Much Ado About Blogs: Anarchy vs. Tradition

As we all know blogs have become a fashionable means of communication made possible by modern technology. The question is, ‘What does this mean for science?’. Is it a reasonable means of communicating science to an open global audience? Is it a reasonable means for intra scientific discussions? How do we keep values from tarnishing scientific objectivity? Can they operate as an alternative to the peer review process associated with journals? And, of course, many more questions.

Here we can address a few of these question.



First, what is the perception, from climate scientists, concerning the traditional means of peer reviewed journals as a means of communicating findings in the climate sciences?*

One of the questions in this regard asked a sample of climate scientists if the quality of published peer reviewed papers in climate science has changed over the years. The results are shown on Figure 1.

Figure 1. Perceptions of Quality of Peer Reviewed Climate Science Papers

If we exclude the value of 4 as the perception of no change in the quality of papers we find that approximately 20% of the sample seem to think that the quality of papers has declined and approximately 43% claim the quality has improved. Is this cause for concern or a case of sour grapes? Crosstabs seem to indicate this not to be the case, i.e. it is not those who have not published claiming the quality of journals to have deteriorated and vice versa.

What about the perception of the role of values in what finds its way into peer reviewed journals?

Figure 2. The Perception of the Role of Values in Peer Reviewed Publications

Again, excluding the value of 4, the data indicates that approximately 58% of the sample perceive journals to have remained value neutral while approximately 23% see journals tending towards being value oriented.

Finally, concerning traditional means of science communication, the sample was asked just what leads to success in peer reviewed publications. These results are presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Factors of Success for a Peer Reviewed Paper.

The data seem to indicate that the sample perceives scientific rigour as the major contributor to the success of the acceptance of a paper.

Now let’s return to blogs, the new kid on the block so to say. Do scientists (climate scientists) perceive that making discussions of climate science open to potentially everyone through the use of blogs is a good idea? As indicated in Figure 4 more scientists think it is a good idea than scientists who do not think it is a good idea.

Figure 4. Is the Discussion of Climate Science Being Open to Everyone Through the Use of Blogs a Good Idea

A quick look a figure four seems to suggest that overall the sample of scientists were slightly more in congruence with blogs and open discussion being a favorable idea.

But what of the quality of blogs? Figure 5 provides some elementary insight into the perceptions of climate scientists.

Figure 5 The Quality of the Scientific Discussion of Climate Change on Blogs Is?

Whoops! No so good there. While blogs are perceived of as being a good idea, there seems to be some question as to the quality of material found on blogs.

So how would climate scientists rate blogs compared to the traditional peer reviewed article in terms of being value laden? This data is presented in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The Quality of the material on Blogs as Compared to Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Well, it would appear that the sample of climate scientists seem to see blogs as being much more value laden than peer reviewed journals. And one should note, much more available to a general audience. Campaigning for a specific scientific/political position?

The first thing that comes to mind is the recent discussion concerning censorship of publication in peer reviewed journals brought to light by Climategate as it has come to be known. No role for values in peer review? The role of values on blogs, no question. Let’s face it folks, in the instance of politico-science, those instances where science enters Real Politik, values will never be excluded.

But back to blogs as a means of disseminating scientific findings. No doubt they are useful in cases of non- (politically) controversial scientific discussions. But what can we say about their role in the likes of the discussion of climate science?


* All data is taken from the survey of climate scientists (Bray and von Storch, CliSci 2008 - full report available at http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/CliSci2008.pdf) with an international sample size of 373 climate scientists. For the sake of avoiding controversy, I will refer to these scientists as the sample, not necessarily as the climate science community.