I am going to start doing link roundup on this blog – I go through many articles each week, some of which really are worth mentioning but do not quite warrant full blog posts. I will try to do this every 1-2 weeks. Enjoy!
Bad Headlines: As a science communicator, nothing irks me more than terrible headlines.
- In his post Study links angry LEGO figures to bad journalism, Paul Raeburn wrote about a recent project by Christoph Bartneck studying the facial expression of Lego minifigures, and how the mass media rushed to talk about how the “angrier” expression of Lego minifigures can harm our children – except, there is no children involved in the project! In fact, Christoph himself also reflected on this on his own blog.
- The flooding disaster in Calgary was in the centre of attention for the past week. Sarah Boon, a writer and a professor who studies hydroecology, talked about what’s in a headline and how some headlines regarding the Calgary flood gave people the wrong impression about the science in the news articles.
Social Media for Academics
- Chris Buddle is an Ecology professor at the McGill University. He recently put together a wonderful presentation on Social media for academics, probably one of the best presentations that I have seen that is tailored for the academics. Chris is very active on twitter, so make sure you follow him @CMBuddle
- The role of twitter in the life cycle of a scientific publication by Darling, Shiffman, Côté, and Drew came out on ArXiv some time ago, but I finally managed to take a look last week. A very nicely written summary about twitter for academics because it is much more in-depth, and was written specifically for its target audience. I have seen way too many generic twitter summaries written for academics that are just way too light and do not present a strong case on why academics should be using twitter. HT Artem Kaznatcheev for bringing this to my attention.
Women in Science
- I am working on a review of recent studies on gender bias in science, and came across this. Athene Donald wrote about a paper published this month regarding the under-representation of women as invited speakers at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology Congress. It is more complicated than it seems – you can check out the paper here. Athene invited comments on her blog post through social media and the comment thread for her post is a good read.
The 8th Conference of the Science Journalists: The conference was held in Helsinki in Finland from June 24 to 28. If you look at the programme, you would notice that there are a many great discussions during the conference! Sad that you missed the conference? Here are a few ways to catch up:
- A list of talks recorded during the conference
- WCSJ 2013 Storify posts
- GE sponsored some talks and they were recorded and posted here
- Follow hashtag #WCSJ2013 and handle @wcsj2013 on twitter
Last but not the least…
- E. O. Wilson, whose point of view about the importance of math in science stirred up a lot of discussions, went on Science Friday to chat. By the way, apparently he talks to himself a lot, which I do too (usually so that I am not bored, or to bounce ideas with, eh, myself?) So I guess I am not weird after all! Good. The transcript of this conversation is posted on the NPR website. It is a great talk about why he wrote the book, and also about how he thinks science should do more to reach out to social science, humanities, and the public (+1 from me).
- Last week Sarah Boon tweeted about the closure of the Centre of the Universe, an astronomy outreach centre on the Vancouver Island. I was really upset about this, and simply could not understand why Canada can’t find $277,000 out of the recently increased National Research Council (Canada) budget to save the centre.
Science, I Choose You! 
You should do a post on social media for academics based on all the things you’ve come across so far. Something short and spiffy. Something about G+ in particular would be nice too see. There is a great science community on G+ and the platform seems better for discussion than twitter while not being as time demanding as blogs.
Also, is there a Kickstarter or some such set up to try to save the Centre of the Universe?
I could write one for social media, but there is already so much out there – the two outlined in my post are probably much better than anything I would have come up with myself. With that being said, something about Google+ might be a good one, since that’s rarely explored even though some of the social media professionals I talked to thought that’s where people will be in the future (when I told them that the SciComm Canada group is a Google+ they were impressed). So that might be something to talk about.
I don’t think there is a Kickstarter. I thought about it actually, but sustaining an outreach program like this is quite different from funding a prototype or a “project.” (For example, you might have enough money to run the program for one more year, and then what?) I think eventually the program will continue, but just become a weekend only program. It also sounds like the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is considering taking this on – I am crossing my fingers and we will see what happens…
Thanks for the summary, Theresa!
Speaking of Athene Donald, I wrote a blog post about research awards exclusively for women, which also featured Athene Donald’s article in the Huffington Post! (http://awisblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/the-problem-with-awards-exclusively-for-women/). She really does have great insight and ideas regarding men and women in science, and the disparities therein.
Thanks! Will definitely give that a read. I like the way she framed the ESEB paper – more about useful discussions. Also love the fact that she is a physics prof! (I work in the department of physics & astronomy, as you might know already).
BTW, I actually did read your blog post (liked it too)! But didn’t get a chance to follow through to get to Athene’s article. I really like your perspective. Another point to make is that women who won either women only prizes or be recruited through the “quota” method might harbour self-doubt (something that I have heard a few people talked about before). Did I win this prize because I am actually good? Or is it because I am a woman? And what does that say about me when I compare myself to my male colleagues? That creates its own host of problems. I do like Athene’s point though, and think perhaps we do need such prizes, but absolutely need to frame them very differently. (and I personally do not agree with the quota system myself…)