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.'"

Comments

Re:Not good for one's career

[smittyoneeach]

Legal blogs, http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/, http://althouse.blogspot.com/, http://althouse.blogspot.com/, http://www.powerlineblog.com/ don't seem too bad for careers, in the main, though one of the PowerLine writers took a sabbatical due to a client. Maybe the legal blogs are closer to talk radio.

In the olden days, science could easily be mistaken for a bloodless intellectual game

By precisely what mature person with any shred of insight into human nature? It's kind of silly how the Church of Holy Progress has tried to co-opt scientists as some sort of secular priesthood. Get over it. Scientists are people, too. I'd expect Richard Feynman would have been a right blast of a blogger, if he yet lived.

Re:"climate change deniers"

[smittyoneeach]

Well, if you are arguing that climate is constant, then you're a CCD.
Except that no one has ever argued constant climate.