To blog or not to blog

Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016

To blog or not to blog

Christie Wilcox

What does a budding scientist, science communicator, or science writer have to gain from writing about science on the Internet? What are the benefits of getting started in social media? Popular blogger Christie Wilcox of Discover Magazine Blogs takes you through the many reasons why you, yes you, should start communicating about science on the Internet.

You picked up this book, so you must be at least a little curious about starting a science blog. Or maybe you already have one but could use a little validation. You want to know why you should write a science blog. After all, aren’t there a million blogs out there?1 Isn’t the Internet bursting at the seams already? Why should you, a busy academic/scientist/journalist/writer/public information officer/insert-your-title-here take the time to write online (especially if it’s unpaid at first)? Why should you bother with this often-maligned medium, when there are journal articles or features to be written? Really—why should you, of all people in the world, be blogging?

While I can share my personal experiences and give you a hundred reasons to blog, ultimately they boil down to two philosophical principles: altruism and narcissism. If you ultimately decide to blog, it will be either for yourself, for the good of others, or a bit of both.

Make the world better for science: The altruistic view

If you like to think of yourself as a giving person, then blogging is definitely right up your alley. What better way to share your passion and love of science with the rest of the world? And the truth is, the rest of the world needs it.

Now, more than ever, science is fundamentally intertwined with national and international political issues. Our climate is changing. Animals and plants are going extinct at an alarming rate. Life-saving technologies like vaccines are denigrated and misrepresented. Every day technologies advance in ways that are rarely explained well to the rest of society. To make informed decisions on a wide range of political issues, the people of the world need to understand the science behind the most hotly debated topics. But to do that, they need interpreters who speak the lingo, who can take jargon-filled research and put it into terms that anyone can understand.

Nowhere is this more true than in the United States, where former Senate majority leader Trent Lott can call his four years of science and math in high school “a waste of my time and a waste of my teachers’ time” and receive roaring applause.2 The only way to change the negative attitude toward science is to show people why they should care. To do that, we have to show people how incredible, important, and intriguing science really is.

But you already know that. You’ve already had moments where your passion just bubbled out of you uncontrollably, and you saw the spark in someone’s eyes when you told them something really, really cool. Maybe you explained how the Higgs Boson particle works or got into a conversation about the ballistic penises of male ducks. Somehow you found yourself in that place of authority where you were sharing with others something new and fascinating, and you changed how they think about the world—just for a moment, or perhaps forever. You inspired them. You want to do it again. And you can use a science blog to do it.

There’s a reason that major grant agencies like the National Science Foundation require outreach and communication from the scientists they fund. Reaching out and sharing science is a moral responsibility for those who “get it.” As the American Psychological Association’s David Ballard says, “We have an obligation to be out there in public because there is nobody better informed or more expert.”3

So why not attend more conferences or go talk to students in their classrooms instead? Because we live in a digital age where ten-year-olds carry smart phones and information is never more than a Google search away. More than half of Americans say they “talk” to people online more than they do in real life.4 As social media platforms continue to grow exponentially, people are turning more and more to online avenues for connection and communication. If we want to be involved in the conversations about science, we have to be online as well. We need to be found in search results, and get real, accurate science into online conversations.

Most importantly, online avenues target the everyday adult. While we can improve education in public school and try to fight the battle in the next generation, we have to go beyond to really shift our culture. Anyone born before 1980 (and some born after) didn’t learn about stem cells in high school. They aren’t going to be taking a traditional class to better understand climate change or the causes of autism. They will learn about and understand these issues better only if they have access to content that explains them clearly.

Blogs reach out far beyond even the most gregarious person. I’ve had blog posts translated into Chinese, Romanian, and French. Commenters come from around the world to weigh in on the science I discuss on my blog. And because it’s the Internet, what is written on a blog doesn’t just stay on that blog; a wide variety of media outlets and other major traffic sources link to it as well. “Just simply by having a blog,” says Travis Saunders of Obesity Panacea (http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea), “we’ve been able then to go and get our message out to literally hundreds of thousands or even millions of people through these other much, much larger engines.”5

I’ve seen firsthand the immense reach of blogs. When I wrote about DNA fingerprinting to explain how Osama bin Laden’s body was identified, more than eighty thousand people read the post on my blog over the next couple days, and it was linked by PBS NOVA, NPR, Nature, Discovery, and a suite of mainstream news organizations, not to mention other blogs. It took only thirty minutes for me to explain the science behind something I do every day, yet millions of people learned about genetic fingerprinting and were able to explain to their networks how we knew bin Laden was dead.

That’s the point, isn’t it? To get people talking about science, thinking about science, caring about science. To help people find science in the everyday.

Science blogging is truly a noble pursuit because it seeks to inform and excite others. It’s all about injecting your personality, your passions, and your reasons for loving science into online content that educates and inspires. The ultimate aim is to change the world—a lofty goal with all the feel-good, heartwarming hope you could ever want in an activity.

It really is all about me: The narcissistic view

The simple truth is that no matter how much good we want to do for the world, we are all limited. We are, as they say, only human. We have jobs that need to be done, money that needs to be made, and personal lives to attend to. So why should you make time in your busy schedule for blogging? Because ultimately, you’re the one who reaps the most rewards from it.

Let’s start with the most immediate benefit: exposure, or as marketing professionals refer to it, “personal branding.” A long time ago, when you applied for a job or met a new person, they only had one thing to judge you by: what you told them. Now, in less than a minute, a potential employer or colleague can learn a lot about you. If you had Googled my name before 2006, for example, the top result would have been a quote my eighth-grade self gave to my middle school newsletter.6 The Internet never forgets, and you can either lament that fact or do something about it. Blogging is content over which you have 100 percent control. That means when someone searches your name and finds your blog, they are seeing what you want them to see—your words, your thoughts, evidence of your skills and expertise.

Nowadays, it’s more likely that a lack of web presence will damage you as you apply to new jobs. Just ask danah boyd, an assistant professor in media, culture, and communications at New York University and a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School. “There is no doubt that all faculty searches include a Google search,” writes boyd.7 “One of the things I hear most frequently about a new hire is how disturbing it is that he doesn’t have a web presence. Something must be wrong, right?”

The best part of having your own blog is that these potential employers, colleagues, or whomever will get to see the best you. Instead of being a name and a résumé, you’ll be a person—and you’ve already begun charming them, even if they haven’t met you face to face. In that way, blogging provides another benefit: it’s like regular networking, but without the pesky limitations of location and timing. Blogs are inherently interactive platforms. With comment threads and the ability to link around the world, they’re all about conversations. Instead of rubbing elbows with a handful of people at a small, in-person function, you’re chatting with thousands of people from all walks of life, any of whom might become an important contact later on. I know firsthand that this can occur: I first met one of my collaborators on my dissertation thanks to blogging.

Others have similar stories. Bertalan Mesko of scienceroll.com feels that “blogging and Twitter don’t just help me in my research but totally changed the way I interact with other researchers and collaborators.” Similarly, John Fossella (who blogs at genes2brains-2mind2me.com) has found that blogging has expanded his scientific network. “Instead of getting feedback from the same handful of folks I regularly see in the lab, I’m getting comments and new ideas from folks who I used to work with 5, 10 and even 20 years ago, not to mention new folks who I’ve struck up online interactions with.”8

“Science blogging literally changed my life,” explains Australian science writer Bec Crew, who didn’t know how to get started when she graduated with degrees in arts and media. Initially, she started blogging to satisfy her need to write while working an office job to cover the bills. As she gained attention for her posts, opportunities opened up, and Crew credits blogging with launching her career. “I was completely unqualified for the position I applied for at one of Australia’s few science magazines, COSMOS,” she explains, “but there was no questioning my enthusiasm for science communication, which helped me get the job.” She was even approached to write her first book, Zombie Tits, Astronaut Fish, and Other Weird Animals (which came out in October 2012), through her blog. When it comes to blogging, Crew says the time put in is 100 percent worth it. “It’s proof of your commitment to the industry, which is especially handy if you haven’t had the opportunity to work in it professionally yet.” More importantly, while it’s easy to say you’re a good writer, hardworking, or committed, showing it is much harder to do—and so means a great deal more. Blog posts can serve as writing samples to show editors, and because they’re online, an interested editor will have an immediate, easy way to contact you. As Crew writes, “What will set you apart is the fact that you’ve been writing about science in your own time, and training yourself to be better at it; because you love it and you think it’s important.”9

This is especially true for the scientist blogger. Science is a labor of love. You do what you do because you think it matters, and you publish your research because you think it’s worth talking about. What better way to make sure your research is talked about than to start the conversation yourself? Multiple studies have shown that media attention can positively influence paper citations.10 This is especially true because, as U.K.-based geneticist Daniel MacArthur has noted, “a fairly hefty proportion of the readership of most science blogs consists of other scientists, so having your work disseminated in these forums . . . increases your profile within the scientific community, promotes thoughtful discussion of your work and can lead to opportunities for collaboration.”11 And if your research is already being talked about widely, you definitely want to be blogging. As GrrlScientist explains in a post about scientists blogging, “A blog can be used to rapidly correct errors in mainstream media reporting, and to highlight the value of one’s findings while doing so. But perhaps most important, a blog provides scientists with a public platform where they can defend their research from misuse or misrepresentation by politicians and corporations that seek to abuse scientific data to bolster their agendas.”12 As the #arseniclife scandal made blatantly clear, your research is fair game for other science bloggers. When NASA-funded scientists published the shocking finding that some bacteria can replace phosphorus with arsenic, they found out the hard way that in this Internet age, scientists will not just challenge your results academically, they’ll also do it online in full view of the public.13 “Savvy scientists must increasingly engage with blogs and social media,” explains Paul Knoepfler, professor of cell biology at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, in a comment for Nature. “Even if you choose not to blog, you can certainly expect your papers and ideas will increasingly be blogged about. So there it is—blog or be blogged.”14

For all writers of all kinds, from journalists to novelists, there is no better way to get yourself and your work out there than to write more. A blog is a writing laboratory where you can experiment with types of content and see what works best and what doesn’t. You can play with images, videos, and all sorts of multimedia. It requires commitment, which means you’re putting words to the page, showing potential employers that you have the dedication and ability to produce content. Blogging also keeps you keyed in to the most recent and relevant scientific discourse, and allows you to interact with other writers and the scientists whose work you write about. You’ll sit at the same table with some of the most well-respected science communicators out there and gain insight into what they do and how they do it.

Science journalist Carl Zimmer has found that blogging allows him to expand his topic range and elaborate on new ideas. “I blog about things that I find very cool but that I won’t be able to turn into an article someone will pay me to write,” says Zimmer. “Very often, I will mine these posts for my books, and I sometimes even manage to produce articles on topics I first visited on my blog.”15

If nothing else, blogging helps develop essential skills. “A wonderful side effect,” says Ph.D. student Drew Conway, “is that the overall quality of your work will also increase, as you become a better writer, researcher and conveyer of complex ideas.”16

National Geographic blogger Ed Yong reminds us that for a journalist, blogging is a great form of practice. “When I write for my blog, I do so in exactly the same way as I would for a mainstream organization. I ask whether stories are worth telling. I interview and quote people. I write in plain English. I provide context. I fact-check . . . a lot. I do not use press releases, much less copy them.”17

By blogging you practice writing, cohesive thinking, effective communication, and web skills like HTML programming, skills you will use no matter what future career you find. “It’s really an opportunity to work on your writing and presenting skills,” says Saunders. “I found that having an excuse to write every day, trying to distill research down into lay terms . . . gave me a lot more confidence in my writing ability and also my confidence in presenting.”18 As every writer knows, the best way to improve as a writer is to write—and blogging not only nudges writers to write more regularly; it also provides wiggle room to explore different narrative structures and writing styles.

While blogging might seem a selfless act at first, it opens the door to real career-enhancing opportunities, whether that means broadening your professional network, increasing your exposure, or simply making you more marketable through new and enhanced skills. You can even end up making money off of it, though I wouldn’t recommend getting into science blogging for the cash. Blog because you like to communicate, and because you have a passion for scientific topics that need someone like you to convey them. Blog to gain exposure and network, and to expand your career.

The win-win of science blogging

Scientist bloggers can gain a wider audience for their research, network with other scientists they might never have otherwise met, and establish their name as experts in their fields. Bloggers who focus on science, whether they’re scientists, journalists, writers, or simply enthusiasts, can use their blog for self-promotion, draw in larger audiences, practice important skills, and try out new ideas and media types. Meanwhile all science bloggers benefit from being involved in a conversation and receiving feedback and ideas from a much bigger audience than they would reach with traditional outlets. And they get to do all of this while doing the important work of sharing what they love with the world, shifting negative cultural attitudes toward science, and combating pseudoscience and misinformation.

So you, enthusiastic science-y person, why aren’t you blogging already? If you’re feeling inspired but still unsure of the next best steps, the rest of this book will help you start with advice and howtos from the best in the business, so you can begin to reap the many rewards. And if you are already blogging, this book has information for you as well: their insider know-how will help you take your blog to the next level, so you can reach whatever goals you have set for your little corner of the Internet.

Christie Wilcox is a science writer and social media specialist. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where she uses molecular biology techniques to study venoms. She is also a writer at Discover Magazine Blogs, where she authors the blog Science Sushi.

Christie Wilcox is based in Honolulu. Find her on her website at christiewilcox.com or follow her on Twitter, @nerdychristie.

Notes

1. Actually, there are hundreds of millions of blogs—over 70 million on Word-Press alone.

2. Jeffery H. Toney, “Physics: ’A Waste of Time?,’” Huffington Post, July 6, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jeffrey-h-toney/physics-a-waste-of-time_b_845184.html.

3. Anna Miller, “You: The Brand,” gradPSYCH, November 2012, http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2012/11/you.aspx.

4. Alex Trimpe, “Google Think Insights,” Think Quarterly (April 2011).

5. From a video by Saunders posted in Peter Janiszewski, “Social Media for Scientists: A Lecture,” Science of Blogging, October 12, 2002, http://scienceofblogging.com/social-media-for-scientists-a-lecture.

6. Seriously. See my quotation at http://bit.ly/SsbLuE.

7. danah boyd, “Bloggers Need Not Apply: Maintaining the Status Quo in Academia,” Apophenia, July 11, 2005, http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/07/11/bloggers_need_not_apply_maintaining_status_quo_in_academia.html.

8. Quoted in Hsien-Hsien Lei, “Scientists and Social Networking: A Primer (Part 2),” HUGO Matters, February 17, 2010, http://www.hugo-international.org/blog/?p=145.

9. Bec Crew, “How Science Blogging Can Lead to a Science Writing Career,” Scitable (blog), Nature, September 11, 2012, http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/scholarcast/how_science_blogging_can_lead.

10. David P. Phillips et al., “Importance of the Lay Press in the Transmission of Medical Knowledge to the Scientific Community,” New England Journal of Medicine 325, no. 16: 1180—1183; Vincent Kiernan, “Diffusion of News about Research,” Science Communication 25, no. 1 (September 2003): 3—13; Gunther Eysenbach, “Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact,” Journal of Medical Internet Research 13, no. 4 (2011): 123.

11. Daniel MacArthur, “On the Challenges of Conference Blogging,” Wired, June 3, 2009, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/On-the-challenges-of-conference-blogging.

12. GrrlScientist, “Science Blogging for Scientists: Planting the Seed,” Living the Scientific Life (Scientist Interrupted), Science, September 24, 2008, http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/09/24/science-blogging-planting-the.

13. Rosie Redfield, “Arsenic-Associate Bacteria (NASA’s Claims),” RRResearch, December 4, 2010, http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html; Carl Zimmer, “This Paper Should Not Have Been Published,” Slate, December 7, 2010, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/this_paper_should_not_have_been_published.html; Carl Zimmer, “Did Rosie Redfield Just Refute #areseniclife on Her Blog?,” The Loom, Discover, August 2, 2011, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/08/02/did-rosie-redfield-just-refute-arseniclife-on-her-blog/#.VN47iMZZUzV.

14. Paul Knoepfler, “My Year as a Stem-Cell Blogger,” Nature 275 (July 2011): 425.

15. Quoted in Eva Amsen, “Who Benefits from Science Blogging?,” Hypothesis Journal 4, no. 2 (September 2006): 10—14, http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/?p=665.

16. Drew Conway, “Ten Reasons Why Grad Students Should Blog,” Zero Intelligence Agents, June 8, 2010, http://drewconway.com/zia/2013/3/27/ten-reasons-why-grad-students-should-blog.

17. Ed Yong, “Am I a Science Journalist?,” Not Exactly Rocket Science, Discover, June 28, 2011, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/06/28/am-i-a-science-journalist/#.VN6KucZZUzW.

18. From a video by Saunders posted in Peter Janiszewski, “Social Media for Scientists: A Lecture,” Science of Blogging, October 12, 2002, http://scienceofblogging.com/social-media-for-scientists-a-lecture.