German Science blogging

The German blogosphere is now being mapped but with a few exceptions German science blogging doesn’ play a major role (in contrast to knitting that shows a large cluster and also in contrast to what some commercial blog platforms say).
The reasons may be manifold: Bench Marks started the discussion with the observation that

Time. Scientists have little time, and rather spend this time in the laboratory or reading papers.
Trust. Web 2.0 sites for scientists haven’t (yet) build a reputation. For important decisions (e.g. a critical protocol for an experiment), they rather ask a colleague they know.
Inappropriate Tools. The requirements for scientists are very different from the typical Facebook or Digg user

This is certainly not the full truth. A comment at the Nature Network goes deeper

…[quoting] physicist Sean Carroll as saying that “[a] blog raises your profile, but it raises your profile for something other than research.” Quite so. I write my blog largely as off-duty entertainment. It is very difficult to discuss things that are explicitly work-related, because some things are confidential, and other things I might say be at variance with my company’s policy. If I do discuss work-related things, such as science communication, it’s in a very general way. Otherwise I confine my comments to matters of relatively little consequence such as what my chickens are up to; the life and opinions of Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM; rock’n’roll; what passes for humor; and issues which are entirely uncontentious anyway, such as religion and politics. I imagine that most scientists are in the same position – they wouldn’t want to blog or append comments for fear of giving away important information, and so the residuum, being unimportant, is thought by the potential audience as not worth reading.

Yea, yea.