The organisers of the Science Online London 2009 conference are asking people to propose their own session ideas (see some examples here), so here is a proposal:

Title: Who Are You? Digital Identity in Science

Many important decisions in Science are based on identifying scientists and their contributions. From selecting reviewers for grants and publications, to attributing published data and deciding who is funded, hired or promoted, digital identity is at the heart of Science on the Web.

Despite the importance of digital identity, identifying scientists online is an unsolved problem [1]. Consequently, a significant amount of scientific and scholarly work is not easily cited or credited, especially digital contributions: from blogs and wikis, to source code, databases and traditional peer-reviewed publications on the Web. This (proposed) session will look at current mechanisms for identifying scientists digitally including contributor-id (CrossRef), researcher-id (Thomson), Scopus Author ID (Elsevier), OpenID, Google Scholar [2], Single Sign On, PubMed, Google Scholar [2], FOAF+SSL, LinkedIn, Shared Identifiers (URIs) and the rest. We will introduce and discuss each via a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). Is digital identity even possible and ethical? Beside the obvious benefits of persistent, reliable and unique identifiers, what are the privacy and security issues with personal digital identity?

If this is a successful proposal, I’ll need some help. Any offers? If you are interested in joining in the fun, more details are at scienceonlinelondon.org

References

1. Bourne, P., & Fink, J. (2008). I Am Not a Scientist, I Am a Number PLoS Computational Biology, 4 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000247
2. Various Publications about unique author identifiers bookmarked in citeulike
3. Yours Truly (2009) Google thinks I’m Maurice Wilkins
4. The Who (1978) Who Are You? Who, who, who, who? (Thanks to Jan Aerts for the reference!)

The organisers of the Science Online London 2009 conference are asking people to propose their own session ideas (see some examples here), so here is proposal:

Title: Blogging For Profit: Costs and Benefits

What are the costs and benefits of blogging and how can you make sure the latter justifies the former?

This (proposed) session will look at two kinds of profit, and the costs associated with each.

1. Research profit (in science and academia), building digital reputations on the Web. Can blogging help your next grant proposal for research funding and if so, how? How can blogging be used to increase the visibility and impact of published research via the likes of ResearchBlogging.org, blogs.nature.com and other aggregators?
2. Financial profit (in business), making blogging pay the bills. What business models (and infrastructure) exist to support blogging? Including, but not limited to: Nature Network, ScienceBlogs, Google AdSense, “20% time“, “free” tools (WordPress, Blogger, OpenWetWare etc). Going solo vs. joining a club – which business models and tools are right for you?

This could be followed by a general discussion on these benefits. When do they justify their costs (and risks) and make for profitable blogging?

If this is a successful proposal, I’ll need some help. Any offers? If you are interested in joining in the fun, details are at scienceonlinelondon.org

[CC-licensed Business Graph picture by nDevilTV]

There’s a nifty quantum mechanics bitchfight difference of opinion going on at Uncertain Principles. Read the comments.

This decoherence approach is not one that I’d reach about before, but I like it. I must admit that the “many worlds” notion always seemed to me more like a comfortable notion that we could get our heads around rather than a genuine interpretation about what might be happening.

The artist Andy Warhol once said:

“In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes”.

This well worn saying has been quoted and misquoted in hundreds of different ways in the forty years since Warhol first coined it [1].

Bad Scientist Ben Goldacre, in his keynote speech* at Science Blogging (sciblog) 2008, highlighted one of these deliberate misquotes, which he attributed to NTK.net (Need To Know: Britain’s most sarcastic high-tech weekly newsletter). It goes a little something like this:

“On the internet everybody can be world famous for fifteen people“.

This wonderful expression captures the nature and scale of science blogging on the internet today in a nutshell. Personally, I think it also sums up much of the spirit of the Science Blogging 2008 conference as well. In total, around eight groups of fifteen people, attended the conference. It was physically impossible to talk to all of them in one day, especially since I had to slink off early at 7pm, but I did manage to meet the following people:

Fifteen random people I’ve never met before

Fifteen people I’ve never met before (virtually or actually), nice to meet you all!

1. Martin Robbins of leyscience.net
2. Jeff Marlow, rocket scientist, starting PhD at Caltech working on the next mission to Mars (wow!). Currently working at Imperial College London (and absorbing soccer football culture – but has given up on understanding cricket – I don’t blame you mate!)
3. Scott Kier, Royal Society, who hosted an enjoyable and lively unconference session “bored of blogging: how to keep motivated“
4. Jenny Beard British Association for the Advancement of Science, see the Fantastic Big Question web site, e.g. Will the LHC in CERN create a black hole, and why should we NOT be worried about it? Ian Mulvany isn’t convinced
5. Ed Yong Cancer Research UK, not exactly a rocket scientist, see European genes mirror european geography
6. Prateek Buch, University College London Genetics / clinical trials, is he obsessed with penises? Probably, aren’t all blokes obsessed with the size of their manhood?
7. Hungarian biologist Victor Poór who draws funny cartoons
8. Edinburgh e-CAT electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) bloke whose exact name and software I’ve forgotten. Damn. Rory Macneil was his name.
9. Coracle (takes his name from a gene/protein he worked on in fruit flies), when he is away from the bench he hangs around at badscience.net
10. Marco Boscolo, Bologna, Italy XML is his DJ
11. Biologist-cum-statistician Bob O’Hara, who looks nothing like the cat shown in his profile picture.
12. Government bods from DIUS, must have been Mike Rose? probably and Steph Gray definitely, see DIUS sciblog report. I liked the demo of how to embed funky DIUS widgets in your website (techie note to self: WordPress strips out <script> tags so I can’t embed widgets here. Doh!
13. Hilary Spencer(?), Nature New York, she must be the person responsible for sanity checking submissions for managing the development of Nature Precedings
14. Victor Henning, who works on Mendeley which helps you to “manage, share and discover academic knowledge”.
15. Bronwen Dekker, who works on Nature Protocols, see picture of the Dekkers (who kindly obliged my very amateur photography)
    

Fifteen people I met in person (at last!)

Fifteen people I finally met in person, having virtually “met” online by reading their publications, blog posts or through email contact.

1. Raf Aerts (Raffa), Tropical Ecologist, had an interesting chat with him about the Ethiopian mountains, where he does his field work, home to the bone-dropping Lammergayers. Makes me wish I’d never given up field work.
2. Alexsander Griekspoor, who now works on Mekentosj.com and “Papers” full-time
3. Henry Gee, the croc-wearing phenomenon and sciblographer
4. Richard P. Grant (RPG), University of Sydney, (Note to self: find out how he convinced his department heads to pay for his round-the-world trip!). Not to be confused with RPG or Richard E. Grant (women tell me the latter isn’t as sexy)
5. Roland Krause, finally we meet for real to take notes from the biomass
6. Graham Steel, Journal of Visualised Experiments (JOVE) blogger (we are all scientists now) I think we have the same sense of humour. Must be a Scottish thing, I’m sure I’ve got some scottish in me somewhere (not just in my name). While I don’t have a visible ginger gene, I sometimes get tingles down my spine when I hear bagpipes. Also, after several pints of Deuchars IPA, I can even sound like I’m scottish too. Och aye! Does that make me Scottish?
7. Maxine Clark, Nature editor extraordinaire “the world needs more editors”! (not scientists?)
8. Heather Etchevers, France, who is wondering what to do with all her conference notes
9. Chemist and informatician Egon Willighagen, see his sciblog report
10. Li Kim Lee, runs Nature Network London
11. Matt Brown, runs Nature Network London and organised a scientific pub crawl in London town. Mr. Barman, I’d like five pints of your finest beer science, preferably the bitter English variety, not the fizzy American or continental european stuff.
12. Brian Clegg who came out with one of my favourite quotes from the conference, “there aren’t too many scientists in the world, there are too many biologists. What the world needs is more physicists, chemists, mathematicians, engineers etc” – or words to that effect. Discuss. He also argues that Scientists alone aren’t enough to communicate science to the general public. Hmmmm.
13. Jennifer Rohn, partly responsible for lablit.com when she’s not pondering the celebrity geek phenomenon
14. Martin Fenner, see his His Paper Writing Dream Machine version 1.0
15. Matt Wood, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute informatics-type. I’m glad somebody likes my impact factor boxing joke. Ha ha, where’s the punchline? I’m looking forward to seeing the Sanger bioinformatics demo up at Amazon Web Services (with hadoop) sometime soon and hopefully attending Bar Camp in Cambridge (BarCamb) next year, which Matt organises.

Fifteen people I’ve met before

Fifteen people I’ve met before, good to catch up

1. Euan Adie, Nature (but no relation to Kate), he has seen the future and its bakeable, pass me the futuristic cheesey snacks Euan!
2. Scintillator Alf Eaton, Nature, hublogger and hubmedder
3. Ian Mulvany, Nature, responsible for connotea (Ian, Alf, Euan: thanks for the free lunch!)
4. Timo Hannay, Nature, manages all the webby people.
5. Chemist Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge
6. Chemist Jean-Claude Bradley. We are looking forward to your gig in Manchester tomorrow.
7. Aussie Chemist Cameron Neylon, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and University of Southampton, blogs at OpenWetWare
8. Mind Hacker Vaughan Bell, who helped me understand the crucial differences between the Royal Society and the Royal Institution (I’ll tell you later). He’s off to Colombia, not Columbia the University in North America , but Colombia the country in South America (it sounds very similar in spoken language). Bon voyage, Vaughan.
9. The totally zen Mike Barton, busy releasing bioinformatics survey results (under a CC-BY license of course)
10. Anna Kushnir, Nature (but not a big fan of PubMed). You and me both.
11. Corie Lok, Nature, organises Nature Network Boston
12. Attila Csordas, who likes the “equalising” effect of blogging. Oh yes indeed.
    
13. Andrew Walkingshaw, see his talk on Linked data and scientific publishing, is the “linked data” bandwagon just a rebadged and repackaged semantic web? I dunno. Discuss.
14. Oh b*ggeration! (imaginary friend 1)…
15. …I can’t quite fill this list to fifteen (imaginary friend 2)

Fifteen people I didn’t meet

Fifteen people I didn’t get the chance to speak to, maybe next time. So many people, so little time…

1. Marc West, a podcaster responsible for the Mr. Science Show
2. Ben Goldacre, medic and journalist, I’ve got a stack of nerdy questions about badscience.net and big bad pharma that will have to wait for another time
3. Simon Frantz, one of the people behind the nobelprize.org website
   
4. Clare Dudman Keeper of the snails, did a great session on creativity
5. Gia Millinovich so how come we rarely see you and your hubby Professor Brian Cox in Manchester?
6. Those Digital Curation Centre (DCC) people (Martin Donnelly?) look interesting, eg. Digital Curation Blog: How to make repositories a killer app for scientists.
7. Professor David Colquhoun FRS. One of a handful of Professors (of Science) with a blog, and I’m pretty sure the only Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) with a blog.
8. Aussie journalist Zoë Corbyn from Times Higher Education, didn’t get the chance to hassle her about writing that myexperiment news article soon.
9. David Bradley of Science Base
10. Oliver Obst head of the medical library of the University of Munster, see Science Blogging 2008 London: Nachmittag (Ja!)
    
11. Gavin Bell, Nature, hand held blogger
12. Charlotte Stoddart, podcaster (or should that be “podder”?), see her podcasting Ben Goldacre here
13. Simon Hughes, British Library
14. Dr Aust who likes to vent his spleen
15. Brain Duck who is trying to understand uncertainty blogs over at brainduck.wordpress.com

Actually there are a lot more than fifteen people I’d like to meet, there is the other sixty as well.

Fifteen Science Professors blogging?

Phew! That’s four groups of fifteen people, around half the total conference attendance. A very interdisciplinary bunch, just like leafing through a copy of Nature, you get genetics on one page, climate change on the next followed by missions to Mars to wrap it all up. I think this is something special that makes Nature and Nature Network unique.

The striking thing is, with a few exceptions, most conference attendees, nature networkers and bloggers are relatively young. Why don’t more senior scientists blog? This is a challenge Timo Hannay and PMR posed at the end of the conference, “get more senior scientists blogging”. There is a BIG prize up for grabs, an all expenses paid trip to the next Science Foo Camp (scifoo) in the Googleplex, California (August 2009). Details to be posted online soon. Maybe this will mean science blogging 2009 will have fifteen senior Professors in the audience?

And finally, if you are one of the ~ fifteen (or so) people subscribed to and reading this O’Really? blog, thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy my random ramblings, I certainly enjoy writing them. For any Professors out there reading this (I know a few that do), when will you start blogging? Now, blogging is no substitute for peer-review, but it certainly fills some of the gaping holes that traditional scientific publishing leaves in the web. What are you waiting for?

References

1. Andy Warhol (1968). (volume released to mark his exhibition in Stockholm, February–March, 1968). “Warhol, Andy” The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Ed. Elizabeth Knowles. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online.
2. Journal of the Hyperlinked Organisation (JOHO) famous to fifteen people
3. Wikipedia: Fifteen minutes of fame
4. Discussion on this post over at friendfeed and on nature network too.
5. Pop Stars? Nein Danke! In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people…, thanks to Heather Etchevers

* A video of Ben Goldacre’s talk should be available online soon.

(Creative Commons licensed picture of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol, “stolen” from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) New York by oddsock)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Yesterdays Nature Science Blogging Conference at the RI was just what I needed to kick start some enthusiasm for blogging again. I’d like to thank the guys at Nature Network for putting it on, and all the lovely people I met, both at the pub night on Thursday, and at the conference yesterday. There’s a collection of links to the online action at sciencegeekspeak.com, where I also posted audio back to Mike to create a podcast of the final session. There’s loads of photos up on Flikr- hunt for the sciblog tag. The day has made me totally rethink the way I blog. Is there such a thing as a born-again blogger? Yesterday is probably the first time I’ve ever talked more than a couple of sentences about what I blog about to anyone. I feel like I may have finally realised an important thing: what I want to write about….

Contributing to a group blog like the Bridge8 blog, where we have such a broad spread of things that we do, I’ve generally written about things that I’ve found interesting on my random travels round the web (and life). Which is a fine thing to do. There are loads of different types of blogs that were talked about at the conference, which Martin Fenner has nicely summarised, and I don’t think I have ever really decided where what I write for Bridge8 fits. I feel that up until this point I haven’t really been considering what the whole strength of blogs are, that they are platforms for discussion. If you are putting up posts that are just summaries of interesting stuff, you are not really inviting comment (except maybe a ‘that’s interesting’ sort of comment). So, my the first thing I want to start with is a bit of self analysis.

Why do I blog?

The unconference session on ‘bored with blogging’ had some discussion around this, some of the reasons brought up for why people blog included wanting to ‘have a rant’ (eg about bad science in mainstream press), an outlet for frustrations (in the lab etc) and wanting to share ideas. One of the reasons I like blogging is because it makes me keep up with things. Now that I’m not in the lab anymore, there’s less pressure to keep up with reading research papers, but I feel that knowing that I have to contribute to this blog spurs me into susbcribing to loads more news and blog feeds than I would otherwise probably read ie, it makes me not be so lazy. A good thing.

What influences the way I blog?

I think the biggest influence to the way I write blogs is the other blogs that I read. And why I read them. The blogs that I really like to read are generally entertaining (to me at least). I like reading blogs like SciencePunk, Wired and BoingBoing, which have a lot of collections of interesting cool geeky stuff and collect latest interesting science news bits and pieces. I don’t really read a lot of blogs that go into deep analysis of research papers, and (oddly, now I realise) I don’t really read any about what interests me most about my current job- science education provision.

What do I want to learn more about?

I want to use blogging (those I read, and what I write) to get more perspectives on how people learn about science. How both teachers and scientists (and of course students themselves) feel about school science teaching, perspectives on the goals of science teaching and learning. So- where do I start? If anyone has recommendations of some useful blogs to start with that would be great. Even on sites like Edublogger it seems difficult to find science-specific ones. Is that just me not knowing where to look?
So what next?

A little more time to digest yesterdays discussions. A bit of time to formulate some ideas. Maybe a Sunday afternoon nap. But at least I feel a bit more confident about what the future of my blogging on Bridge8 will be about- sharing ideas and thoughts about science learning. I’m sure I’ll still post up interesting bits I find, but I think that’s what I want to start having conversations about. Feeling a little more enlightened about what I am going to try and do from now on. Yay!

One of the surprises (for me) of yesterday’s Science Blogging 2008 conference was the place where it was held: the Royal Institution of Great Britain. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know anything about the RGIB before this event, but pleased to say I know more now and will definitely be back.

Royal Institution of Great Britain, Faraday Auditorium

Photo from Kaustav Bhattacharya via Creative Commons license

Not to be confused with the well-known Royal Society – a learned body that provides science funding, publishing, and avdice – the “Ri” has a much greater focus on education and engagement with the public on matters of science. It’s been no slouch on doing original research; according to Wikipedia:

The Institution has had an instrumental role in the advancement of British science since its founding. Notable scientists who have worked there include Sir Humphry Davy (who discovered sodium and potassium), Michael Faraday, Sir Lawrence Bragg (who won the Nobel prize for his work on x-ray diffraction), and more recently Lord George Porter. In the 19th century Faraday carried out much of the research which laid the groundwork for the practical exploitation of electricity at the Royal Institution. Fourteen of the Royal Institution’s resident scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Ten chemical elements including sodium, were discovered at the Institution, as well as the electric generator and the atomic structure of crystals.

But its the public engagement is where the Ri excels. It’s rumoured that some of its early 19th-century lectures were so popular, and drew such traffic-stopping crowds, that the road in front of the building was made London’s first one-way street. Many British people are familiar with the Ri’s traditional Christmas lectures for kids.

The building is just completing a £22 million renovation, and is very impressive inside. I see now why it was appropriate for it to host a conference of bloggers who want to use the public medium of blogging.

If you’re in London, go see some of the events they’re putting on in September. Certainly drop in on Saturday 20 September when they hold an open house. Other cool events are Crossing over: exchanges in art and biotechnologies (an exhibit from 2 October to 21 November) and Depicting movement: patterns in the brain (a lecture on 27 October).

Thanks to Richard and Lisa for getting THIS audio from the final panel session of the Nature’s Science Blogging Conference at the RI in London.

4:15 – 5:30 Embracing change: taking online science into the future
Richard Grant, Cameron Neylon and Peter Murray-Rust. Moderated by Timo Hannay.

The panelists summarise the key themes of the day and provide a look into the future of online communication and collaboration in science. The goal is for attendees to come away with things they can do to enhance communication of science online.

It is a cracker of a session, well worth a listen even tho the levels are a bit dodgey in places. After a lot of two an fro about the value or otherwise as blogs to the reputation and career of scientists there is a fascinating section on citizen science (something that is close to the heart of the sciencegeekspeak.com conglomerate).
Enjoy, spread the word and let’s get people talking about Science!

Mike, Richard & Lisa

Thanks to Lisa for making THIS short introductory podcast at the start of the Nature’s Science Blogging Conference at the RI in London.

Mike & Lisa

Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy.

In a few minutes I’m off to Science Blogging 2008, a one-day conference here in London for science bloggers. I’m prepared for being the lightweight part-timer in the crowd. I’m disappointed I had to miss some of the warm-up events (pub visits, walks to point of scientific interest). But looking forward to the topics today.

Science Blogging London 2008 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

I am at the Science Blogging one day meeting at the Royal Institute in London today.

The programme looks really interesting and on an unconference format following discussion on the nature network forum.

This means that some good basic stuff was sorted before we turned up – a universal tag (sciblog e.g. flickr, twitter) for attendees to use at and after the conference. Looking forward to a good day and ots of backchannel

Tags: sciblog

If, like me, you can’t make it to London for Nature’s Science Blogging Conference being held at the Royal Institution then join us online. This post is an attempt to point to all the online goodness so you can join in or just watch online. Tis an all day event GMT +0, so for us Aussies that means the first half of the event happens before midnight Saturday night.

UPDATE:

Live video stream HERE thanks to Cameron.
(Who is also live commenting in this friendfeed room)
Our first podcast just published HERE – thanks lisa!

The TWITTER action faded after lunch.
Great summary of final panel session HERE.
(Rummage thru the friendfeed room and look for the 70 comments)

Tags:

• sciblog
• YAHOO Pipe by @dnwallace (brings info from many sources)

Schedule:

30 – 9:45 Coffee/Breakfast; Proposal of unconference sessions

9:45 – 10:00 Opening remarks Naomi Temple, Royal Institution; Matt Brown/Corie Lok, Nature Network

10:00 – 10:30 Keynote: Ben Goldacre
(title to be confirmed)

10:30 – 11:30 Panel: The scientific life, exposed.
Jenny Rohn, Grrl Scientist, Anna Kushnir. Moderated by Mo Costandi.

11:30 – 11:45 Short break; Voting on unconference sessions

11:45 – 12:30 Morning breakout sessions. Three parallel sessions of 45 minutes, with option to go 15 minutes longer.

12:30 – 1:45 Lunch and networking; Announce afternoon unconference sessions

1:45 – 2:30 Afternoon breakout sessions. Three parallel sessions of 45 minutes, with option to go 15 minutes longer.

2:30 – 3:15 Coffee and networking

3:15 – 4:15 Unconference sessions: 3 parallel sessions to be decided on the day by vote.

4:15 – 5:30 Embracing change: taking online science into the future
Richard Grant, Cameron Neylon and Peter Murray-Rust. Moderated by Timo Hannay.

5:30 – 5:40 Closing remarks Matt Brown/Corie Lok/Royal Institution

5:45 Drinks and networking at the Ri, to be continued at a local pub (location to be announced).

Things to watch out for:

• Possible live video and or audio from people like Cameron Neylon (who did stuff like this at scifoo)
• Twitter back-channel (use #sciblogs hashtag and maybe your questions can be addressed)

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Looks like this August is the center of my science related social life in 2008: starting with the bottom-up BioBarCamp unconference in Palo Alto followed by the top-down Sci Foo Camp unconference in Mountain View and now The Science Blogging Conference in London on the 30th. This conference is an interesting mix: on one hand it is organized solely by Nature Publishing Group and held at The Royal Institution of Great Britain (“the oldest independent research body in the world”), on the other hand it is about science blogging (one of the newest independent research body of the world) which today is affordable for almost everybody in the world with a broadband connection and already has an increasing equalizing effect on how science is done and how science is communicated. Secondly, although it started as conference with a schedule in advance the organizers later included 3 parallel unconference sessions that will be proposed at the beginning of the conf. I hope that later even the strictest, hardcore scientific conferences will include unconference sessions thereby introducing a random, surprising and entertaining element into the regularities of academic life.

What I am most interested in on The Science Blogging is the people, the bloggers behind and their case stories of successful or failed actions, communications, instigations via their blog posts.

From the programme I’d like to highlight the How to enhance your blog session by Maxine Clarke and Euan Adie which seems well suited for rookie bloggers, the blogging and creativity session with Clare Dudman, Brian Clegg and the amazing Henry Gee and Communicating Primary Research Publicly
Heather Etchevers, Jean-Claude Bradley and Bob O’Hara.

Links:

official site of the conference: programme and attendees

Nature Network Topic

FriendFeed Room

Nature Publishing Group are organising a workshop on science blogging, this Saturday 30th August 2008 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Why would you care? Because there are:

1. Lots of interesting people…
2. …talking about a range of interesting subjects …
3. .. in a distinguished venue that has recently been refurbished. It is also home to the fantastic Christmas lectures and much more besides.

To cap it all, I think it will be great fun too. So if you’re going, see you there. If you’re not, it is never too late to publish your fantasy science funding entry. Much of the conference will be televised and blogged, making it available online too.

Fantasy Science Funding is a fun game that anybody can play. You select a Science funding body of your choice, imagine yourself as its all powerful chief executive, and decide which areas of scientific research you would “hire and fire”. What could be easier? Here is how Fantasy Science Funding works…

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is full of scientists. All kinds of scientists working in biology, chemistry and physics, as well as plenty of mathematicians, engineers and technologists too work in the UK. They make their living in good old Blighty, pushing forward the boundaries of human knowledge, wherever and whenever they can. Nanotechnology, astronomy, molecular biology, primatology, climatology and lots of other ‘ologies can all be found in Britain. Who is it that pays them and how much money do they spend? Here is a list of funding bodies in 2008, along with their annual budgets and chief executives. It is not a comprehensive list, because it does not include all charities, European money and privately funded Science. However, it does cover most of the larger funding bodies…

(*I’m told CRUK spends more like £300 million than £6m but can’t find a citation for this)

(**See also wikipedia, ERC has been given a budget of €7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013, equivalent to about €1.5 billion per year)

A Nation of Scientists?

It has been said that Britain is a nation of shopkeepers, gardeners, curtain-twitchers, musicians, gossips, entrepreneurs, artists, novelists, politicians and other weird people.

With relentless globalisation, nationality looks like an increasingly odd concept. But with more than £3 billion spent every year on Science in the UK, if Britain is a nation of anything, it is a nation of Scientists.

[Creative Commons licensed picture of the Union Jack flag projected on Buckingham Palace by bambi851]

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Next Wednesday (13th August) will kick off our first recording. We’re going to discuss our plans for seeing Science Blogging 2008: London, a conference hosted by Nature Network and the Royal Institution take off online.

Lisa Bailey (Bridge8, RiGB) is attending the conference and helping us ensure that the basics are available (power, wifi – good coffee??). Mike Seyfang will be in Adelaide coordinating posts and podcasts to www.sciencegeekspeak.com and Kristin will be commenting from Mexico va LA. we’ll be tagging everything with sciblog. RSS this blog to keep up to date.

Kristin

(Updated by Mike)

Lisa: I’m booked in for the Nature Network Science Blogging conference to be held at the end of this month, conveniently enough for me at the Royal Institution.

The programme is up now, with some sessions to be decided on the day by the attendees. I’m particularly interested in how blogging can help in science education, and I’ll be heading along to that discussion.

I will definitely be doing the Tour of London Pubs with a Science Theme the night before! I’m sure we’ll hit the John Snow, a pub in Soho, famous for Dr John Snow, father of modern epidemiology, who demonstrated in 1854 that cholera was spread through contaminated water. He removed the handle from the pump, located in Broadwick street where the pub now stands, forcing people to use other uncontaminated sources of water further away. It now is also one of the few places in London you can get 2 pints of beer and change from five quid! Wonderful!

A thought experiment with lots of money

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is the United Kingdom’s funding agency for academic research and training in the non-clinical life sciences. It supports a total of around 1600 scientists and 2000 research students in universities and institutes in the UK. The head of our laboratory, Douglas Kell, has recently been appointed Chief Executive of the BBSRC [1]. Congratulations Doug, we wish you the very best in your new job. Now, according to bbsrc.ac.uk, their annual budget is a cool £400 million (just short of $800 million or €500 million). This has left me wondering, how would you spend a £400 million Science budget for the life sciences? For the purposes of this article, imagine it was you that had been put in charge of said budget, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown (texture like sun) had given you, yes YOU, a big bag of cash to distribute as you see fit. A mouth-watering prospect, I think you’ll agree. Here, is my personal opinion of how, in my dreams, I would spend the money.

Hiring and Firing Scientists

Ultimately, funding agencies like the BBSRC get to “hire and fire” scientists and the laboratories they work in, based on their own selection and rejection criteria. Although they don’t have the power to make established Scientists redundant, they can squeeze their funding. So, here is who I would be hiring and firing if, in my fantasy world, I was responsible for the budget:

You’re Fired!

Just like Sir Alan Sugar on the UK television show The Apprentice, we should be “firing” weaker candidates and giving them less BBSRC funding. Here is who I would be firing:

1. Molecular Biology, 1953 to 2008, Rest In Peace At the top of my ‘fired’ list is molecular biology. Once upon a time, molecular biology was at the frontier of human knowledge, but its time has come and gone. While the techniques it has produced are invaluable and here to stay, PCR and blotting etc, the reductionist DNA mania mindset has been harmful to longer term advances in Biology and Biotechnology generally. We need more big-picture quantitative Science (call it systems biology if you like, see below), and less of the qualitative “study one gene or one protein” that has been common in the past. Molecular Biology, you are fired!
2. Unrepeatable experiments. This shouldn’t be allowed, whether they are wet lab or dry lab experiments, it shouldn’t be acceptable to publish unrepeatable experiments. How you actually stop people doing this is a challenging problem. The same goes for disposable software [2,3]. Biology and Biotechnology needs sustainable long-term infrastructure that is solid and dependable, not flaky custom half-baked experiments and solutions that come and go like teenage fashion fads. Dodgy experiments, you are fired.
3. Closed Access publishing. That £400 million pot of money has come directly from the hard earned wages in the British taxpayers pocket. The general public, having paid for all that research, should have access to ALL the primary data, not just the second-hand press releases and mainstream media reports. Primary data and journal publications shouldn’t disappear behind some Scientific publishers pay-wall. Closed Access publishing, you are fired.

You’re Hired!

When we’ve finished firing, we should be “hiring” and giving more BBSRC funding to…

1. Young scientists. I would say that wouldn’t I? I am a young scientist. But seriously, todays young scientists, before and after their PhDs, are tomorrows leaders and Professors. Currently the BBSRC offers up to 10 David Phillips fellowships, which are a bit of a golden handshake for “World class early career scientists”. These prestigious fellowships are obviously important, because they are over-subscribed with around twenty applicants for each single award available. So why are there only ten awarded each year? If talented young scientists fail to get these fellowships, they will move abroad. How will Britain be competitive in Global Science in twenty or thirty years time if all its young Scientists have permanently moved abroad to pursue their careers? The BBSRC should be awarding hundreds not tens of these fellowships, to encourage home grown talent to develop their careers close to their families and friends in the UK. Ambitious young Scientist with fresh ideas? You’re Hired.
2. BIO- and CHEM- informatics research and development. By which I mean cheminformatics, bioinformatics and whatever-o-informatics (this is a fantasy remember, in my own selfish self-interest). I’m not talking about the the kind of “my algorithm is 2% better / cheaper / faster than yours” but the kind of bold and innovative information management, that makes new biological and chemical insights into massive data sets. Informatics needs to be tightly integrated with wet lab experiments because “dry” laboratory informatics in silico can be pretty pointless when it gets divorced from biological problems in vivo and in vitro. Likewise, wet laboratory work has much to learn from dry lab insights. Better integrated informatics, with emphasis on the BIO and CHEM? You are hired.
3. The Web of Science. It is deeply ironic that the Web was invented by a Scientist, for use by Scientists in a laboratory, yet 18 years later, we’re not even close to exploiting the full power of the Web to organise, share, manage, communicate and discuss scientific experiments and their results. Blogs, wikis, Web 2.0, Web Ontologies, Web services, Workflows on the Web, Web accessible citation and publication databases, let us boldly experiment with and build the future of the Web. As a founding father of the internet, Vint Cerf, puts it “It’s easy to forget just how far the internet still has to go“. In many ways the Web embodies what Science is all about, why are scientists so slow to adopt this (cough) “new” technology? The Web of Science? You are hired.
4. Databases and Ontologies. We don’t need more of these (thank you very much), we need less but they need to be much better integrated, so that we can understand what the hell all the bloody data actually mean. Less is definitely more in this case, that sounds easy, but it is mind-bendingly hard and challenging problem which we need to work on and invest in. Peer-reviewed knowledge-bases and ontologies are big part of the solution, see the OBO Foundry for a leading example. More work on fewer, but much better, databases and ontologies is what I would fund. High quality digital knowledge-bases? You are hired.
5. Open Access Publishing. I don’t care too much if it is green or gold (see comments below). We need Open Access publishing NOW! (Bangs the table, Bob-Geldof-at-Live-Aid style). Well actually we needed Open Access fifty years ago before all these scientific publishers started taking control. Free access, via authors depositing their articles in PubMedCentral, is a good step forward, but ultimately, I want urgently need FULL Open Access so that unrestricted text-mining can take place on large public repositories. While the BBSRC encourages its funded scientists to publish in Open Access journals and self-archive papers in PubMedCentral, at the time of writing it does not currently enforce this enough, as far as I know. The BBSRC should follow the NIH, and actually enforce open access publishing. Open Access? You are hired.

There I think I’m done self-indulgently fantasy power-tripping now, back to reality. It’s a good job important decisions about science funding are taken by experienced people, rather than humble postdocs like me. Still, the “thought experiment” of fantasy science funding was an enlightening exercise. What did we learn?

• Power corrupts, fantasy power corrupts fantastically, e.g.
  • It won friends and influenced people. . . The power corrupted me, and I funded all my friends, and the subjects we work on.
  • but it lost friends and alienated people. I only had a fantasy budget for a short time (the duration of this blog post) and I managed to offend lots of molecular biologists. Oops.
• Funders are humans too. Funding for scientists is dished out by humans, sometimes they make good decisions, other times they make mistakes.

Of course, your mileage may vary, so if YOU controlled a £400 million Science budget, how would YOU spend the money? Now where did I put those grant application forms?

References

1. John Denham MP has announced the appointment of Professor Douglas Kell as the next Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Biochemist e-volution, Society news, 2008-07-08
2. Stella Veretnik, J. Lynn Fink and Philip E. Bourne (2008).Computational biology resources lack persistence and usability. PLoS Computational Biology, 4(7). pubmed/18636105, DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000136
3. Jonathan D. Wren (2008). URL decay in MEDLINE – a 4-year follow-up study. Bioinformatics 24(11): 1381-1385, DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn127, pubmed/18413326
4. The Stranglers (1982). Gordon Golden Brown, texture like sun
5. BBSRC are already backing Systems Biology in see Systems Biology Centres and Systems Biology at the BBSRC.

CC-licensed picture of Queen Elizabeth’s head on a £20 bank note from canonsnapper , picture of Alan Sugar’s firing finger from jovike

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Lisa: Last week I went to a science blogging event at the apple store in London. It was an interesting audience of bloggers (about 20% by quick audience poll), scientists (missed catching the number of hands up at that one!) and anyone else interested in how self-publishing is changing the way science is communicated. Present to talk about their own blogs, and blogging in general, were Ben Goldacre, who runs BadScience and also publishes a weekly column for the Guardian. Ed Young started his own blog Not Exactly Rocket Science when he wanted to get experience as a science writer and blogs about peer-reviewed literature, deciphering complex ideas without ‘dumbing down’ the content. Jennifer Rohn writes Mind The Gap about her return to the world of research after a period out, and is more a personal blog about her own journey and experiences

Why blog about science? One of the great things about blogging is the ability to directly connect with ‘the masses’. Scientists often blame ‘the media’ for getting their message wrong and misinterpreting research, but scientists can now connect directly to the public. So no excuses any more right? It’s free and easy to set up a blog, although all the bloggers spoke about the need to keep a site constantly updated to maintain your audience, and this is where the motivation comes in! On the other hand, as Ed pointed out, blogging can make you a better writer, due to the instantaneous, constant, and anonymous feedback you get. It’s not just good science, said Ed, but good prose, that will win you an audience. I think that’s where I struggle!

Who reads science blogs? I guess anyone and everyone, and how people get to your blog is irrelevant as long as they stay to read an entry or two! Although as Ben Goldacre put it, when asked about why there seems to be more people blogging about biology than chemistry or physics, that the more specialised your subject becomes, the more background knowledge people require to ‘get the jokes’. Scientists may like science blogs because they go down to a more ‘satisfyingly nerdy’ level of detail than mainstream media. I thinkthis point is one of the things I really enjoy about reading a good science blog. People link directly to their sources, so you have your own chance to check for yourself if you agree with their conclusions.

So- what was my feeling after the whole event finished and we all headed to the pub? Just do it! I think it would be fantastic to get more scientists blogging. Whether blogging can be used effectively within research is debateable, as the gold standard of peer-review won’t accept data that’s been previously published. But in terms of getting more (and better) science out there and accessible, encouraging scientists to write what they know about, showing how science works and what it entails on a day-to-day basis can be a form of ‘science therapy’ and who knows may make scientists better communicators after all.