Monday, March 2, 2009

To Blog, or Not to Blog

That seems to be the question for some scientists.

For those of you wondering why anyone would spend time blogging or reading blogs, there are a few discussions out there by scientists who've started blogs. The links below offer some well-reasoned and well-written commentary on the topic.

One of the most compelling reasons is that blogging helps sharpen writing skills, particularly with respect to developing well-reasoned arguments or explaining your science to non-scientists. I find that students and many early-career scientists have great difficulty explaining their work in everyday language.

This blog entry explains how to start a blog and some pros and cons: go here

For those of you in tenure-track positions, here is an interesting blog entry by someone (female) in the process (her tenure package included her blogging activity as a positive example of scholarly activity): go here


And here is the result of her tenure review.

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