On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog!

The life sciences have been slow to embrace blogging. Real slow. The pharmaceutical industry has just about dipped in a toe, but there's been nothing from biotechs, zilch from government laboratories, naught from funding agencies and, most surprisingly of all, diddly squat from academic research labs.Yet in absolutely every other aspect of human life, blogs already play a part, and an increasingly important part at that. For example, easily the best information that I could get on the pre-G8 summit demonstrations in Edinburgh came not from traditional media reports, nor from family that I have in the city, but from bloggers on the spot, embedded with the protestors or looking on in the streets.1The same thing is true for big corporations. If I need the latest on General Motors, I can read chairman Bob Lutz's blog.2 If I want to know where Sun Microsystems is going, there are blogs from many employees in the company, from the president on down.3 If I need the low-down on IT matters I can choose from hundreds of blogs, including outstanding examples from O'Reilly.4 Likewise, for literature, the law, education, religion and politics, there are rich and vibrant blogs in abundance.But not for the life sciences. There are a few exceptions to be sure – see our story on page 37 – but largely we're not for blogging. Why is that? For biotechs and pharma, there may be a concern about letting secrets out. But if GM and Sun Microsystems can embrace blogs, they've certainly found a solution to this problem. And if the fear in academic labs is that journals will reject papers because their ideas have been discussed on blogs, or that it's a bad idea to share concepts with competitors, then it's a sad day for science.So perhaps life scientists are simply unaware of the phenomenon. I doubt it but, just in case, here are some definitions, courtesy of Wikipedia.5• "A weblog (usually shortened to blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order)."• "Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs, and corporations. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author, to the collaboration of a large community of writers. Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around the blog; others are noninteractive."If there are reasons that blogs can't play a useful function in the life sciences, or that the new ideas, results, discoveries, collaborations, failures, and opinions that are pouring out of research labs around the world 24 hours a day shouldn't be shared immediately, I don't believe them. I believe that quality blogs will be a godsend to the life sciences community. And here's my proposal to you to get things moving:1. Get blogging. From the greenest student to the director of a top-rated laboratory, you've got something to say to your colleagues, to the research community and to the wider public. To get going, check "Starting a Science Blog" on page 37 of this issue. Staff at The Scientist are already on board, see http://media.the-scientist.com/blog/browse/.2. Send your blog's URL to blogs@the-scientist.com3. We'll compile a register on our Web site of life science blogs, complete with categorization and a ratings systems.4. The best will be invited to join the The Scientist's blogging community, which will include scores of contributors, entries from whom will appear on our site on a regular basis.5. We'll invite senior figures from the life sciences community to participate in our commonwealth. Let us know whose brainwork, reflections, and ruminations you'd most like to read and we'll see what we can do.Get blogging! And get submitting to our site. It's your chance to get your voice heard above the 9 million other bloggers out there.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog!

The life sciences have been slow to embrace blogging.

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of