Tag Archives: Elizabeth Wilson

Thoughts on the Canadian science blogging scene and on the FrogHeart blog

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I thought the timing was right for a review of the Canadian science blogging scene. At this point there seems to be about 12 of us. I found 4 new (to me) blogs this year:

  • The Bubble Chamber which is maintained by the History of Science programme students at the University of Toronto. As you might expect, it’s very academic at times. You might find a recent posting, How to pursue science from the humanities, an interesting read.
  • CMBR is maintained by Colin Schultz. He’s a science journalist. I haven’t read it often enough to be able to comment on it although I am intrigued by an item he has about science and the movies.
  • PARS3C is maintained by Elizabeth Lowell, a science journalist and editor. She focuses on space exploration (not a very strong interest of mine). Here’s her profile of Rocket Scientista, a PhD student in astrophysics who discusses, amongst other things,  why she thinks science blogging is important.
  • Nicole Arbour, a science and innovation officer in the UK’s Foreign Office in Ottawa, blogs about the science in Ottawa and in Canada regularly on a site maintained by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. One of her latest is titled, Science Policy in Canada, and features a video of Mehrdad Hariri, Chair of the Canada Science Policy Conference, talking about plans to create a science policy centre in Canada.

Colleagues that have stimulated my thinking and opened new vistas include,

  • Rob Annan on a blog that seems to have changed its name recently (glory halleluiah!) to Researcher Forum. (Rob, I will change my blog roll soon.) It was a blog developed as a consequence of a protest letter written to Stephen Harper’s Conservative government a few years back when science budgets were affected. Months after its inception, Rob Annan was asked to take on the job of blogging regularly. His writing on Canadian science policy is always thoughtful and thought-provoking. Here’s his latest one on innovation in Canada and some of the problems. And, here’s one of my favourites from June 29, 2010, Public has a right to influence research policy. It’s about multiple sclerosis and the ‘surgery cure’ that has excited an enormous amount of interest.
  • The Black Hole is a blog about what happens once you graduate from university. It’s mostly aimed at those who have PhDs or Masters degrees although I think anyone could benefit from the insights that Beth Snow and David Kent provide. They certainly opened my eyes up to some of the issues in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. There’s a very interesting and humourous response to a current discussion taking place about whether or not there are too many people getting doctoral degrees, Professionals in High Demand. They ran a series during the summer about work that graduate students can aspire to and that doesn’t involve becoming a professor at a university.
  • Gregor Wolbring, a professor at the University of Calgary, maintains probably one of the longest-running and well-known Canadian science blogs, Nano and Nano- Bio, Info, Cogno, Neuro, Synbio, Geo, Chem…. He doesn’t blog that frequently these days; his site biography indicates that he must be screamingly busy. It’s worth taking a look at his blog as he often features material that no one else does.

Strictly speaking these aren’t science blogs as I think of them but this is a review of the ‘scene’ as much as anything else and these blogs definitely contribute,

  • Jeff Sharom maintains the Science Canada blog whose goal “is to highlight science policy issues in Canada’s political arena and media.” He doesn’t offer any commentary so this site functions more as an aggregator or reader but he picks up just about everything on Canadian science policy and it’s definitely worth a look if you want to know about the latest news.
  • RRResearch is maintained by Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia. As she notes, “This is a research blog, not a conventional science blog. Most posts are not about published research or science in the public domain, but about my lab’s day-to-day research into the mechanism, function and evolution of DNA uptake by Haemophilus influenzae and other bacteria.” She’s probably best known for her response to a recent science controversy over arsenic and bacteria.

The rest of these are blogs that haven’t been updated for a few months or more or don’t fit easily into the notion of being a Canadian science blog.

  • Je vote pour la science has been maintained by Pascal Lapointe and his colleague, Josée Nadia Drouin. There hasn’t been a new podcast (yes, a Canadian science podcast blog) since May 2010. These are expensive and time-consuming and both Pascal and his colleague work for Agence Science-Presse (which is being kept current). If you do have the French language skills I do encourage you to check out both sites.
  • David Ng is a professor at the University of British Columbia and he is a member of a group blog (his two partners are both from the US).  One of Dr. Ng’s most recent postings at The World’s Fair was titled, Crickets chirping and Collider Whales. There’s more about Dr. Ng and his various projects here.
  • Jay Ingram, co-host of Discovery Planet, maintained a blog , which featured podcasts, until Oct. 2008. I wonder if he will start it up again now that he’s retiring from Discovery Planet.

As for FrogHeart, I had a banner year bloggingwise. January 2010 statistics (AW stats. package) show the site as have 4225 visits in total and this month the site has clocked over 25,000 visits.That’s an increase of over 600%. In fact, FrogHeart consistently showed over 20,000 visits per month in the last quarter.  Based on this data, I’m going to make the claim that as far as I know,  FrogHeart is the largest, independent Canadian science blog.

Nanocrystalline cellulose is the most searched topic on my blog this year. It may not be the top search in every month but it’s consistently in my top 10. I want to thank Peter Julian, Rainer Becker, Charles McGovern, Richard Berry, Forrest H Bennett III, Leon Chua, Blaise Mouttet, Fern Wickson, Betty J. Morris, and Teri W. Odom who kindly provided answers to my questions (some were full length interviews while others were quick e-mail questions).

Please do contact me if I’ve missed something or someone or got something wrong.

I think 2010 was a better year for Canadian science blogging if you consider the addition of a couple new blogs as evidence (and I do). Many of the bloggers are independent, i.e., they self-fund their blogs and that suggests a big commitment.

I think at this point I’d like to highlight a December 28, 2010 article from the Calgary Herald on  how to pour champagne by Tom Spears (from the article),

It took six French scientists and a lot of free samples to prove this, but the official word says you should pour Champagne down the side of a tall glass to preserve the fizz and the flavour.

Bubbles also last longer when your Champagne is really cold — about 4 C.

I wish a great 2011 for everyone and an even more active year for Canadian science blogging.

ETA Jan.19.11: I found another Canadian science blogger: Nassif Ghoussou, a professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia. His blog is called Piece of Mind. Thanks to Rob Annan’s blog, Researcher Forum, for this find.

ETA Jan. 24.11: This is great. I found Cool Science today. The blogger, a science communicator and parent located in Ontario,  focuses on something called ‘science parenting.  From the blog’s About page,

This site is about raising a creative rationalist in an age of nonsense. It is about parents getting excited about science, learning and critical thinking. It is about smart parents raising smart kids who can think for themselves, make good decisions and discern the credible from the incredible.

Are there any other Canadian science bloggers I can add to this list? Please, do let me know.

Public opinion doesn’t shake easily; Wilson talk on Artificial Intelligence

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Over on the Framing Science blog, Matthew C. Nisbet has posted about the impact that ClimateGate has not had on public opinion about climate change. From the post,

The full report [by Jon Krosnick, professor at Stanford University, on most recent public opinion poll about cljmate change and ClimateGate] should be read, but below I feature several key conclusions. Despite alarm over the presumed impact of ClimateGate, Krosnick’s  analysis reveals very little influence for this event. More research is likely to come on this issue and this is just the first systematic analysis to be released.

Yet there is an even more interesting question emerging here than the impact of ClimateGate on public opinion: If communication researchers have difficulty discerning a meaningful impact for ClimateGate, why do so many scientists and advocates continue to misread public opinion on climate change and to misunderstand the influence of the news media? As I argue below, an additional object of study in this case should be the factors shaping the perceptions of scientists and advocates.

—>Krosnick’s analysis estimates that the percentage of Americans who believe in global warming has only dropped 5% since 2008 and that ClimateGate has had no meaningful impact on trust in climate scientists which stands at 70% (essentially the same as the 68% level in 2008).

A 5% drop isn’t to be sneezed at but taken into perspective it is predictable and, assuming these are ‘good’ figures, then in the short term, there has not been an appreciable impact. Makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, most people don’t change their opinions that easily. Oh they might have a crisis of confidence or a momentary hysterical response (I confess) but most of our opinions about important issues tend to persist over time and in the face of contradictory evidence.

Nisbet’s post makes reference to some other work, this time on scientists’ ideologies (liberal or conservative [not the Canadian political parties]) done by the Pew Research Center and released in July 2009. (Nisbet’s comments on ideology and scientists here and the Pew Research Center study here) Intriguingly, there’s a larger percentage of scientists (50%) self-identified as liberal than members of the general public (20%).

According to work published shortly after and mentioned on this blog here in a comment about the public’s focus on the benefits of nanotechnology while scientists focus on risks and economic value, by Elizabeth Corley (Arizona State University), this difference in focus may have something to do with ideology,  from the news release,

Decision-makers often rely on the input of scientists when setting policies on nanotechnology because of the high degree of scientific uncertainty – and the lack of data – about its risks, Corley says.

“This difference in the way nanoscientists and the public think about regulations is important for policymakers (to take into consideration) if they are planning to include both groups in the policymaking process for nanotechnology,” says Corley.

The study also reveals an interesting divide within the group of nanoscientists. Economically conservative scientists were less likely to support regulations, while economically liberal scientists were more likely to do so.

This suggests that a more nuanced approach to measuring public perception may be emerging despite  the rather disappointing meta analysis by Dr. Terre Satterfield of public perceptions about nanotechnology benefits and risks (mentioned on this blog here).

On a completely other note, I recently attended a lecture/presentation by Elizabeth Wilson, professor of Women’s Studies at Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia, US) given at the Green College at the University of British Columbia about artificial intelligence circa the early 1960s, titled, “Extravagance of affect:; How to build an artificial mind. I’m not sure who this lecture was aimed at. While I was deeply thankful for her detailed explanations of basic concepts, presumably people in the field of Women’s Studies wouldn’t have needed so much explanation.  Conversely, her presentation had some gaps where she jumped over things which you can only do if your audience is well versed on the topic.

I haven’t seen much about emotions and artificial intelligence prior to this talk so maybe Wilson is forging into new territory and over time will get better at presenting her material to audiences who are not familiar with her specialty. In the meantime, I’m not sure what to make of her work.

Later this week, I’m hoping to be publishing an interview with Peter Julian the NDP member of Parliament (Canada) who recently tabled a member’s bill on nanotechnology.