Sandwalk: The Scientific American Blog Network

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Scientific American Blog Network

Today marks the launch of another blog network. This one is The Scientific American Blog Newtork. Bora Zivkovic is the man behind it.

I read about thirty blogs on a regular basis. Some of them have migrated two or three times over the past five years and I always follow them because they are good blogs. I really don't care whether the blogs I follow are part of a network or not. I don't read the other blogs in a network because my aggregator gives me a direct feed.

What's the purpose behind belonging to a blog network? Does it provide something that you can't get by being an independent blogger? Is it money? Are there any downsides other than the fact that you are lending your name to support for a profit making corporation? If you're supporting a magazine like Discover, Seed (now dead), Nature, or Scientific American does it mean that you stand behind whatever they print?

The thing I find most annoying about commercial blogs is the advertising—some of which is contrary to what's being posted. Is the "profit" to the blogger really significant enough? Maybe it is for PZ Myers but the income for someone like me was peanuts when I last explored that option.

7 comments :

Psi Wavefunction said...: For me, personally, and I do not speak for anyone else at SciAm, it is largely the opportunity to use a well-established platform with name and readership to spread stories about my tiny oft-neglected field. There are benefits of co-blogging with others, at the risk of becoming a slight circlejerk at times (which I try to keep out of my blogging), since the network can provide support and advice when it comes to issues with writing or your own blog community or whatever. And the lasting friendships, those are nice too. But in my case, I felt compelled, as someone semi-officially in charge of public outreach for my area, to take advantage of this opportunity to spread the word, if you will. Hope it clarifies things somewhat...

Still keeping my other blog though, as it's my own entirely. And no, I don't stand behind any other SciAm material but my own - I didn't write it.; Tuesday, July 05, 2011 5:12:00 PM
Razib Khan said...: If you're supporting a magazine like Discover, Seed (now dead), Nature, or Scientific American does it mean that you stand behind whatever they print?

LOL. come now, do you really think anyone would presume that? ok, a few people who aren't internet savvy do seem to think that i represent *discover magazine* and that *discover magazine* represents me. but this is not the typical assumption.

in any case, remuneration is OK. but the big think is the one-stop-shopping effect. unless you're a really distinctive brand you usually have more traffic and are "noticed" more when you're bundled with other blogs on a network. the second issue is that being with *discover magazine* seems to mean that i have more credibility with people if the "influence" of ppl linking to me is any judge. all things equal i don't care, but it is cool to get more information out there in regards to the science i'm passionate about.; Tuesday, July 05, 2011 6:59:00 PM
DK said...: Is it money?

I suspect it is. Nothing to sneer at. And maybe some extra cushion of dedicated tech support.; Tuesday, July 05, 2011 8:45:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Publicity, and assumed credibility.; Tuesday, July 05, 2011 10:55:00 PM
Lou Jost said...: I like an interesting group of blogs under a single umbrella. These groups usually have a nice summary page of the latest blogs, which I can quickly browse. I can efficiently choose which ones I want to read, including occasional posts from blogs I would not ordinarily have time to follow in detail.

I do wish the SciAm blog summary page were more informative, more like ScienceBlogs, giving a couple of sentences from each new blog post. Post titles are not informative enough.; Tuesday, July 05, 2011 11:08:00 PM
Psi Wavefunction said...: @William
Some of us specifically try to avoid assumed credibility by writing informally and loudly showing off lack of credentials. I am just an undergrad and my stories are [hopefully] accurate and interesting because of the sources I have read and understood correctly, not because of my platform or title or whatever. Which, by the way, should be no different for anyone else, faculty included. Accuracy hinges on sources, while personal expertise is more heavily involved with interpretation thereof, the credibility of which, given accurate sources, can be determined by the reader themselves.

So no, some of us specifically avoid assumed credibility. Publicity, on the other hand, sure. I can only go so far with a Blogger-run blog on an obscure subject. A network can give me the necessary boost. And I'm promoting my topic here, not myself - I don't even blog under my real name, which I hope is easy enough to guess ;-)

And I'm not special so I can't be alone in that approach.; Wednesday, July 06, 2011 12:34:00 AM
Troy Britain said...: I could use a few peanuts...; Friday, July 08, 2011 9:11:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

More Recent Comments

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Scientific American Blog Network

7 comments :