Tag Archives: PLoS

2012 Canadian science blog roundup and some thoughts on a Canadian science blog network

This is my 3rd annual roundup of Canadian science blogs and the science blogging scene in Canada seems to be getting more lively (see my Dec. 31, 2010 posting and Dec. 29, 2011 posting to compare).

As I did last year, I will start with

Goodbyes

Don’t leave Canada appears to be gone as there hasn’t been posting there since May 4, 2011. I’m sorry to see it go as Rob Annan provided thoughtful commentary on science policy on a regular basis for years. Thank you, Rob. (BTW, he’s now the director of policy, research and evaluation at MITACS.)

Cool Science, John McKay’s blog has been shut down as of Oct. 24, 2012,

Hi everyone. This will mark the final post of the CoolScience.ca site and it will be quietly taken offline in November. I will also be closing down the Twitter and Facebook accounts and moving everything over to my professional accounts that are all focused on communicating science, technology, engineering and medicine.

The Dark Matter science blog by Tom Spears, which I reluctantly (as it was a ‘newspaper blog’ from the Ottawa Citizen)included last year  has since disappeared as has NeuroDojo, a blog written by a Canadian scientist in Texas.

Goodbye ish

Marc Leger’s Atoms and Numbers blog’s latest posting is dated Oct. 23, 2012 but the pattern here seems similar to Marie-Claire’s (see the next one) where the posting is erratic but relatively regular (once or twice per month) until October of this year.

Marie-Claire Shanahan is posting less frequently on her Boundary Vision blog with the last posting there on Oct. 9, 2012.

The Bubble Chamber blog from the University of Toronto’s Science Policy Work Group seems to be fading away with only one posting for 2012, Reply to Wayne Myrvold on the Higgs Boson.

Colin Schulz’s CMBR blog hasn’t had a new posting since July 13, 2012’s 11 Things You Didn’t Know About Canada. In any event, it looks like the blog is no longer primarily focused on science.

The Exponential Book blog by Massimo Boninsegni features an Oct. 24, 2012 posting and a similar posting pattern to Marie-Claire & Marc.

exposure/effect which was new last year has gone into a fairly lengthy hiatus as per its last post in January 30, 2012 posting.

Theoretical biologist, Mario Pineda-Krch of Mario’s Entangled Bank blog is also taking a lengthy hiatus as the last posting on that blog was June 11, 2012.

Nicole Arbour’s Canadian science blog for the UK High Commission in Ottawa hasn’t featured a posting since Oct. 15, 2012’s The Power of We: Adapting to climate change.

Gregor Wolbring’s Nano and Nano- Bio, Info, Cogno, Neuro, Synbio, Geo, Chem… features an Aug. 4, 2012 posting which links to one of his nano articles, (Nanoscale Science and Technology and People with Disabilities in Asia: An Ability Expectation Analysis) published elsewhere.

Jeff Sharom’s Science Canada blog highlights links to editorials and articles on Canadian science policy but doesn’t seem to feature original writing by Sharom or anyone else, consequently, it functions more as a reader/aggregator than a blog.

The Black Hole blog which was always more focused on prospect for Canadian science graduates than Canadian science, hence always a bit of a stretch for inclusion here, has moved to the University Affairs website where it focuses more exclusively on the Canadian academic scene with posts such as this, Free journal access for postdocs in between positions  from Dec. 12, 2012.

Returning to the roundup:

John Dupuis’ Confessions of a Science Librarian whose Dec. 26, 2012 posting, Best Science (Fiction) Books 2012: io9 seems timely for anyone taking a break at this time of year and looking for some reading material.

Daniel Lemire’s blog is known simply as Daniel Lemire. He’s a computer scientist in Montréal who writes one of the more technical blogs I’ve come across and his focus seems to be databases although his Dec. 10, 2012 posting covers the topic of how to get things accomplished when you’re already busy.

Dave Ng, a professor with the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia, is a very active science communicator who maintain the Popperfont blog. The latest posting (Dec. 24, 2012) features Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravaganza! – Day 24.

Eric Michael Johnson continues with his The Primate Diaries blog on the Scientific American blog network. His Dec. 6, 2012 posting is a reposted article but he has kept up a regular (once per month, more or less) posting schedule,

Author’s Note: The following originally appeared at ScienceBlogs.com and was subsequently a finalist in the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize judged by Richard Dawkins. Fairness is the basis of the social contract. As citizens we expect that when we contribute our fair share we should receive our just reward. When social benefits are handed out …

Rosie Redfield is keeping with both her blogs, RRTeaching (latest posting, Dec. 6, 2012) and RRResearch (Nov. 17, 2012).

Sci/Why is a science blog being written by Canadian children’s writers who discuss science, words, and the eternal question – why?

Mathematician Nassif Ghoussoub’s Piece of Mind blog continues to feature incisive writing about science, science funding, policy and academe.

Canadian science writer Heather Pringle continues to post on the The Last Word on Nothing, a blog shared collectively by a number of well known science writers. Her next posting is scheduled for Jan. 3, 2013, according to the notice on the blog.

A little off my usual beat but I included these last year as they do write about science albeit medical and/or health science:

Susan Baxter’s blog Curmudgeon’s Corner features her insights into various medical matters, for example there’s her Dec. 1, 2012 posting on stress, the immune system, and the French antipathy towards capitalism.

Peter Janiszewski and Travis Saunders co-own two different blogs, Obesity Panacea, which is part of the PLoS (Public Library of Science) blogs network, and Science of Blogging which features very occasional posting but it’s worth a look for nuggets like this Oct. 12, 2012 (?) posting on social media for scientists.

After posting the 2011 roundup,

I had a number of suggestions for more Canadian science blogs such as these four who are part of the Scientific American SA) blogging network (in common with Eric Michael Johnson),

Dr. Carin Bondar posts on the SA blog, PsiVid, along with Joanne Manaster. There’s more than one Canadian science blogger who co-writes a blog. This one is self-described as, A cross section of science on the cyberscreen.

Glendon Mellow, a professional science illustrator,  posts on The Flying Trilobite (his own blog) and Symbiartic: the art of science and the science of art, an SA blog he shares with Kalliopi Monoyios.

Larry Moran, a biochemist at the University of Toronto, posts on science and anything else that tickles his fancy on his Sandwalk blog.

Eva Amsen who posts on a number of blogs including the NODE; the community site for developmental biologists  (which she also manages) but the best place to find a listing of her many blogs and interests is at easternblot.net, where she includes this self-description on the About page,

Online Projects

  • Musicians and Scientists – Why are so many people involved in both music and science? I’m on a mission to find out.
  • the NodeMy day job is managing a community site for developmental biologists around the world. The site is used by equal numbers of postdocs, PhD students, and lab heads.
  • SciBarCamp/SciBarCamb – I co-instigated SciBarCamp, an unconference for scientists, in Toronto in 2008. Since then I have co-organized five similar events in three countries, and have advised others on how to run science unconferences.
  • You Learn Something New Every Day – a Tumblr site that automatically aggregates tweets with the hashtag #ylsned, and Flickr photos tagged ylsned, to collect the interesting bits of trivia that people come across on a daily basis.
  • Lab Waste – During my last months in the lab as a PhD student, I made a mini-documentary (using CC-licensed materials) about the excessive amount of disposable plastics used in research labs. It screened in 2009 in the “Quirky Shorts” program of the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York.
  • Expression Patterns – In 2007 I was invited to blog on Nature Network. The complete archives from 2007-2012 are now on this site.
  • easternblot.net – Confusingly, my other science blog was named after this entire domain. It ran from 2005 to 2010, and can be found at science.easternblot.net

I believe Amsen is Canadian and working in the UK but if anyone could confirm, I would be much relieved.

Someone, who according to their About page prefers to remain anonymous but lives in Victoria, BC, and posts (somewhat irregularly, the last posting is dated Nov. 10, 2012) on The Olive Ridley Crawl,

I am an environmental scientist blogging about environmental and development issues that interest me. I prefer to be anonymous(e) because I work with some of the companies I may talk about and I want to avoid conflict of interest issues at work. This gets tricky because I am at the periphery of a lot of events happening in the world of my greatest expertise, persistent organic pollutants, endocrine disrupting compounds, their effects on health and the policy fights around chemicals, their use the controversies! So, I’ve reluctantly moved away from writing about what I know most about, which means this blog suffers severely. I still soldier on, though!

I was born, and grew up in India, so I am interested in all things South Asian and tend to view most all Western government and Western institution actions through a colonialist scratched lens! I am also becoming much more active about my feminism, so who knows what that will do to this blog. I have been meaning to write a monstrous essay about women, the environment and justice, but that’s a task!

I used to live in Chapel Hill, NC with a partner of long vintage (the partnership, that is, not her!) and a crazy cat who thinks he’s a dog. We moved to Victoria, BC in 2008 and I’ve been busy learning about Canadian policy, enjoying this most beautiful town I live in.

Why Olive Ridley? Well, the Olive Ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys Olivacea) nests on the coasts of Madras, India and I got my start in the wonderful world of conservation working on the Olive Ridley with the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network. So, I do have fond memories for this beautiful creature. And yes, as my dear partner reminds me, I did meet her on the beach when I was doing this work.

Agence Science-Presse (based in Québec and headed by Pascal Lapointe) features three blogs of its own:

Blogue ta science : les billets dédiés aux jeunes.

Discutez avec notre expert : avez-vous suivi notre enquête CSI ?

Autour des Blogues : les actualités de nos blogueurs et de la communauté.

There’s also a regular podcast under the Je vote pour la science banner.

genegeek appears to be Canadian (it has a domain in Canada) but the blog owner doesn’t really identify herself (there’s a photo) on the About page but no name and no biographical details. I did receive a tweet last year about genegeek from C. Anderson who I imagine is the blog owner.

There’s also the Canadian BioTechnologist2.0 blog, which is sponsored by Bio-Rad Canada and is written by an employee.

These next ones were added later in the year:

Chuck Black writes two blogs as he noted in June 2012,

I write two blogs which, while they focus more on space than science, do possess strong science components and overlap with some of the other blogs here.

They are: Commercial Space and Space Conference News.

Andy Park also came to my attention in June 2012. He writes the  It’s the Ecology, Stupid! blog.

Something About Science is a blog I featured in an Aug. 17, 2012 posting and I’m glad to see blogger, Lynn K, is still blogging.

New to the roundup in 2012:

SSChow, Sarah Chow’s blog, focuses on science events in Vancouver (Canada) and science events at the University of British Columbia and miscellaneous matters pertinent to her many science communication efforts.

The Canadian federal government seems to be trying its hand at science blogging with the Science.gc.ca Blogs (http://www.science.gc.ca/Blogs-WSE6EBB690-1_En.htm). An anemic effort given that boasts a total of six (or perhaps it’s five) posting in two or three years.

The Canadian Science Writers Association (CSWA) currently features a blog roll of its members’ blogs. This is a new initiative from the association and one I’m glad to see.  Here’s the list (from the CSWA member blog page),

Anne Steinø (Research Through the Eyes of a Biochemist)
Arielle Duhame-Ross (Salamander Hours)
Bob McDonald (I’m choking on this one since it’s a CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] blog for its Quirks and Quarks science pr0gram)
Cadell Last (The Ratchet)
Edward Willett
Elizabeth Howell (she seems to be blogging again and the easiest way for me to get to her postings was to click on the Archives link [I clicked on December 2012 to get the latest] after doing that I realized that the images on the page link to postings)
Heather Maughan
Justin Joschko
Kimberly Gerson (Endless Forms Most Beautiful)
Mark Green (a CSWA member, he was born and educated in the US where he lives and works; ordinarily I would not include him, even with his  CSWA membership status,  but he writes a monthly science column for a Cape Breton newspaper, which has made me pause)
Pamela Lincez (For the Love of Science)
Sarah Boon (Watershed Moments)
Susan Eaton (she seems to be reposting articles written [presumably by her] for the AAPG [American Association of Petroleum Geologists] Explorer and other organizations in her blog]

Barry Shell’s site (listed as a CSWA member blog) doesn’t match my admittedly foggy notion of a blog. It seems more of an all round Canadian science resource featuring profiles of Canadian scientists, a regularly updated news archive, and more. Science.ca is extraordinary and I’m thankful to have finally stumbled across it but it doesn’t feature dated posts in common with the other blogs listed here, even the most commercial ones.

Tyler Irving (I had no idea he had his own blog when I mentioned him in my Sept. 25, 2012 posting about Canadian chemists and the Canadian Chemical Institute’s publications) posts at the Scientific Canadian.

I choke again, as I do when mentioning blogs that are corporate media blogs, but in the interest of being as complete as possible Julia Belluz writes the Scien-ish blog about health for MacLean’s magazine.

Genome Alberta hosts a couple of blogs: Genomics and Livestock News & Views.

Occam’s Typewriter is an informal network of science bloggers two of whom are Canadian:

Cath Ennis (VWXYNot?) and Richard Wintle (Adventures in Wonderland). Note: The Guardian Science Blogs network seems to have some sort of relationship with Occam’s Typewriter as you will see postings from the Occam’s network featured as part of Occam’s Corner on the Guardian website.

My last blogger in this posting is James Colliander from the University of  Toronto’s Mathematics Department. He and Nassif (Piece of Mind blog mentioned previously) seem to share a similar interest in science policy and funding issues.

ETA Jan.2.13: This is a social science oriented blog maintained by a SSHRC- (Social Science and Humanities Research Council) funded network cluster called the Situating Science Cluster and the blog’s official name is: Cluster Blog. This is where you go to find out about Science and Technology Studies (STS) and History of Science Studies, etc. and events associated with those studies.

I probably should have started with this definition of a Canadian blogger, from the Wikipedia entry,

A Canadian blogger is the author of a weblog who lives in Canada, has Canadian citizenship, or writes primarily on Canadian subjects. One could also be considered a Canadian blogger if one has a significant Canadian connection, though this is debatable.

Given how lively the Canadian science blogging scene has become, I’m not sure I can continue with these roundups as they take more time each year.  At the very least, I’ll need to define the term Canadian Science blogger, in the hope of reducing the workload,  if I decide to continue after this year.

There’s a rather interesting Nov. 26, 2012 article by Stephanie Taylor for McGill Daily about the Canadian public’s science awareness and a dearth of Canadian science communication,

Much of the science media that Canadians consume and have access to is either American or British: both nations have a robust, highly visible science media sector. While most Canadians wouldn’t look primarily to American journalism for political news and analysis, science doesn’t have the same inherent national boundaries that politics does. While the laws of physics don’t change depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on, there are scientific endeavours that are important to Canadians but have little importance to other nations. It’s unlikely that a British researcher would investigate the state of the Canadian cod fishery, or that the British press would cover it, but that research is critical to a substantial number of Canadians’ livelihoods.

On the other hand, as Canadian traditional media struggles to consistently cover science news, there’s been an explosion of scientists of all stripes doing a lot of the necessary big picture, broad context, critical analysis on the internet. The lack of space restrictions and accessibility of the internet (it’s much easier to start a blog than try to break in to traditional media) mean that two of the major barriers to complex discussion of science in the media are gone. Blogs struggle to have the same reach as newspapers and traditional media, though, and many of the most successful science blogs are under the online umbrella of mainstream outlets like Scientific American and Discover. Unfortunately and perhaps unsurprisingly, there is currently no Canadian science blog network like this. [emphasis mine]

Yes, let’s create a Canadian science blog network. I having been talking to various individuals about this over the last year (2012) and while there’s interest, someone offered to help and then changed their mind. Plus, I was hoping to persuade the the Canadian Science Writers Association to take it on but I think they were too far advanced in their planning for a member’s network to consider something more generalized (and far more expensive). So, if anyone out there has ideas about how to do this, please do comment and perhaps we can get something launched in 2013.

How to start art/science collaborations (roundup) and an art/engineering festival in Calgary (Canada)

Generally speaking I’ve viewed art/science collaborations from an ‘arts’ perspective so it’s with some interest that I’ve been reading Johanna Kieniewicz’s postings as she has a scientist’s perspective, from her Nov. 22, 2012 posting on the PLoS (Public Library of Science) At the Interface; where art and science meet blog,

Last week, I attended an environmental science conference with an evening reception that featured a short talk on art/science collaborations in the context of environmental science. The talk was followed by a musical performance – inspired by the fragility of peatbog environments – after which I overheard a scientist mutter “What was that? That better not have had research council funding.” He was not the only one; I heard similar sentiments expressed by several others as I walked to dinner.

On some level, I was disappointed by this response, but I wasn’t really surprised. Despite great progress amongst those who are ensconced in the world of science communication to the idea of collaborations between scientists and artists, this is something that many scientists still don’t “get”. Other researchers are openly hostile, and certainly think that scientific research organisations have no business funding this type of work.

To be fair, these are not necessarily the attitudes of people who are disinterested in art — I’d be willing to bet that a fair few of those who walked away from the performance muttering about scientific research council funding being wasted on the arts also have memberships at cultural institutions. That said, whilst being consumers of culture, few scientists really see themselves as having much of a role in its creation. In an increasingly competitive funding landscape, does it really make sense to spend research money on an art project? Does engaging with the arts mean that they are less serious as scientists?

Kieniewicz goes on to give a number of reasons why she thinks art/science collaborations are important, including this one,

Although art cannot directly communicate science or change minds, it can create a space for dialogue around difficult issues.

In a followup Dec. 6, 2012 posting, Kieniewicz goes on to explain how artists and scientists get together for collaborations and she also provides an extensive roundup art/science collaborations (Note: I have removed links),

Following on from my last post on the ‘why’ of collaborations between artists and scientists, here I’d like to look at the ‘how’. When scientists and artists don’t typically have professional reasons for mixing, what are the mechanisms that enable collaboration?

Artist in Residency Schemes

Some of the more outward-looking scientific research organisations realise that there is something to be gained from a scheme that brings artists through their doors. It could be couched as a box-ticking ‘outreach’ exercise, but it is also an opportunity to bring the science happening behind their doors alive to the wider public. This approach has been particularly embraced by the physics community, where studies of the interactions between subatomic particles — which have serious implications for science and cost a great deal of taxpayer money — nonetheless seem of little relevance to the man on the street. As physicist David Weinberg notes based on his collaboration with Josiah McElheny (below), “far more people saw [our collaboration] in one day in Madrid than have ever read my Astrophysical Journal articles.”

Artist/Scientist Pairing Schemes

I think of artist/scientist pairing schemes as something of a matchmaking exercise, in which a number of artists are invited into a research institute and paired with interested and willing scientists. Like any matchmaking process, it seems to me that this is something that can go either way: sometimes it will work out, but other times it may not.

Individual collaborations between artists and scientists

Unsurprisingly, collaboration between an individual artist and scientist generally starts with an introduction, a conversation, and an interest/openness from both parties to trying something a little different. Collaboration in these circumstances is often initiated by the artist who may have an idea and an interest, but who recognises that they would benefit from the help of a scientist in order to fully realise their vision.

In the UK, there is an Arts and Humanities Research Council funding programme, Science in Culture, designed to stimulate art/science collaborations. There was funding in Canada for this type of collaboration. The Canada Council for the Arts had joint programmes with the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council and the National Research Council in the early 2000’s.

There is a new initiative, Beakerhead, being organized in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) for 2013 mentioned in my Nov. 13, 2012 posting (this is more of an arts/engineering collaborative event),

Beakerhead is an annual movement that culminates in a five-day citywide spectacle that brings together the arts and engineering sectors to build, engage, compete and exhibit interactive works of art, engineered creativity and entertainment.

Starting annually in 2013, Beakerhead will take place in Calgary’s major educational institutions, arts and culture venues, on the streets and, most importantly, in communities.
From performances and installations to workshops and concerts, Beakerhead is made possible by a continuously growing list of partners who share the desire of staging a collaborative event of epic proportions.

There is more information about the aspirations for this event on the Beakerhead Program page,

When fully realized, Beakerhead will be a five-day citywide highly participatory event that explodes in Calgary’s major educational institutions, arts and culture venues, on the streets and, most importantly, in communities. Through programming partnerships and community initiatives, Beakerhead is fuelled by groups and individuals in art, culture, science, engineering and technology.

Everyone is empowered to build, stage, exhibit and compete in interactive works, so people can experience and explore engineered creations from around the world – all at once! The following three streams are guiding Beakerhead’s programming vision:

1) Productions: local and internationally commissioned and co-produced grand openings, premieres, productions, and concerts.

2) Programs: city-wide illuminated art works and 3-D projections, international professional and student challenges, massive mechanical sculptures, interactive races, local restaurant programs and more.

3) Speakerhead: education and outreach programs such as artist and engineer-in-residence programs, professional speaker series, classroom programs and more.

Format and Goals:

Events will take place indoors and out, including ticketed and free events, and involving venues and public spaces throughout the city – and it’s all starting now! Partnerships are continuously forming and a calendar of events and programs is being developed to be announced in late 2012.

Together, Beakerhead will:

  • Engage people and communities – in hands-on public spectacles and contests.
  • Experiment – culturally – with science, art and engineering. Let’s test limits!
  • Commission new works – in new media, music, theatre, visual arts, dance.
  • Invite collaborations – between artists, scientists and engineers.
  • Invite collaborations – between local, Canadian and international experts.
  • Curate new exhibitions and performances.

Modestly viral science communication inspires

Students in the science communication masters programme at the Imperial College of London have created a video (Science Nation Army) that has gone modestly viral. From the Feb. 23, 2012 posting by Anna Perman on the Guardian Science blogs,

This week, a video made by myself and three friends from the science communications masters course at Imperial College went viral. Not “Fenton the dog” viral, but trending on YouTube (316,000 hits and counting), a spot on CBS News blog, in the Sun newspaper and a teeny-tiny snippet in the Guardian’s own G2 (too tiny even for a link). The video shows us recreating Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, using as our instruments the tools lying around in a lab at Imperial, and some “creative” editing techniques.

We did this to communicate science. And it seems to have worked.

Here’s the video,

It is part of a larger project, a multimedia blog developed by these students, Inside Knowledge: The Student Blog for the Public Library of Science (PLoS) blog network. More from Perman about the project,

A year ago, the four of us [Anna Perman, Ben Good, Lizzie Crouch, and David Robertson] started working with the research group at Imperial’s Blast lab (now part of the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies) to make a multimedia blog for the PLoS blog network about their work. It wasn’t an easy journey. The lab includes military personnel, has links to the ministry of defence and works with human tissue, so getting permission to film and write about their research was no mean feat.

In our film we tried to convey the entire experience of science, from the tedium of sitting with a lab book, to the excitement of their explosive experiments.

We also wanted to get people to think about the lab environment not as somewhere scary and alien, but somewhere accessible, and most importantly, somewhere fun to work.

This particular video was to show the variety of people who must work harmoniously to conduct a piece of scientific research. Just like a band in which a group with different talents create something more than the sum of its parts, a research group like Blast contains a diversity of doctors, mechanical engineers and biophysicists.

There are two groups working on The Student Blog, the group from the UK’s Imperial College of London (Inside Knowledge) and a second group from Stanford University in the US called Science, Upstream (Jamie Hansen and Julia James). I find the project a little confusing as I don’t see any postings after Sept. 2011 for Inside Knowledge and Science, Upstream, which seems to have a separate space on the PLoS website, doesn’t feature any postings after April 2011.

Still, I like the idea of the video and of communicating science in as many ways and in as many venues as possible. Oh, and I really enjoyed the Science Nation Army.

Award-winning science outreach: Ask a Biologist

Before the ‘Ask a Biologist‘ website won its Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, or SPORE, award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), there was a scholarly October article in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) written by the project’s developer, Charles Kazilek.

Since 1997, Ask A Biologist has grown from a single page on Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences website to more than 2,500 pages of content. More than 150 scientists and experts support the “Ask a” section, which has now offered insight to more than 25,000 perplexed or curious children and adults. The School of Life Sciences is the home for a large group of biology experts who can provide insights on a wide range of topics. Questions are routed to appropriate faculty and graduate student experts through a common email address which protects any single person from being inundated with questions. It also provides a level of review, and an opportunity to revise answers to ensure they are grade appropriate.

In addition to the core question and answer (Q & A) feature, a strong conduit between the public and the working scientist, Ask A Biologist has grown to involve scientists in content creation. The site has also evolved to include multiple media formats. Audio interviews with scientists, video, teachers’ tools, photo galleries, and games have been developed to accommodate different types of learners and meet the expectations of nearly one million visitors, yearly. [ref. to figure removed]

The Oct. 14, 2010 news item on physorg. com offers a more lively perspective than is possible with a scholarly article,

“A key-stroke can bring the world to one’s laptop, but nothing substitutes for a living, breathing expert,” says Kazilek, director for technology integration and outreach in ASU’s School of Life Sciences.

The experts backing up Dr. Biology are more than 150 volunteer scholars at ASU, which include professors, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the School of Life Sciences and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The popularity of the site has also attracted an army of off-campus volunteers from around the world.

“Scientists, educators and science Web developers often don’t realize that great graphics and in-depth content are only part of why ‘Ask A Biologist’ is popular,” Kazilek says. “People still need people.”

(I have a feeling I’ve featured this quote before but my website searches don’t yield it.)

A Nov. 25, 2010 news item on physorg.com celebrates the AAAS award,

What set Arizona’s Ask A Biologist apart? Reading interventionist Joan Howell with the Phoenix Elementary School District, a teacher for 20 years, says that it is Kazilek. “Charles simply knows how to connect with children,” she says. “He has combined science and art and created a wonderful vehicle for learning. It keeps you aware of the Web, it’s something local, it shows that ASU is a leading institution and it’s infectious. We are very thankful at our school and in our district. He has opened up a world of possibility.”

Kazilek’s virtual world is kaleidoscopic, encompassing coloring pages, image and zoom galleries, games, stories, science career pages, teacher’s resources, experiments, and language translations into Spanish and French. Entrancing more than a million visitors a year from across the globe, favorite offerings from amongst the 2,500 pages of content are the Ugly Bug contest and the Ask A Biologist’s podcast, which injects children’s voices, as co-hosts, in the website’s audioprogramming (http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/watch_listen).

“The Ugly Bug contest teaches kindergarteners to sixth graders how to look at things closely,” says Howell. “The details of the bugs inspire all sorts of questions. It’s a wonderful skill for children to develop. They don’t even realize that they are learning.”

The numbers are telling: more than 10,735 votes have been cast to determine 2010’s ugliest bug since it debuted on Oct. 31. Locked in battle are top contenders, the assassin bug and yellow dragonfly (http://askabiologist.asu.edu/activities/ubc).

Congratulations to Charles Kazilek and ‘Ask a Biologist’.

Open Science Summit nears

The July 29 -31, 2010 Open Science Summit is almost upon us (first mentioned here in a June 29, 3010 posting). The summit organizers pose this notion to set the themes for their conference (from the summit’s home page),

Renowned physicist Freeman Dyson identifies two kinds of scientific revolutions, those driven by new concepts (theoretical), and those driven by new tools (technological).

In the last 500 years we’ve witnessed paradigm shattering conceptual shifts associated with names such as Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and, Einstein. Simultaneously, the evolution of technology drives progress in unpredictable ways—Galileo borrowed principles from the technology of eye-glasses to pioneer the use of the telescope in astronomy, while Watson and Crick relied on Rosalind Franklin’s skill with X-ray diffraction (a tool from physics) to probe the structure of life. (Undoubtedly, Franklin’s contribution would have been more fully recognized under a true Open Science Paradigm.)

To this classification of scientific revolutions, we can now add a third kind, an Organizational Revolution, the advent of a truly “Open Science,” which will profoundly affect the pace and character of subsequent theory and tool-driven paradigm shifts.

Looking at the speakers scheduled, the summit offers an interesting range including Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute, Special Agent Edward You of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)*, Michael Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), David Koepsell, author of Who Owns You?, and more. It does seem to be largely oriented to genomics, bioinformatics, and other biological sciences.

If you can’t attend in person, there will be live streaming by fora.tv, go here.

* The FBI is quite interested in reaching out to scientists as per my posting of  May 25, 2010 about an article in The Scientist titled, SYNTHETIC BIO MEET “Fbio”; You may soon be visited by an FBI agent, or a scientist acting on behalf of one. Here’s why and written by Jill Frommer. The article is now behind a paywall.

Measuring professional and national scientific achievements; Canadian science policy conferences

I’m going to start with an excellent study about publication bias in science papers and careerism that I stumbled across this morning on physorg.com (from the news item),

Dr [Daniele] Fanelli [University of Edinburgh] analysed over 1300 papers that declared to have tested a hypothesis in all disciplines, from physics to sociology, the principal author of which was based in a U.S. state. Using data from the National Science Foundation, he then verified whether the papers’ conclusions were linked to the states’ productivity, measured by the number of papers published on average by each academic.

Findings show that papers whose authors were based in more “productive” states were more likely to support the tested hypothesis, independent of discipline and funding availability. This suggests that scientists working in more competitive and productive environments are more likely to make their results look “positive”. It remains to be established whether they do this by simply writing the papers differently or by tweaking and selecting their data.

I was happy to find out that Fanelli’s paper has been published by the PLoS [Public Library of Science] ONE , an open access journal. From the paper [numbers in square brackets are citations found at the end of the published paper],

Quantitative studies have repeatedly shown that financial interests can influence the outcome of biomedical research [27], [28] but they appear to have neglected the much more widespread conflict of interest created by scientists’ need to publish. Yet, fears that the professionalization of research might compromise its objectivity and integrity had been expressed already in the 19th century [29]. Since then, the competitiveness and precariousness of scientific careers have increased [30], and evidence that this might encourage misconduct has accumulated. Scientists in focus groups suggested that the need to compete in academia is a threat to scientific integrity [1], and those guilty of scientific misconduct often invoke excessive pressures to produce as a partial justification for their actions [31]. Surveys suggest that competitive research environments decrease the likelihood to follow scientific ideals [32] and increase the likelihood to witness scientific misconduct [33] (but see [34]). However, no direct, quantitative study has verified the connection between pressures to publish and bias in the scientific literature, so the existence and gravity of the problem are still a matter of speculation and debate [35].

Fanelli goes on to describe his research methods and how he came to his conclusion that the pressure to publish may have a significant impact on ‘scientific objectivity’.

This paper provides an interesting counterpoint to a discussion about science metrics or bibliometrics taking place on (the journal) Nature’s website here. It was stimulated by Judith Lane’s recent article titled, Let’s Make Science Metrics More Scientific. The article is open access and comments are invited. From the article [numbers in square brackets refer to citations found at the end of the article],

Measuring and assessing academic performance is now a fact of scientific life. Decisions ranging from tenure to the ranking and funding of universities depend on metrics. Yet current systems of measurement are inadequate. Widely used metrics, from the newly-fashionable Hirsch index to the 50-year-old citation index, are of limited use [1]. Their well-known flaws include favouring older researchers, capturing few aspects of scientists’ jobs and lumping together verified and discredited science. Many funding agencies use these metrics to evaluate institutional performance, compounding the problems [2]. Existing metrics do not capture the full range of activities that support and transmit scientific ideas, which can be as varied as mentoring, blogging or creating industrial prototypes.

The range of comments is quite interesting, I was particularly taken by something Martin Fenner said,

Science metrics are not only important for evaluating scientific output, they are also great discovery tools, and this may indeed be their more important use. Traditional ways of discovering science (e.g. keyword searches in bibliographic databases) are increasingly superseded by non-traditional approaches that use social networking tools for awareness, evaluations and popularity measurements of research findings.

(Fenner’s blog along with more of his comments about science metrics can be found here. If this link doesn’t work, you can get to Fenner’s blog by going to Lane’s Nature article and finding him in the comments section.)

There are a number of issues here: how do we measure science work (citations in other papers?) as well as how do we define the impact of science work (do we use social networks?) which brings the question to: how do we measure the impact when we’re talking about a social network?

Now, I’m going to add timeline as an issue. Over what period of time are we measuring the impact? I ask the question because of the memristor story.  Dr. Leon Chua wrote a paper in 1971 that, apparently, didn’t receive all that much attention at the time but was cited in a 2008 paper which received widespread attention. Meanwhile, Chua had continued to theorize about memristors in a 2003 paper that received so little attention that Chua abandoned plans to write part 2. Since the recent burst of renewed interest in the memristor and his 2003 paper, Chua has decided to follow up with part 2, hopefully some time in 2011. (as per this April 13, 2010 posting) There’s one more piece to the puzzle: an earlier paper by F. Argall. From Blaise Mouttet’s April 5, 2010 comment here on this blog,

In addition HP’s papers have ignored some basic research in TiO2 multi-state resistance switching from the 1960’s which disclose identical results. See F. Argall, “Switching Phenomena in Titanium Oxide thin Films,” Solid State Electronics, 1968.
http://pdf.com.ru/a/ky1300.pdf

[ETA: April 22, 2010 Blaise Mouttet has provided a link to an article  which provides more historical insight into the memristor story. http://knol.google.com/k/memistors-memristors-and-the-rise-of-strong-artificial-intelligence#

How do you measure or even track  all of that? Shy of some science writer taking the time to pursue the story and write a nonfiction book about it.

I’m not counselling that the process be abandoned but since it seems that the people are revisiting the issues, it’s an opportune time to get all the questions on the table.

As for its importance, this process of trying to establish better and new science metrics may seem irrelevant to most people but it has a much larger impact than even the participants appear to realize. Governments measure their scientific progress by touting the number of papers their scientists have produced amongst other measures such as  patents. Measuring the number of published papers has an impact on how governments want to be perceived internationally and within their own borders. Take for example something which has both international and national impact, the recent US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) report to the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors (PCAST). The NNI used the number of papers published as a way of measuring the US’s possibly eroding leadership in the field. (China published about 5000 while the US published about 3000.)

I don’t have much more to say other than I hope to see some new metrics.

Canadian science policy conferences

We have two such conferences and both are two years old in 2010. The first one is being held in Gatineau, Québec, May 12 – 14, 2010. Called Public Science  in Canada: Strengthening Science and Policy to Protect Canadians [ed. note: protecting us from what?], the target audience for the conference seems to be government employees. David Suzuki (tv host, scientist, evironmentalist, author, etc.) and Preston Manning (ex-politico) will be co-presenting a keynote address titled: Speaking Science to Power.

The second conference takes place in Montréal, Québec, Oct. 20-22, 2010. It’s being produced by the Canadian Science Policy Centre. Other than a notice on the home page, there’s not much information about their upcoming conference yet.

I did note that Adam Holbrook (aka J. Adam Holbrook) is both speaking at the May conference and is an advisory committee member for the folks who are organizing the October conference. At the May conference, he will be participating in a session titled: Fostering innovation: the role of public S&T. Holbrook is a local (to me) professor as he works at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.

That’s all of for today.