You would never guess from reading the newspaper, but much of the very best investigative science journalism today actually originates from blogs. Science blogs serve as an intersection between journalists and the dense and impenetrable language of academic journals. Sadly, journalists in most newsrooms simply don’t have the time, incentive, knowledge or backing to do their own investigative work anymore, high quality science blogs help fill that void.
Blogs provide an open forum where scientists can publicly wade into discussions and question and debate each others' work under the watchful eye of their peers. Sadly the science blogosphere is now nearly downright dead and much of that discussion has moved to private groups where academics now largely exist in echo chambers populated by only their own narrow subdiscipline.
I came of age in the glory days of science blogging. In 2011, my poxy self-built, self-hosted blog got 10,000 hits a month and was quickly cited by a laundry list of publications and used without any credit by even more. That didn't pay the bills but it lit a spark in my mind that let me dream that one day my writing really could change the world and perhaps pay my bills. Fast-forward a few years and I'd signed a contract to move my blog to a platform where eventually it was getting over 100,000 hits a month and by then it really was both paying my bills and playing an active role in the science news cycle, but it wasn't the money that excited me, it was the impact I saw it have and the conversations I watched it ignite among people around the world.
But those days are over. Google ad rates plummeted and Facebook stopped being a useful distribution medium for creators to reach their audience. Platform after platform went bankrupt or shut their doors. I was offered over a 1000% pay cut and told to take it or leave it. I left.
I fled to the mainstream media. Anyone who hadn't had the experience I had would see this as a massive step up. Better recognition, better pay, a bigger audience and more stable income. It was all of those things and more but at the same time I saw it as quite the opposite.
While writing for a range of highly regarded publications, I always ran into the same problems. I could no longer really use images as I used to. I was no longer free to pepper my pieces with hyperlinks and references. I typically now had to squeeze everything into a tiny word count. The threat of lawsuits became a constant consideration and led to ideas I’d have previously merrily blogged about getting spiked because publishers are terrified of getting sued. Even when my work was technically meant to be opinion, my ability to opine was necessarily restricted. I was now at the mercy of an editor. My stories now had to be pitched, meaning I had to convince an editor that my ideas were good enough to garner a big mainstream readership before I'd even started writing them. To me this was insane. This just wasn't how I operated.
None of this should be seen as a slight on the excellent journalists I’ve been lucky to work with. Journalism is vital, it has its place and blogging isn’t going to replace it. I’m not going to stop doing journalism but journalism isn’t blogging and it never will be.
Another thing I lost as I transitioned from blogging to journalism was my comment section. While most journalists hate comment sections with a passion, I loved mine. I saw it as a place for a form of what scientists call “peer review”. Scientists currently rely on a system of pre-publication peer review, a hellish system (in its current form) that routinely delays good scientific papers by years because there is practically zero incentive for scientists to review each other’s work as it is done anonymously for no reward, with the profits being taking by the owners of journals. I never had to submit my blog posts to peer reviewers but if I ever made the tiniest error you could bet your bottom dollar that within ten minutes flat I'd know about it in a comment that sure as hell would get upvoted to the top of the page, exactly where it belonged.
Often my posts would ignite fascinating sprawling discussions in the comment section between scientists and people from different walks of life on every corner of the globe, these debates were sometimes far more interesting than my actual posts. I felt like a cupid for ideas, an intellectual matchmaker. Under my articles, different viewpoints would battle it out and minds would be changed. Discussion was almost always civil and constructive, I suspect because I had set the tone and because I always made a big effort to deconstruct the straw men that trolls rely on before the trolls had a chance to arrive.
All of that discussion disappeared in a flash when the owners of the blog platform I wrote on decided to abolish all comment sections after I had left, a decision that was also taken by countless other publishers. All of that valuable discourse is now gone forever. The owners of the platform also came up with the idea of removing all the dates from the content so it's now impossible to tell when anything I wrote over the several years I was there was actually written. I frequently now get emails from people about things I wrote five years ago as if they’d been written yesterday.
I say all this to highlight the problems of relying on privately owned media platforms. They are owned by people who can choose to do whatever they want with them. They can alter, paywall, or destroy them at a later date. This was made all too apparent when Google inexplicably shuttered the backbone of global blog networks, Google Reader, almost overnight in 2013. These things can’t happen nearly so easily on a blockchain as blockchains are decentralised by definition and function democratically. The Steem blockchain (that I’m writing this blog post on) could create a network between blogs similar to the one we used to have with Google Reader.
If I’ve whet your appetite, starting blogging on here doesn’t have to be hard. Account setup only takes a second and then after a short approval period you’re ready to go. While it might sound insanely complicated behind the scenes–and it is–actually using this platform is a breeze for even the most tech illiterate. Don’t let the word blockchain scare you off.
What about blogging? Where do you begin? The way I work is simple. I start putting notes together when an idea I think I might want to write about lands on my desk. I let ideas evolve as I research them, reading the relevant scientific papers and speaking to the relevant experts. I let them keep ticking along until such a time when it feels right to hit publish. Sometimes that is days later, other times it is years later, sometimes it is never but that’s pretty rare. If an idea is interesting enough to make me want to write it down then sooner or later a new piece of information almost always comes along that is the boost needed to make the idea make the cut. Somehow, this is almost always sooner than expected, which never fails to surprise me. If the idea needs building on after the fact, I just string posts together in a series.
Another big advantage of blogging is that by using hyperlinks to the best external sources to provide references and background, you don’t have to have to tell every single story from the very beginning. Nor do you have to rely on only one publication’s content, as is typically favoured at news publications that rely on keeping readers within their own walled gardens. I find this freedom provides far more potential for interesting content and deep dives into complex topics than I can achieve with a typical journalistic piece as I don’t have to waste time rehashing content that’s already been covered perfectly well elsewhere.
Pro-tip: already blog on Wordpress? Use Steempress to port your blog into Steem for free and reap the rewards of Steem while blogging as normal!
There are also some weirdly useful benefits from blogging that people probably don’t know about. For instance, blogging has given me a superhuman external memory, if I ever need to remember anything to do with something I’ve blogged about, all I need to do is Google the name of my blog plus any word to do with whatever obscure fact is on the tip of my tongue and voila, up pops my reference. It’s also led me to meet a whole host of amazing and inspiring people in every corner of the world.
The freedom and joy of earning a living this way was like nothing I have ever known and going from that to working within the constraints of traditional publishing models was suffocating. I hope Steemit will be my solution, and I hope you'll join me.
This is part three in a four part series. Come back tomorrow for the final part where I’ll look at how blockchains could fix the broken scientific publication process.
PART 1: I Have a Dream for Science on Steem
PART 2: What Is Steem and Why Do I Think It Could Be Revolutionary?
PART 3: Why Science Blogging Needs Saving
PART 4: How Blockchains Could Fix Science
You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to weekly email updates on my posts.
Full Disclosure: I’ve made what seems to be ballooning into a substantial investment in Steem Power so I can help encourage and reward the best science content on here and earn curation rewards for myself in the process. I’ll be using some of that investment to promote this series however that’s something I won’t be doing in future. I’m going to promote each post a few hours after it’s released to give you hard working science curators out there a good shot at the curation rewards. If that was gobbledegook to you, then read yesterday’s post where I explain how this all works.
I am truly blown away by all of that information, I do agree with you, blogging is a very important part of our society today, and I think it will become increasingly so.
I don't know how to blog, it's all greek to me.
Maybe I just need something to blog about, who knows?
I do enjoy reading blogs though, great insight into the thoughts of people...
Keep up the good work @simoxenham
Great information! I'm a retired scientist with lots of unfinished projects and unpublished data. Hopefully I can get those things published and peer-reviewed by fellow Steemians. I want to get my ideas and experience out there to help people still working who might benefit from them.
Awesome! I think there's great potential here - it's going to be the subject of my post tomorrow. Will look forward to seeing your unpublished data!
do it qiyi! DO IT!!!
Yes! This! This is probably the most useful thing to come out of all my years of blogging on Blogger and LJ and now Steemit, the ability to just tip-of-my-tongue old memories and old conversations instantly.
Meanwhile, you are making some very cogent points about the applicability and utility of blockchain in science writing and about how blogging is such a vital bridge between the silos of arcane expertise and the layman's understanding.
Blogging is very fascinating. Since you are given a chance to share what you know to people. I was an aspiring writer before but was not really given a chance due to biased connections by others and it really pained me so much that I stopped. I am very greatful towards steemit because it opened a lot of doors for me. An avenue for creativity,passion and engagement a great place to write about you niche. Kudos to this amazing article @simoxenham ;)
If you haven't already, consider getting in touch with the SteemSTEM team. They're responsible for the high quality of STEM content on Steemit and put a lot of work into rewarding good science articles.
Thanks, already in touch!
Steemit gives great oppurtunity for science bloggers especially now when you can find your "circle". Again interesting article that had to be read at one sitting.As good as last ones.I wish I could give you much more that 0.01$ upvote sir.That's the kind of content that Steemit needs to grow bigger.Full of information and wroten by hothead 🤓
Thanks! Every little helps :) It would require a lot more than a single reader to earn a single cent even in the good old days of blogging so I have high hopes that this platform can scale!
Btw.I forgot to mention that it's very important to attach hyperlinks to studies as you are saying since most of the mainstream do not use proofs for their theories.So why would I trust them at all?🤔
I know it's one of my pet peeves, there's simply no excuse not to!
This is SO important. Since we are all humans, we're bound to make mistakes and our readers can hold us accountable for that or even provide additional information.
Although I understand the hatred for comments in a way as well - if you attract the "wrong" kind of people, who are starting to spread insults and conspiracy theories, this can be incredibly exhausting. A few years ago, I experienced this with another blog of mine which went viral for a short time.
Yes, there's certainly two sides to the coin. I found this became less of a problem however once upvoting and downvoting of comments became possible.
Yeah, downvoting this stuff is definitely a helpful improvement. That's why I like the flagging option on Steemit. You cannot delete comments (which is a good thing), but you can rip their creators of their rewards and reputation. That's at least a start.
Another great post.
We have gotten used to a world where having news and articles for free is the common thing.
But we cannot forget something, nothing in this world is for free! News companies make a living just by trying to gather as many readers as possible and it is us the readers who will now become the product. They sell us as a source for advertisement. Although it seems like a legit way to stay in business because the main goal is to drag as many people as possible, the quality drops drastically.
Thanks for the advises about blogging. They will be very helpful. Hopefully I improve my quality of writing by each post I make.
Thanks Jorge, good luck! It's certainly a great way to improve your writing, I still cringe at the posts I wrote when I was first starting out! :D
Damn, you've really been knocking it out of the park with your first few posts, you make me want to go back to the deep dive, big research content I was doing when I started on steemit.
Thanks! Followed - Keep it up :) The research community tends to change their practices very slowly, but you've got a big advantage being here so early - I wish I was here in the early days!
Oh thanks! Appreciate it, wasn't even fishing for a follow ;)
Ahh, I wish I had more to show for the advantage though. As you might've noticed I picked up on the site almost 2 years ago and don't have much to show for it. I'm still in a bio undergrad so I don't have too much time to put together work and little extra funds as you could imagine a student does. Most of my time pays off it terms of experience in writing and understanding the platform, as it really can be a pay in site.
Having good content is a requirement, but the means to put some serious steem power in your wallet is what really counts as you may have seen. The more you can fund, the more visibility and steem you can rack in those early days which is what matters.
Interesting series of posts on the use of the blockchain in science blogging @simoxenham. I am currently an economist, but with quite substantial training in the sciences although I eventually chose not to go down that route and veered more towards the social sciences. I still retain a keen interest in scientific developments and a passionate distaste for faux science, which can build up very quickly here at times.
Steemit definitely needs more high quality science blogs and scientifically trained critical voices, so kudoes to you. Followed and resteemed. Keep it coming!
Hello friend! Good morning. Pls am fairly new one steemit. It has taken me one week sleepless nights to come up with my post Of yesterday and the post are two in number. Pls you reading it and ur upvote will encourage me pls I beg u
Totally agree with this post...Help and support each other and the world as a whole--a better place...
creative job @simoxenham, thank you for sharing.
I agree with the main gist of the case you're making, but unfortunately with this part:
in practice it doesn't always line up with the theory. When I created my account it was relatively straightforward like you describe, but I've tried to convince some acquaintances to create accounts and for some of them it has taken weeks to get approval. The powers that be say they're working on it, which is good, but when a delay does happen it tends to undermine people's interest in trying the platform.
Yeah. It's important to realize signing up new users costs money. I believe Steemit Inc is delegating new users with $10 US+ in STEEM power. Also you do not need to sign up through steemit.com. There are sites that let you pay for yourself and then there is no delay.
Yeah, hopefully they will find a way to speed account approval up soon. On the plus side, I understand their procedures help fight against spammers which improves the network and the ability to earn for all us genuine users!
The science category is one of my favorites here on Steem but there really aren't many unique/interesting posts. It's usually just someone spewing facts that can be gotten elsewhere. What make a good science post, in my mind, unique and interesting is when personality is infused with the information...an aspect that we, the non-scientists, can relate to. Great post BTW. Looking forward to more.
Bill Bryson comes to mind as another journalist who can write well about science. Maybe we can see him on Steemit one day:). I am also a believer in the science community on steemit, we will continue to develop it. Like you said in your last post in this series Steemit is doing a lot of fundamental things right. Data has value and Steemit lets us share in that value.
Yes, we really do need to bridge the gap between academics and the rest of the world.
It would be nice to have at least 50% of the information we take in to be educational. Leave 25% for the entertainment industry and 25 for some 'real' news.
At least thats how id like my social media feed and search findings to be like.
I cant even find that scholarly search option on google anymore.
Thank you for bringing some scientific material onto this platform.
That would be wonderful, if only. It still exists, scholar.google.com is what you're after!
Nice! Thank you.
It used to be a tab option though. But i'll take what i can get. ;)
Here is a post I wrote about finding free scientific articles, if you are looking for some science news. I would recommend Nature Communications - good for scrolling through and looking for an interesting science read. Cheers!
great post, science category... thanks
We need more science and fewer science-deniers and faith-based science disbelievers. I could rant on this, but felt your thoughts were timely and well put together. Science Rocks!
I had a lot of experiments especially in electronics and engineering side. However, I had no time to publish a 500 words article. But I will try to allocate some of my time blogging.
To blog about science and engineerind and earning from is dream come true.
The last science post i made took me 2 weeks. It takes time to gather information....and u have to be really interested and motivated to do it....
Also,
OH MAN, thank you so much for this!!!! @simoxhenham!!! 😭
Followed. Lookong forward for more awesome posts.
Helpful information.
Interesting blog.
And of course the longest post I've read .
Good job my friend @simoxenham one day I want to be like you!
This post has received a 20.79 % upvote from @boomerang.
hey, @simonxenham write cool, teach me so))
this should be save by us. surely .
not for us. also for our future generation
Great information my dear friend, your post is wonderful, i really proud of you, i like your post,
You are a knowledgeable person .
Your information is really great .
Thank you for share your post sir.
Un post bastante interesante, para la gente del mundo de la Ciencias, steemit es una gran oportunidad para crecer y dar a conocer nuestros artículos y trabajos científicos, @simoxenham.
this is an awesome opinion man, does it need savings , I would say a big yes , it does , if for example you were working for a particular scientific industry that pays well , you don't just consume it all , without putting aside at least 10% of your income .
to me these accumulated income will help you to set up , maybe a lab or a workshop for practice , even after one's retirement age.
This is damn true. Science blogging needs saving. I mean, I am not a scientist. I am a biology degree holder, though. And as a student who were under some of the not-that-good professors in the world, science blogging can help. Students love tech. In steemit, earning and learning can be done at the same time. I bet simple science explanation to normal stuff happening in plain sight cannot be explained by non-science people.
please hope me, let me gote your vote please,,
Blogging is a key that spreads Information wide. And taking it to a science perspective is not something irrelevant and it might be the door science is longing to open for years..
I found your post interesting to read. Vital points were noted which i benefitted from.