Late last month, I pondered the implications of a piece of research that was mentioned but not described in detail in a perspective piece in the January 4, 2013 issue of Science. [1] In its broad details, the research suggests that the comments that follow an online article about science — and particularly the perceived [...]

Remember some months ago when we were talking about how Jonah Lehrer was making stuff up in his “non-fiction” pop science books? This was as big enough deal that his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, recalled print copies of Lehrer’s book Imagine, and that the media outlets for which Lehrer wrote went back through his writing [...]

Later this week at ScienceOnline 2013, Emily Willingham and I are co-moderating a session called Dialogue or fight? (Un)moderated science communication online. Here’s the description: Cultivating a space where commentators can vigorously disagree with a writer–whether on a blog, Twitter, G+, or Facebook, *and* remain committed to being in a real dialogue is pretty challenging. [...]

At the tail-end of a three-week vacation from all things online (something that I badly needed at the end of teaching an intensive five-week online course), the BBC news reader on the radio pulled me back in. I was driving my kid home from the end-of-season swim team banquet, engaged in a conversation about the [...]

Owing to summer-session teaching and a sprained ankle, I have been less attentive to the churn of online happenings than I usually am, but an email from SciCurious brought to my attention a recent controversy about a blogger’s “self-plagiarism” of his own earlier writing in his blog posts (and in one of his books). SciCurious [...]

Recently, we’ve noted that a public composed mostly of non-scientists may find itself asked to trust scientists, in large part because members of that public are not usually in a position to make all their own scientific knowledge. This is not a problem unique to non-scientists, though — once scientists reach the end of the [...]