ScienceBlogs.com bloggers (part 2)

ScienceBlogs.com recently won an award, added a 61^st blog, and restarted its ask a science blogger feature. All very cool, but as Newman asked Redford, “Who are those guys?”

A few days ago I presented some raw data about the ScienceBlogs.com blogs and their authors. This post sifts that data a bit.

Of the 61 blogs on ScienceBlogs.com 6 are group blogs with multiple authors. The 3 the group blogs give no information about how many authors they have, they were removed from the data set used in this post. (See “notes” below.)

The following — based on 62 bloggers posting on 58 blogs — was gleaned from what the bloggers had to say about themselves in their profiles and “about” pages.

Here are some subsets of the 62 bloggers. Note the categories overlap: all the scientists are PhD’s, one MD is also a PhD, some of the grad students are biologists, etc.

scientist counts anyone with a PhD in a science which leaves out, for example, one philosopher, one mathematician, and all the grad students (sorry, a judgment call).

biologist counts anyone who identified themselves as such (PhD or not). Biology is the only field of study with more than a few representatives among the 62 bloggers.

writer includes people who do other things to make a living in addition to writing, but more than half are full-time writers.

MD is the only category small enough to enumerate easily: family doctor, psychiatrist, oncologist, first-year resident, and surgeon/scientist.

pen name counts anyone using an alias, just a first name, or no name at all. There are many reasons to blog anonymously, and it is unfortunate that we live in a culture where those reasons are well-founded. I suspect lost business, lost job opportunities or advancement, and getting fired are the main worries.

Pen name usage:

ratio	proportion	category
4:1	4/5	MD’s (the oncologist uses his real name)
2:1	2/3	post-docs (tenuous employment?)
1:3	5/20	professors (are the 5 tenured?)
1:4.5	2/11	women
1:5	2/12	writers
1:12	1/13	grad students (fearless or naive?)

The gender distribution in this data set is about what we have come to expect in science — but hopefully not what we will settle for. 6 of the 31 PhD’s are women as are 4 of the 20 professors.

Several of the those blogging from the USA are immigrants. I think there are 7 people blogging from outside of the USA. One in each of Sweden, South Africa, Canada, and maybe India. Two in each of the UK and Australia.

why care?

I think ScienceBlogs.com is a great innovation. Its owner Seed Media Group which also publishes SEED magazine says it doesn’t influence the topics these bloggers choose to write about or how they write about them — a fairly brave stance to take and the only way to attract good bloggers. Apparently their only managerial control lies in selecting good bloggers and terminating them if they wish (AFAIK no firings have occurred and no bloggers have chosen to leave the fold [update: see comments]), and while I am only familiar with the some of the blogs, I’m impressed. The ones I’ve read are high quality blogs offering a nice variety of content and style.

Some of the bloggers have mentioned they get a cut of the ad revenue and quickly added “it’s not that much.” In any case they get the benefit of the ScienceBlog brand as well as the practical aspects of having someone doing setup and maintenance of the software and servers. If you have ever done that on your own you know it’s a big benefit. You give up some freedom of visual expression in return for peace of mind and more time to write content.

As a member of the user community I really like the RSS channel feeds and the ability to search across all the blogs, but most of all I like having all those science blogs pre-vetted and in one easy-access place — even though not all of them fit my personal tastes. Of the ultra-techy ones, I find Good Math, Bad Math by Mark Chu-Carroll satisfies my computer science fix, but I don’t know enough chemistry for Molecule of the Day to be more than an interesting curiosity. (True to its name a molecule is diagrammed and described every day.) In the category of surprising finds are the two philosophers’ blogs: Janet Stemwedel’s Adventures in Ethics and Science and John Wilkins’ Evolving Thoughts both of which demonstrate the pragmatic aspect of philosophy.

Future directions in this series:

• some negative criticism of ScienceBlogs and their blogs and bloggers — it’s not just a bed of roses. Where are the social science representatives and the consumers of science? More women and a greater diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds would be nice too.
• reviews of some of the ScienceBlogs
• notable non-ScienceBlogs science blogs and bloggers
• a focus on RealClimate, a group blog by 11 real climate scientists

notes

Of the 6 group blogs on the list I removed 3 from this overview because I could not determine how many authors they have. This had nothing to do with the quality of the blogs. They are

• Effect Measure is authored by “senior public health scientists and practitioners.” We don’t how many or how they came together to run this blog. We’re told “Their names would be immediately recognizable to many in the public health community. They prefer to keep their on-line and public lives separate to allow maximum freedom of expression.”
• Integrity of Science says a little more. It is run by Pacific Institute, “an independent, nonpartisan think-tank studying issues at the intersection of development, environment, and security. The Institute´s Integrity of Science Initiative responds to and counters the assault on science and scientific integrity in the public policy arena, especially on issues related to water, climate change, and security.”
• Page 3.14 is “Maintained by Seed’s editors, web editors, and the other people who make Seed tick.”

Adding these to the above would increase the number of scientists and PhD’s as well as the size of the pen name category.

[update: see part three]

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The drawing at the top of this post is from the OpenClipArt collection.