron Culture, The Frontal Cortex, Neurophilosophy and Neurotribes in this “army”. I wasn’t really that into neuroscience (and associated fields) until recently, but this community of imaginative, thoughtful and skilled writers has pulled me in.

• Gimpyblog’s posterous. I don’t always agree with Gimpy, but his posterous notes are generally thought provoking, always well written and often make me laugh.

I picked the posterous over the blog because he writes more about policy and media there, which I’m personally more interested in. But it’s worth noting the freshness of the posterous posts too. I could say similar about Ben Goldacre –  his posterous can be a lot more interesting than the polished columns on his blog. Ben headlines the posterous as things “not clever enough” for his main blog, but there is something about seeing clever-ness in action (even when it means the author’s got something slightly wrong).

• Exquisite Life. ­ One for UK science policy anoraks, from Research Fortnight. I especially enjoy their annotated versions of political speeches. Is gradually building community of commenters.

On the point about commenters, I really wish the Royal Society policy blog had a comment button. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a desire to comment there myself (which might say something about the style of writing) but it’d be nice to know I could if I wanted to, and I’m sure they’d get some authoritative and interesting commentators. Comment spaces are also an opportunity for readers to talk to each other, reflecting blogging as a dynamic and broad discussion. It’s kind of sad the RS blogs don’t have them.

• Wellome Library. I love science blogs for the same reason I love libraries: ­ piles of interconnected knowledge just inviting you get lost within. Visit this blog, but visit the library too.

I really like the idea of libraries blogging. I wish more did. I’d love to see some less polished blogging – “ooo we just found this”, or “a visitor’s reading this” as well as the more essayistic pieces (perhaps using twitter or posterous, or just working more loosely on a standard blog platform). I’d also like to underline how wonderful the Wellcome Library as a place and a blog is. Really, can’t recommend it enough.

• Not So Humble Pie. A cooking blog, but one that is famous for its science-themed cookies, I added this as an example of how science pops up across the blogosphere (see also).

I should stress this isn’t a list of “top” science blogs, it’s a list of  blogs I put together as a group to share with Eureka readers. For example, I’ve missed The Bubble Chamber, Laelaps, Atlantic Tech, Soft Machines, Wonderland, STS Observatory, The Guardian’s Notes and Theories, the Times’ Eureka Daily and Not Exactly Rocket Science (and that’s just tip of the iceberg…).

Miracle Mineral Solution

If you keep an eye on the UK skeptic media you will have probably already heard the story of 15 year old Rhys Morgan and Miracle Mineral Solution (“Bleachgate”). If not, let me share it with you.

Crohn’s disease is horrible. Being a teenager is horrible. Have a read through The National Association for Colitis and Crohn’s Disease pages for 16-29 year olds to get an idea of what it’s like when both happen at once. Welsh teenager Rhys Morgan was diagnosed with Crohn’s a few months ago. He did what a lot of people with similar conditions do and joined some online support groups.

It’s probably worth repeating that Crohn’s is horrible. I should also stress that it’s a complex and unpredictable condition, the details of which medical science is still unraveling. Such support groups are not only an emotional support, but can be great for sharing information, knowledge and experience. They can also be ways of spreading things that aren’t so helpful, and they can emotionally difficult places too (I can recommend this book for some discussion of issues surrounding this).

Rhys was sceptical of one of the treatment being pushed on a forum, something called “Miracle Mineral Solution”. Very sensibly he did a bit of digging, and sound found that the FDA describes it as industrial bleach. Rhys shared his concerns with the forum, and a whole story of internet community nastiness followed. Watch Rhys’ videoblog for the full story, as he tells it himself so well (or see transcript on his blog).

When the story first broke about a month ago, it was covered extensively by skeptics bloggers, but no where else much. This week, there was an overview of the story in the Guardian, via a column by skeptic-blogger Martin Robbins. It’s great that Martin’s connection there gets the story into such a high profile site (and, as Paul Bradshaw says, it’d be good if lots of people link to Robbins’ piece with the words Miracle Mineral Solution…). Still, I’d have loved to see it covered by, for example, reporters on education or health beats too. Not just for the extension of coverage, but because I think it’s worth reflecting on the story from more than just a skeptic perspective.

There has been a move in recent years to make UK science education more about public engagement, designing curricula that not only train the next generation of scientists, but equip young people to use and critique claims to scientific authority as part of their everyday lives (see this GCSE for example). However, a lot of this sort of work seems to see the process as preparation for later life, as if active engagement is something adults too whereas kids are simply passive. Similarly, I’ve heard activists in young peoples’ health complain that under 18s are too often seen as “human becomings” rather than “human beings” when it comes to medicine; that teens are simply taught how to prepare for a healthy adult lives as if they have little role in their current existence.

I can see why people have been celebrating and supporting Rhys on this issue, but he’s not the only teenager to take such a sensible and active role when it comes to their health (e.g. the trustee of Body and Soul featured in this podcast). I suspect a lot of young people hope to get the best possible information about health; that they will spend time looking for such information and will be sceptical about what they find. Also that the care that others get good information too, and so share it about, and that they will get into fights with other young people and adults while they do so.

That’s why, for me the tale of Rhys Morgan and Miracle Mineral Solution isn’t just a story for or about skeptics. It’s a genuinely interesting, concerning and illuminating story of inter-generational health communication in a digital age, and one I’d have love to see talked about more.

EDIT: 19/9/10 changed reference to Martin’s piece in Guardian which was initially down as a blogpost rather than a column. See my comment on Paul’s blogpost for context. Also, look – the story has been picked up by a Kenyan newspaper and on the PLoS blogs.

Taking science journalism “upstream”

Today I spoke at Science Online London as part of a plenary panel session curated by David Dobbs and also featuring Martin Robbins and Ed Yong on “Rebooting” (aka the future of) science journalism. This is the typed-up version of my talk, along with links and extra bits of context.

As the academic on the panel (not to mention the only one that isn’t, shhhh, in any way a journalist) I thought I’d focus on an idea: an invite to take things “upstream”.

That probably sounds dirtier than it should.

The term “upstream” is (a) a metaphor and (b) jargon. Both of which I apologise for. The concept has been incredibly influential in the engagement end of science communication work. Science communicators use it all the time, they even tell each other off when they’re “not upstream enough”. But has never really carried through to journalism.

In essence, it’s an argument for showing more of science in the making, not just waiting for publication of “ready-made” peer-reviewed papers.

Imagine science as a river.  Upstream, we have the early stages of communication about some area of science: meetings, literature reviews or general lab gossip. Gradually these ideas are worked through, and the communicative output flows downstream towards the peer-reviewed and published journal article and perhaps, via a press release and maybe even a press conference, some mass media reporting. Let’s not get too carried away with this metaphor though, or we’ll just end up with boring stories about scientists going rafting (it also relies on what is, arguably, an over-linear model of science, but that’s a whole other argument).

The term “upstream engagement” has various antecedents, but really stems from a (2004) report from think-tank Demos, See Through Science, by James Wilsdon and Rebbecca Willis. They argued that science communication initiatives had become over-dominated by questions of risk, which they felt, was too late in the process. The March 2006 POST note (pdf) provides a good example of the difference between early and late (upstream and downstream) engagement, drawing on reactions to GMOs. It refers to a 1994 consensus conference funded by the BBSRC and held at the Science Museum anticipated issues surrounding genetic modification (GM) of plants and involved publics at an early stage. In comparison, they argue that the 2003 GM Nation project, although government-funded and promised to take up recommendations, it was “too little, too late” (POST, 2006: 2). GM Nation asked people to respond to what had been delivered to them, whereas the 1994 event had given people access and, simply, insight into what might be delivered.

Wilsdon and Willis were heavily influenced by Stephen Hilgartner’s (2000) book about US science policy, Science on Stage, and echoing this they have a lot of fun with theatrical metaphors:

The task of upstream engagement is to remove some of the structures that divide the back-stage from the front-stage. It seeks to make visible the invisible, to expose to public scrutiny the values, visions and assumptions that usually lie hidden. In the theatre of science and technology, the time has come to dismantle the proscenium arch and begin performing in the round (Wilsdon & Willis, 2004: 24)

I should note, the idea has its critics, e.g. Dick Taverne’s letter to Nature or, somewhat more thoughtfully, William Cullerne Bown. Still, these are exceptions. Listening to some of David Willetts’ statements on public engagement, I suspect he is a fan of working upstream (or is at least has been briefed by someone who read that POSTnote).

Perhaps it’s not a surprise that journalists haven’t really taken it up though. The idea of upstream engagement is to fix problems in the relationships between science and society. The government like this, clearly, so write POSTnotes and fund things like ScienceWise, but it’s not the business of journalism to deal with it. They just want to sell papers. They have their own rules to play with (c.f. Andy Williams’ reference to news values in the recent Times Higher piece on science writing).

But I think upstream science journalism offers something sell-able. It’s based on theatre after all. It swaps that cliché of “scientists have found” for “scientists are doing”. It focuses on “scientists find interesting”, “scientists wonder” or “scientists are excited by”. Actually, I’d hope it looses the sloppy generalisation of “scientists” and instead introduce researchers with rather less anonymity. That’s part of the point. It lets the audience look science right in the eye and see it in all its glory (beauty and wonder; warts and all).

I suspect people are waiting to respond with the criticism that it is irresponsible to report work that isn’t peer-reviewed (ooo and here it is – ta Evan).  Although I have sympathy this issue, I’d also say it’s a lazy stick with which beat science journalists with, not to mention somewhat supportive of the publishing industry. But upstream science journalism can be done responsibly, and without tripping over patents or embargoes. Remember, the focus is more on the people, their ideas, worries and enthusiasms, not the results. Moreover, I  still want a place for “downstream” science reporting. The publication of a major paper is a news event worth covering. I’m not dismissing a creative, articulate, probing and context-bringing write-up of peer-reviewed research in the slightest. Done well, it can be a beautiful and important thing. There is also, I think, a lot to be said for what we might call “really, really far downstream” reporting: maybe we need more about what happens to science after publication. Science journalism should follow scientists all the way through society (yes, that is a Latour reference and yes I have read Amsterdamska’s review).

I also think science journalism would be served well by taking itself upstream, not only working to show how science is made, but making its own workings more visible too. Upstream engagement was, after all, designed to deal with a crisis in trust. Perhaps a bit more upstream communication would help  science journalists to gain trust from their audiences, and from the scientific community. This would include openness, but also involving their audiences (upstream, and meaningfully, not only letting them comment at the end of the process).

I don’t think this call to move upstream offers something drastically new. I use it as a nice phrase to, I hope, encourage and focus attention in this area. I think it is already being done, and new media is making more feasible (and showing there is a market for). As Vincent Kiernan argued during last year’s WCSJ’s fight over embargoes, new media mitigates against what John Rennie called “Big paper of the week syndrome”, the reliance on cycles of “pseudo-news” about what happens to have been published in one of the larger journals (see also the embargowatch blog for fascinating tracking of these tensions).

My favourite example has to be this video of the ICHEP conference hosted on the Guardian. I’ve also noticed recently that Times health correspondent David Rose uses twitter not just to post links to finished pieces, but as news comes in. It’s also worth mentioning the interactive way Mark Henderson has used his twitter account in conjunction with the Times’ Eureka blog (especially during the election), as well as others who favour the “DVD extras” approach to blogging alongside traditional journalism. Further, the Guardian’s science storytracker gives insight into the evolution of a story, and it was interesting to see the the Guardian’s health team use their Datastore during the death rates investigation. In terms of “really far downstream” (in a good way) science journalism, I think Gaia Vince’s blog is a nice example.

This death rates points us towards a possible pitfall: Ben Goldacre’s criticism of their stats, and more to the point, that such open data needs to come with “open methodology” too. As I said at the time, however, precisely because it is so complex, an approach which is iteratively discursive (rather than momentarily confrontational) is perhaps the most likely to succeed. There are also, in the business of journalism, matters of competition to be remembered: the worry of being scooped (perhaps beautifully demonstrated by this story). As with be careful of embargoes and patents (competition issues in science), I think it’s a matter of being careful, being clever and being imaginative. Maybe the tweeting of political journalists during the election is a nice example?

This sort of upstream work can be pretty niche. A nice example of that being exchange between Evan Harris and Jon Butterworth over “if” you wanted to know about supersymmetry. But that’s why it can work online, because you can find those niche markets (e.g. first comment on Jon’s post). We might similarly argue that it doesn’t provide news, but again the web might be of here, as people come to content at different times and through a range of routes: I think blogging has already started to blur boundaries between feature and news piece when it comes to science writing.

The niche point does, however, point us towards the best argument against upstream science journalism: that it’d would be boring. Maybe that scientists go rafting feature was a bit dull. But people write dull pieces based on research papers all the time. If a science journalist thinks scientists at work is boring, then I think they are in the wrong job. Similarly, if they think the ideas and knowledge of their readers is boring, I suspect they’re increasingly find they are in the wrong job.

I don’t think moving science journalism upstream will solve all its problems. Neither do I think the concept offers something drastically new: it’s already happening. Still, thinking about upstream as a one of the many possible new forms for science journalism might focus attention in a fruitful direction. Or maybe it’s a ridiculous mis-application of what is a slightly aging and rather self-indulgent idea in the first place. Tell me your thoughts.

EDIT (September 2010): You can see a video of the session.

EDIT (March 2011): I have been amazed by the way the online science writing community have taken to this – e.g. a mention in David Rowan’s speech on How to Save Science Journalism and, especially, the the newly launched PLoS blog Science Upstream.

Should fans get a life? (or tell us a lot about public engagement?)

I have a guest post over at Matthew Nisbet’s new Age of Engagement.

The blog had featured a post about modern fan culture and marketing. I couldn’t help but fold this into some thoughts on science communication. Can an awareness of tensions and connections between fan culture and entertainment marketing have applications for work aiming to connect members of “the public” with scientific ideas and communities? I left a comment and Nisbet asked me to expand as a post.

It’s something I’ve thought about a bit over the last few years. I discussed the notion of a rhetorical reference to a community of readers in my PhD, and discussed audience-to-audience interaction with students when teaching courses on science online and science’s interactions with fiction. I also wrote an article a couple of years back about branding and children’s literature which involved some study of social marketing. I should admit the blogpost was slightly hastily put together though, grabbing through some disparate ideas on something that there probably should be more research into. There’s a load more I could say around the topic, I’m still working out how to put them together, and what would make the right case study. I’d love to hear further thoughts (or examples, from science and/ or fan culture), either here of over at the Big Think post itself.

Nisbet’s been blogging about science communication for a while. His ‘Framing Science’ at scienceblogs is mentioned in my list of blog recommendations for prospective students last month). His new blog promises to maintain this interest, but take a broader look at communication, culture and public affairs, as well as reinvigorate his interest in the relationship between science and religion (see his introductory post for more details).

He’s been setting up in his new home with a prestigious quantity of posts for the start of term. I’ve already been interested to read pieces reflecting upon the NYTimes article about peer review, and (re)framings of nuclear power. The Big Think site it is hosted on is sometimes known as the YouTube for ideas, and there are a fair number of videos in blogposts (which I’d say is a good thing, something and plan to experiment with myself in the next year).

So, go read my ramblings on fan culture and public engagement, let me know if you have any thoughts, and do add Nisbet’s new blog to your list of regular reads.

Blogs a science communication student might like

A colleague asked me for a list of blogs that next year’s science communication MSc students might like to read. I figured the only way to share this information was in a blogpost.

Warning: there is no such thing as a reading list of science blogs, you need to explore for yourself. These are just starting points.

• If there’s a hot new biology story, you can bet Ed Yong will have a thorough and humour-filled post over a Not Exactly Rocket Science. He also regularly writes about issues in science and (new) media too, and his recent thread on the origin of science writers should be of particular interest to science communication students.
• Another blog everyone recommends (and I’m just going to agree) is Mindhacks. A very joyful neuro/psychology themed read, great for sending you to some of the more interesting ends of the internet.
• Two notable science writer bloggers currently developing personal sites after the recent mass-exodus from scienceblogs.com are Brian Switek and David Dobbs. Carl Zimmer’s post on the scienceblogs diaspora contains a feast of links to more great writers once of this network (Zimmer’s blog is worth a mention in itself too).
• I expect my prospective students to already know Bad Science, and I can also recommend his posterous account. The phenomenon of “bad science” blogging is bigger than Ben Goldacre though, two blogs in particular I’d recommend because they often write about science in the media are Lay Science and Gimpyblog (most of the media discussion goes on his posterous account).
• Fiona Fox of the Science Media Center doesn’t blog very often, but when she does, everyone talks about it. On a similar note, Natasha Loder’s blog is worth a look, as is Framing Science, from American science communication academic, Matthew Nisbet. Real science media nerds might also like Ivan Oransky’s embargowatch.
• The Times & Guardian both have good (though very different) science blogs, note the former now has an “entrance fee”. I really like Nature’s the Great Beyond, and it is worth keeping track of New Scientist’s range of blogs.
• The Science Museum’s collections department has a nice blog, as does the Wellcome Trust. (and the Wellcome Library, and the Wellcome Collection…).
• Research Fortnight’s Exquisite Life is a must for following UK science policy. It is also worth having a look at the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Blog and the Campaign for Science and Engineering. The Royal Society policy team have just started a blog too, which (I hope) will be worth watching.

Twitter is a good way of engaging with the science blogosphere. My “awesome science” list of people who write and/ or link to great science writing on the web should be a useful starting point. Twitter is also brilliant for discussing/ eavesdropping on debates about science in the media and policy, so I can recommend people on my science policy and science communication lists too. Please note, many of these accounts will tweet about other things too.

These links are really just the tip of the iceberg. Or, a small section of a big chunk of ice, as I’m not sure something iceberg-shaped is the appropriate metaphor. I should also add that I don’t agree with everything these people blog/ tweet about. Not even close. They do, however, tend to write about topics a science communication student might be interested in. At the very least, they’ll point you towards some new ideas and make you think.

Click on a few links here and see who they link to. See what entertains, educates or enrages you. Go, have a play.

Science on teh internets: an interview with Drs Mendel & Riesch

Having run a series of short interviews with UK-based science bloggers, I’ve also talked to a couple of colleagues who are developing research on the ‘bad science’ blogging community.

Jon Mendel is a geographer at Dundee with a background in studying networks, virtual war and security. Interested in how new media are functioning or not functioning in the case of science blogs and in the role and efficacy of networked forms here.

Hauke Riesch researches public understanding/engagement/involvement/awareness/whatever of science and risk at Cambridge, having previously written a PhD on philosophy in popular science books. Among other things. Next to everything social to do with risk and new technologies, he is interested in how scientists think about science, how they communicate it, and how they think about communicating it.

Firstly, can you give us some idea of the methodology you applied to your study?

We drew on our participation in and observation of the development of this community, from its establishment through to some of the interesting activism episodes in which the community participated.

We used an e-mail qualitative survey: we emailed a list of questions to established members of the community on their blogging activities and their thoughts about science blogging in general and this community in particular.

The paper you presented at the Science and Public conference started by noting there is a lot of hope surrounding science blogging – what do you think those hopes are?

Blogging in general has attracted a lot of hope about how it can democratise the public sphere: anyone can in principle get themselves and their ideas heard and the small army of potential fact-checkers and arguers can shed light on issues where we would previously have relied on a small and overworked group of professional journalists. However there may be barriers inherent within the very concept of blogging that prevent this – there is just so much out there that important contributions can easily be drowned out. These goals are quite neatly summarised and evaluated by Sunstein who concludes that they have not been realised at least to the extent that had been hoped.

In the context of blogging about science, similar hopes are often expressed: some argue that blogging can give individual scientists a voice for their views and opinions and therefore enable them to contribute directly to the national conversations about science and science policy. Related to that, science blogging is often seen as a way for scientists to free themselves from demands of publishers or journalists and others who usually control the flow of information between science and public, so that they can communicate their science directly to the public and allow the public to engage more easily with them. These ideas are also often linked to the free-access movement: Scientists are encouraged to blog directly about their science because ultimately the public pays for it and has a right to know about what science finds. Science blogging does give more people an outlet to write about science – allowing lots of good material to be placed online, though also lots which is less good.

The science bloggers with whom we have discussed our research are also interested in science blogging as offering opportunities for activism, engagement and the development of communities. Bloggers are seeking to use science blogging to engage with and challenge the main-stream media and various other actors.

What do you think are the limitations of these hopes?

As has been noted by some of the bloggers in this community, blogs have relatively small audiences compared to many mainstream media outlets. Blogs can also be left communicating with a relatively narrow audience, such as those already highly interested in science (although whether this is a problem is debatable: Racing Post isn’t seen as a failure because of its relatively narrow audience). As things stand, we do not see convincing evidence that science blogs offer a replacement for the mainstream media – although they can be a useful supplement, partner and challenge to it (and some of the bloggers in this community would challenge the distinction between blogs and the mainstream media). Talk of the ‘dead tree press’ etc. seems, in this context, highly premature.

The efficacy of science blogs’ activism is also unclear. Bloggers have been involved in some notable successes – for example, the Singh-BCA libel case – and have been able to organise effectively in order to offer strong challenges to much better-resourced opponents. On the other hand, some have questioned whether initiatives such as #scivote have been effective (and there are interesting links here between ‘science activism’ and people’s broader political goals – some people are less than happy about having the Conservatives in government). We tried to intervene ourselves with regards to aspects of BIS’s Science: So What? So Everything initiative (see e.g. coverage in Times Higher and a piece on the Times’ science blog) but we now have FOIA responses which show how little impact academics and bloggers had with regards to some problematic aspects of the campaign. We are not sure what solutions there might be here.

We should emphasise that there is a fairly high degree of self-reflection in the community we studied and that bloggers are often quite critical themselves about the limitations of certain practices. We would want to avoid judging the successes/failures of this community in relation to overly-utopian hopes largely generated from outside of the community: there have been some notable achievements, although a small community of science bloggers seems unlikely to turn the science media into a ‘dead tree press’ in the immediate future.

Can you tell us a bit about who the sorts of people who blog about science are, or at least what the backgrounds and motivations of the bloggers you studied are?

We lack the knowledge to answer about people who blog about science generally: this is a large area that we haven’t studied in enough depth, and many prominent bloggers are also anonymous. There is generally something of a lack of research on science blogs.

The community we studied has established norms on writing about science which emphasise accuracy, reliance on evidence and ‘letting the facts speak for themselves’. In addition, there is a focus on getting things done: science blogging within the community is not just about writing, but also about campaigning on related causes – this activist element may be a distinguishing feature of this community of science bloggers. There is also an interesting approach to ideas of authority here: ideas of individual authority are largely rejected, but writing instead takes on a
kind of authority through being embedded in a network of blogs, comments, links and research.

Sneaky extra question I asked all the bloggers I interviewed: do you have a favourite blog? If so, what is it? (doesn’t have to be a science one).

Mindhacks is excellent for its discussion of a broad range of mind/brain/society-related issues, while Jack of Kent’s blog has been a very interesting piece of activism and is an excellent explanation of complex legal issues for laypersons. David Campbell’s blog has some good, detailed discussion of issues around politics, geography and multimedia (including some excellent essays on new media/social media). It has also been great to see the development of the ‘bad science’ blogging community and of the blogs associated with it.