Crowdsourcing for science?

Last night, I and other attendees of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships 25th Anniversary Symposium in Boston were introduced to an interesting idea, courtesy of Clive Thompson, science writer extraordinaire for Wired and other outlets: linkurl:Write blogs;http://www.collisiondetection.net/ to get ideas. It's a basic concept. Thompson -- a surprisingly dapper (for a writer), well-coiffed, quick-talking presenter -- explained that he constantly feeds his blog, collisiondetection.net, because blogging is "highly promiscuous" -- meaning, you blog and link to another blog, then that person links to you in a future post, and so on. You find out who's linked to you (linkurl:technorati.com;http://www.technorati.com/ ), check them out, and see other blogs by like-minded people, who might think about something you'd never considered before. Journalism is a bit like science: If someone works on your same idea and publishes first, your work is practically for naught. However, Thompson convinced his editors at Wired to let...