Way before Facebook, scientists and readers of science—pioneers by nature—were establishing their own brand of participatory media. Twenty-two years ago, when Fred Ausubel and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School were formulating the lab manual Current Protocols in Molecular Biology with me, we knew its success hinged on constant correction, updating, and improvement. The publishing process had to mirror the process of experimentation. Freud’s (not Fred’s) dictum, “from error to error, one discovers the truth” was our mantra, and we recognized that traditional print media could not accommodate the accelerating pace of change in methodologies. In those pre–World Wide Web days, we developed quarterly protocol updates, with our own web of reader feedback: postage-paid response cards tucked into every supplement, encouraging researchers to send in corrections and ideas for improvement.
The Future of Public Engagement
What would induce the busy ...
