Keynote given at PopGroup 46 meeting in Glasgow, 21 December 2012

1. Why I blog instead of writing papers
@rdmpage
http://iphylo.blogspot.com

2. Facebook
Twitter
Blogging

5. Facebook
Twitter
Blogging

6. Why blog?

7. Rants, raves (and occasionally considered
opinions) on phyloinformatics, taxonomy, and
biodiversity informatics. For more ranty and less
considered opinions, see my Twitter feed.

8. What sort of things do I blog
about?

9. Rants

10. Reviews

11. Experiments

12. Grant proposals

13. NERC said NO

14. Analyses

15. Dark taxa
http://iphylo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/dark-taxa-genbank-in-post-taxonomic.html

16. Mammals in GenBank
Aus sp.
Proper Linnaean names

17. Mammals
Aus sp.
Proper Linnaean names

18. “Invertebrates”
BOLD

19. Is this a problem?

20. It’s the norm for Bacteria

21. Why blog?

22. Déjà vu

23. @cboettig
http://www.carlboettiger.info/2012/09/28/Welcome-to-my-lab-notebook.html

24. Immediate feedback
(great if you are a shy attention
seeker)

25. Blogs can lead to conversations

26. “Dark taxa” conversation 68
comments

27. Isn’t it vanity publishing?

28. Of course it is!

29. Isn’t any publishing?

30. Is your blog any good?

32. Does it get cited?

33. Citations to “dark taxa” blog post
An update on DNA barcoding: low species coverage and numerous
unidentified sequences
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-0031.2012.00408.x
No name, no game
http://dx.doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2012.10
Ramping up biodiversity discovery via online quantum contributions
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.10.010
Applications of Natural Language Processing in Biodiversity Science
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/391574

34. https://twitter.com/dpsspiders/status/281094052072542208

35. What do I want for Christmas?

36. DOIs for my blog posts

37. What about peer review?

38. Watson and Crick 1953
Not peer reviewed

39. Peer review as filter
Submitted
for publication
Physical and/or
economic limits on
how big a journal
can be
Accept for publication

41. Filter, then publish

42. Peer review as filter
Submitted
for publication
Physical and/or
economic limits on
how big a journal
can be
Accept for publication

43. …publish, then filter

44. Attention filter

45. Peer-review doesn’t guarantee
science is correct

46. NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m.
EST on Thursday, Dec. 2 [2010], to discuss an
astrobiology finding that will impact the
search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

47. A Bacterium That Can
Grow by Using
Arsenic Instead of
Phosphorus
Wolfe-Simon et al. 2010
Science
doi:10.1126/science.1197258

48. @RosieRedfield
(University of British Columbia)
Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable
information … If this data was presented by a
PhD student at their committee meeting, I'd
send them back to the bench to do more
cleanup and controls.
http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html

49. https://twitter.com/ironlisa/statuses/11579028288839680

50. NASA DID NOT HYPE anything – others
did. Credible media organizations have
not questioned NASA about any text.
Bloggers and social media have.
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on
Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding
that will impact the search for evidence of
extraterrestrial life.

51. Absence of
Detectable Arsenate
in DNA from
Arsenate-Grown
GFAJ-1 Cells
Reaves et al. July 2012
Science
doi:10.1126/science.1219861

52. Rebuttal in peer-reviewed
literature

53. but released as preprint…

54. arXiv:1201.6643

55. …and initial concerns raised on
blog

57. What’s next?

58. Science as a process will be open

59. figshare.com

62. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.92668

63. Everything of interest will be citable
(papers, data, figures, blogs)

64. http://www.altmetric.com/

65. http://impactstory.org/

66. … and that is why I blog instead of
writing papers