Tag Archives: blog

Der Vorteil von Blogs

http://goncourt.net/Blog/article/6559/on-blogging

Das Bloggen gleicht inzwischen dem Schreiben auf einer alten Triumph Adler. Hemmungslose Lektorats- und Redaktionsfreiheit. Deadlinefreiheit. Leserfreiheit. Kein anderes Medium derart in der Lage, das Durcheinander, die Skizze, die Beobachtung und den Gedanken, die haltlose Assoziation und den hinfälligen Zusammenhang in ähnlicher Diskretion, ähnlicher Verantwortungslosigkeit, ähnlicher Willkür aneinanderzureihen. Das Fotografieren, genauso Augenblicksprotokoll wie Projektionsfläche für alles mögliche, das Notat, je kürzer desto interpretierbarer, der Name Goncourt, irgendwann im Fluge aufgeschnappt, dann mit Wörtern, Gesten, Blicken gefüllt, dann wieder entleert.

We are not suggesting that peer review is infallible

Nature medicine recently acknowledged our work as science bloggers by admitting

We are not suggesting, however, that peer review is infallible. Nonetheless, as editors, we hope that anyone accepting an invitation to review a manuscript considers that commitment as being of comparable importance to the other responsibilities of a busy researcher. And although we know that more pressing issues can take precedence over reviewing a manuscript, we still expect that the same level of integrity and objective, critical analysis will be applied to the assessment of the manuscript under review as is applied to the referee’s own work.

In German we say “blauäugig” which translates to “wonderful naive”. There are so many examples of non-integrity and non-objectivity of published research where the peer review failed to a large extent – many examples here and at other sites like retractionwatch or badscience. All these papers by Friedhelm Herrmann, Marion Brach and Roland Mertelsmann with the most recent examples by Carsten Carlberg (“It’s all her fault, and probably today is the worst day of her life when the world sees what she has done”“) and Silvia Bulfone Paus (“it was Elena and Vadim and the journal editors should have caught us“)

With the pervasiveness of the Internet, and the speed of communication it permits, commentary and criticism of research findings can occur almost immediately after their online publi­ cation. This medium should be actively embraced by the research community as a dynamic forum.

There is not even a trackback possibility for that Nature medicine editorial – the whole blogger’s laudatio thing reeks of hypocrisy.

Blogs aids creativity

Today at First Monday:

I am a blogging researcher: Motivations for blogging in a scholarly context
Sara Kjellberg
The number of scholarly blogs on the Web is increasing. In this article, a group of researchers are asked to describe the functions that their blogs serve for them as researchers. The results show that their blogging is motivated by the possibility to share knowledge, that the blog aids creativity, and that it provides a feeling of being connected in their work as researchers. Continue reading Blogs aids creativity

What discriminates science journalists and science bloggers?

A recent opinion article in Nature may serve as my diving board here. Althoug texts are much better edited by professional journalists, the content isn’t better (driven mainly by press release). And of course, journalists must write about topics outside of their knowledge zone. Funny, they resemble

more that of a priest, taking information from a source of authority and communicating it to the congregation.

Journalists don’t have enough time for the details while bloggers can restrict themselves to their main expertise ;-) raising also a large amount of public awareness.

Not-a-blog

Just recently I came across a site (but can’t rememeber the URL) – basically saying that this is not a blog but just a few notes, how and why I did something to convince me at a later time of its justification. Yea, yea.

Fire Scribe

The WordPress editor window is somewhat odd if you are writing in text mode but need to scroll down to preview your post. From several blog editors that I have tested now – there is now one that made it onto my desktop. Scribe Fire is an advanced Firefox plugin that can be nicely configured as you can see on this screenshot.
The “powered by” can be switched off Continue reading Fire Scribe

At its heart

43 folders writes:

Remember that your blog is only incidentally a publishing system or a public website. At its heart, your blog represents the evolving expression of your most passionately held ideas. It’s a conversation you’re holding up with the world and with yourself — a place where you can watch your own thoughts take different shapes and occasionally surprise you with where they end up…

wow – couldn’t say that in a better way.

Playing with your browser

Some blog authors are nuts about protecting their web site from copying files. There are many ways to protect your site – but only one really good (publish nothing). I often see small javascripts that disable the ability to right-click where javascript.about.com has a much simpler solution:

<body oncontextmenu=”return false;”>

Please try a right click now…
If you are fooled by a web author in such a way, what could you do? tech-recipes has the answer: Of course, we can use javascript to turn it back on.

When visiting the offending website, type the following into the URL bar of your browser:
javascript:void(document.oncontextmenu=null)

Happy browsing, yea, yea.