Truth.

So the good people at babble.com have a micro-controversy brewing.  It doesn't come anywhere close to being a crisis, but as the crisis PR guy who knows more than a few of the players involved, I think I have something to add.

First, by way of background: there's this dad blogger on babble (to protect the innocent, we'll call him "Godzilla") who does a great job promoting his blog/business, tends to push the envelope on marketing, and writes a few emotional feel-good pieces that he hopes provide inspiration to his readers.  These pieces get a lot of attention because a) they're well written and b) they're heavily promoted. 

Then there's this other dad blogger (let's call this guy "Megalon") who has had some not-so-great interactions with Godzilla and makes some reasonably credible assertions that at least one of Godzilla's feel-good pieces was a hoax.   Then Godzilla promotes this series he wrote about being rescued from a mountain, Megalon (and some others) think it's over-the-top, and a sliver of the parenting community breaks into full-blown navel-gazing  "what are we as a community" mode.  Godzilla tells this story about how he owned a mattress business or something, Megalon does the self-deprecating "don't drink and blog" thing, people take stuff way too personally, and hilarity ensues.

Liz Gumbinner, as usual, has a great perspective and kinda brings us back to earth a bit.  From my perspective, there are really two things to keep in mind as bloggers "go pro."

First, there's nothing wrong with promoting yourself and your work as creatively and aggressively as you want.  The market will decide when you've gone too far. The purpose of marketing isn't necessarily to make you feel all warm and fuzzy about a person or a topic.  The purpose of marketing is to influence you on a decision or action.   Sometimes the warm and fuzzy approach works.  Sometimes it's more effective to make people uncomfortable.  Sometimes it's even more effective to annoy people into doing something for you just so you'll go away.  In a 20-year career in politics and PR, I've been called a sell-out, a fraud, a communist AND a fascist, a racist, a hypocrite, a sycophant, and a sleazebag.  (And that's just from my friends.) "Professional" blogging is competitive, and the formulas and business models that actually make money compel you to be provocative and annoying - both in content development and promotion. 

Second, and more importantly, there's this: if something you write and promote isn't completely true, you should say so. It's not good enough to say "even if it's not completely true, that's OK if people get value from it. Even if it's "based on a true story." Even if it's a feel-good piece with a politically-correct social message.  If you state that your blog is your business, you are writing something designed to influence people in some way, and you have a financial interest in the impact of your content, you should be held to the same standards as any other business.   And if you're promoting your content in press releases, the default expectation is everything you're promoting is truthful.  Further, I see this responsibility as an individual one.  If I mess up, it reflects poorly on my employer, my partners, my colleagues. I'm responsible, not them.

Parables and fiction can teach wonderful lessons and have meaningful impact if they're well written.  But the more "true" a story is, the more force it carries.  There are so many examples of this it's impossible to count them all.  The most basic example I can think of is the Bible.  People who think the Bible is a literal record in which every word is completely true take the Bible much more seriously than those who think it's a collection of stories that highlight a good guy with some semblance of accuracy.  And those folks take the Bible more seriously than those who see no evidence that anything in the Bible ever really happened as written.

There are many more contemporary examples with a lot at stake.  Liz mentioned the tale of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omani. You can flip the argument by looking at the climate change "debate." There's a reason critics of climate science aren't putting up much of a fight in peer-reviewed academic journals but are investing heavily in popular consumer media.  The story's facts aren't changing.  But their impact changes dramatically if people don't believe the facts. 


I'd love to know other people's opinions on this. 

Unleashing my inner broad

I'm pleased to announce that I'm now a contributor to The Broad Side, a new online project led by the PunditMom herself, Joanne Bamberger. As I've written before Joanne is the author of the book Mothers of Intention: How Women and Social Media are Revolutionizing Politics in America and she's an amazing female role model.   From the founder's welcome:

The mission of The Broad Side is to gather women who are writing about the most-discussed and important issues of the day from a fresh perspective, not in that stale, wonky, inside-the-Washington, D.C.-beltway kind of narrative.

While The Broad Side will mostly be a place to showcase all the women’s commentary that those talking head shows and op-ed pages are missing, we’ll definitely invite some men to contribute, as well. 

Joanne's project is a critical and long overdue addition to the American political discussion.  She features intelligent and articulate voices who haven't been corrupted by the beltway culture - people who care much more about policy options than political brinksmanship.  Joanne also refuses to let Washington continue to ignore a simple truth - women's voices simply aren't heard in politics as much as they should.  (by the way, you can hear Joanne's voice, talking politics with me here.)

I'm very pleased and proud to be one of Joanne's first contributors and I'm also pleased that my first Broad Side post focuses on another impressive female role model - Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader.  I'm looking forward to watching Joanne's continued success and I'll be heading over to The Broad Side often - I hope you will too.

So I wrote a piece in PR News...

If you have a subscription you can read it here.

I compared the work of Honda and Toyota as they used social media to launch their most popular models in 2012 - the Honda Civic and the Toyota Camry.  Both companies have had challenges in recent years, and 2012 is an important year for both models.

In comparing the two I used data from Social EQ, a model developed by my company, APCO Worldwide. Social EQ's model uses opinion research to help determine what "Social Informants" - that's the name we give to those uber-users of social media who influence the online discussions the rest of us have all the time - consider to be an effective social media presence for a company or organization.  Since the Social EQ team already reviewed the 40 "Most Admired" companies as rated by Fortune Magazine, we already had a good snapshot of Honda and Toyota.

Both companies basically got middling reviews when compared to the other most admired companies.  They both have decent, easy-to-find online content, but Social Informants want more direct access to the people who work there when they have questions or feedback.  I notice that both companies are trying to do just that, but in different ways.  Honda is trying to strengthen its reputation with its customers by starting a grassroots-y YouTube-driven original music video contest.   Toyota is rolling out the model - quite literally - via webcast and trying more direct outreach to leading voices in different online communities, like my good pal Tim Hurst at Earth & Industry.

The Social Informants initially gave Honda a slight edge over Toyota when the Social EQ team did their research, but I have to say I like what Toyota did with the Camry a bit more than what Honda did.  Honda was creative and fun, but Toyota was more direct and did a good job identifying online community leaders.  Bottom line I think both companies deserve credit for trying new things but I think Toyota closed their social media gap with Honda a bit here.

Clever girl, that Stefania.

I'm heading to San Diego this week.  The annual BlogHer conference is kicking off, but rather than attending the panel discussions etc I'll be at the I'm With the Brand party hosted by Clever Girls Collective. Fresh & Easy (a client) is a sponsor.  I'm stepping up my involvement with this client, and I'm very happy about that.

But there's another reason why I'm excited to travel 3000 miles for a 3-hour party.  I'm really looking forward to witnessing the success of Clever Girls Collective - and specifically one of its founders, Stefania Pomponi Butler - first-hand.

I'm very fortunate to be able to point to specific moments in my social media career where I built relationships with entrepreneurial bloggers, or learned an important lesson from the community of online moms.  The first touchpoint, I'll readily acknowledge, was dumb luck - I was tasked with connecting bloggers to a new radio network that featured Gloria Steinem on its Board of Directors, and I thought it might be a good idea for Ms. Steinem to actually talk with some of those bloggers.  But the year was 2006.  Bloggers (and especially mom-bloggers) were still regarded by mainstream media as insignificant and DEFINITELY NOT journalists. Marketers were only beginning to realize the potential of the mom-o-sphere.  The idea of someone with the fame and gravitas of Gloria Steinem talking with a dozen "regular people" was questionable at best.  It took a lot of convincing.  I had to write memos titled, "What is a blog?" because nobody really knew what I was doing. (Neither did I.)  But of course, Gloria Steinem isn't afraid of anyone, and she agreed to do it without a fuss.

So Ms. Steinem talked with regular people like  Liz Gumbinner.  And Kristen Chase. And Catherine Connors. And Leah Peterson.  And a bunch of other women.  And they loved it.  And then some bloggers met Ms. Steinem at the network's launch party.  And they loved that too.  The radio network wound up folding, but I became "the guy who did the Gloria Steinem thing" and rode that wave into the "State of the Mom-o-Sphere" panel at BlogHer 2007 in Chicago, and I really thought I was this amazing PR hot-shot and everyone would love me.

Yeah, not so much.

By July 2007, a lot of bloggers were getting slammed with emails from PR and marketing flacks basically asking them to write about how awesome their products were. It didn't matter what the product was, or if the mom actually wrote about anything relevant to the product.  And the moms were sick of it.  And they let me know it. Loudly.  So even though I never really spammed anyone like that, I felt compelled to apologize on behalf of the industry and wrote a manifesto of sorts  and I became "the PR guy who gets it."

But another very important thing happened at that panel discussion, and it was an idea led by Kelly Wickham and by Stefania. They noticed the moms getting all these pitches from PR flacks happened to be white, and that blogs written by people of color were being ignored - even though they had comparable levels of popularity - and they wanted to know why.  So I tried to give an explanation - it's basically because, when it comes to diversity, often the PR industry just plain sucks.  And I became "the PR guy who gets it" all over again.

Of course that answer didn't settle the matter for Stefania or Kelly, nor should it.  They've led several panel discussions at subsequent BlogHer conferences and beyond on the issue of diversity in the blogosphere.  And Stefania and her partners founded Clever Girls Collective. They started out by showing brands that they could reach out to online moms - and particularly moms of color - much more effectively than big PR firms.  They've grown dramatically over the past couple of years because they take their job very seriously, they always work with integrity, and they deliver results.

I've learned a lot by watching and talking with Stefania and these other dynamic women.  I've learned that you can achieve much greater success by engaging bloggers not as ersatz journalists or outreach targets, but as entrepreneurs or partners.  I've learned how important a mom blogger's integrity and fidelity to the greater community of online moms is, and you should support that community without necessarily asking for anything in return.  I've learned that in this community, bloggers support each other relentlessly and find true friendship and build amazingly strong bonds over great distances.

I've learned this and more and I'm very, very grateful.

Off the Cuff visits Raleigh Denim: social media at its best

Victor Lytvinenko of Raleigh Denim (L) and Chris Hogan

Last week my family got a visit from Chris Hogan's family.  We have known each other for years and I'm fortunate to call them great friends.

Chris is also founder and editor of Off the Cuff, one of the most prominent men's fashion blogs you'll find.  He's often featured in mainstream publications as an expert. His work in social media is a well-recognized case study of best practices. So as one might expect, when we firmed up the details of his visit Chris sent out a tweet to his followers:

"Heading to Raleigh, NC, in a few weeks. Looking for some stores/brands to check out, visit. Suggestions?"

Not surprisingly, he got a number of people suggesting he visit the proprietors of Raleigh Denim, one of the last  places in America where jeans (and some other items) are made by hand, all under one roof.  You can find their clothes in elite stores like Barneys New York.  They're not cheap, but they're not cheap, if you know what I mean. So Chris reached out to the owners and arranged a visit, and (after burgers and beers) he let me tag along.

When we arrived on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, founders/owners Victor and Sarah Lytvinenko were busy putting together denim bags for shipment. Victor took us around the shop and I assumed "fly on the wall" status as  Chris talked with him about his approach to making clothes and the company's story.

And it's a great story.  Victor is a rare blend of artist and entrepreneur.  He loved that schools in the Raleigh area were producing students with great ideas about textiles but lamented the fact that very few of those students were ever able to bring ideas to market.

He also talked about trying to start the business in late 2009 and early 2010, one of the worst economic environments in our history.  Family members were pitching in and they were working around the clock, making samples and trying to convince stores to carry their product.  After finally managing to send a small order to Barneys, he received a request for a larger order, but didn't have the capital to buy raw materials or tools to accommodate them.  Since the economy was in the depths of the credit crunch, no bank would lend him the money.  Then President Obama's stimulus package became law - and Victor soon after got a call from the bank, telling him he could get that loan.  Now Victor and Sarah aren't worrying about growing their business - they're worrying about growing it too quickly.

Most of the afternoon, however, was spent talking about the craftsmanship, history, and philosophy that goes into making clothes at Raleigh Denim.  It was clear from the outset that Victor and Chris were of the same mind on this - other than jotting down a few numbers, Chris didn't really have to take notes because it was all obvious to him.  Once Chris got home he wrote and published a great blog post that summarizes his takeaways from the visit.   He also sent out a tweet that suggested a potential new partner and opportunity:

Someone please explain why @jcrew_insider isn't knocking on @raleighdenim 's door? Amazing jeans, made like we used to make 'em in America.

This is how social media often works best - a person reaches out to a network for ideas, acts on those ideas, and develops more ideas that can benefit more people.  The fact that Chris used specific tools was secondary to the experience - what really mattered is that Chris reached out to people who were part of a community, and that he leveraged online relationships to accomplish a goal.

That's why he's better than you at this.

All you sucka sci blog networks better REALIZE you play for second place

Bora launched his blog network at Scientific American.  He took his time, did it right.

Don't get me wrong - I love the writing at Wired Science, ScienceBlogs.com, Discover, Scientopia, Guardian Science Blogs, Nature Network, PLoS Blogs, and so on - but Bora was really smart about this. He saw the growth in the niche, looked at what was working best, saw what could improve, and just plain NAILED IT:

Another thing I was particularly interested in was to find bloggers who in some way connect the “Two Cultures” as described by C.P.Snow. Some connect science to history, philosophy, sociology or ethics. Many are very interested in science education, communication and outreach. Some make connections between science and popular culture, music, art, illustration, photography, cartoons/comic strips, poetry, literature, books, movies, TV, video, etc. Several produce such cross-discipline and cross-cultural material themselves – at least two are musicians, two are professional photographers, several produce videos, two are professional artists, a couple are authors of multiple books, some produce their own blog illustrations. But there are also commonalities – they all have strong knowledge of their topic, they strictly adhere to the standards of scientific evidence, they are all very strong writers, and they are all enthusiastic to share their work with a broader audience. 

When I put together this group, with such diverse interests and styles, it was not surprising to discover that, without really having to try hard to make it so, they also display diversity in many other areas: geography, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, personal/professional/scientific background and more. This is something that is important for science, and is important in the science blogging world.

This is brilliant for two big reasons: first, diversity is a source of enormous strength in science and pretty much everything else.  It's the right thing to do.  Second because it makes science immediately relevant to people with diverse interests - music, art, history, pop-culture, sports, education, and so on - the network has the capacity to grow its readership much more than other science blog networks.

My initial reaction is that SciAm's emergence with a large, smart roster may thin the herd of networks a little bit. I notice some writers have left their networks to join SciAm's, and since there are only so many blog posts you can read in a day, readers will go for the quality content first.

I may flesh this thinking out a bit more but here's one prediction/caution for those writing for another network. If you start to get several emails from your editors or managers providing "guidelines" on how to write in ways that generate more traffic like throwing celebrity references in the titles or providing more posts with repetitive phrases, your network is following an unsustainable strategy.  Your editors care more about Google search terms than you.  They want your words but not necessarily your thoughts.  The first network to do this will probably be the first one to go.

UPDATE: PZ Myers is already declaring ScienceBlogs.com "dead" and hinting that he's leaving.  Pharyngula is basically half of SEED/SB's traffic and I notice that the new SciAm network has at least a couple of SB peeps on it. I'm guessing the folks at National Geographic aren't pleased.  Leave it to an evolutionary biologist to tell us what happens when something doesn't adapt to a changing environment...

"Closed" networks and cultural arbitration

Last week we saw the latest pothole in the road to Utopia for iTunes:

Apple Inc. says it has removed an application called "ThirdIntifada" from its App Store following complaints that it glorified violence against Israel.

Of course, when they say "removed" they could just as easily have said "approved and then had to be told this was one of the stupidest things imaginable."

I've already written how the "big four" tech companies - Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook - have made our lives amazingly easier and they have connected people in ways we could barely imagine just a few years ago.  But because those companies have understandably placed limits on those markets and marketplaces, and have tried to create some rules for entry, they've had to make a host of judgment calls about what gets in and what doesn't.   By fate or by design, we're now at a rather alarming point.  Middle-managers at tech companies are regularly policing free speech and global commerce, and occasionally wielding more power in a single mouse click than some foreign ministers could hope to wield in a term of office.

It's hard to define social networks and commerce platforms with hundreds of millions of users as "closed" - especially when the administrators of them want as many users as possible. But they do want to be the gatekeepers of speech and commerce, insisting on approving the software that appears on their platforms.  They are now they are forced to make judgment calls I'm certain they never anticipated.  The folks at Facebook did not intend to be the folks who determine "obscene" content, yet here they are, establishing the "visible aerola" standard for breastfeeding pictures.  Apple never intended to mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict or promote the idea of "praying away the gay" or help drivers avoid sobriety checkpoints.

There's no doubt in my mind that the more apps they approve, the more mistakes they'll make, and the more likely regulation with plenty of unintended consequences will appear.

Cultural disconnects: how do you define beauty?

We start with Exhibit A:

Student groups at the London School of Economics are calling for the dismissal of a social scientist who has become embroiled in a racism row after claiming that a study showed black women to be less attractive than women of other races.

Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the institution, published his comments on a blog and claimed he had analysed data from an online study of physical attractiveness.

In his article for Psychology Today, Kanazawa wrote: "Black women are … far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women." The piece drew a barrage of complaints from readers and has since been removed from the site.

So a researcher known for his penchant for controversy (he once wrote a piece suggesting liberals are smarter than conservatives) writes something stupid but it potentially starts a rather interesting, potentially cross-cultural conversation around an important question: "how do you define beauty?"

I looked at two of the online communities I review most - scientists and moms.  I found a mixed bag.

Hank Campbell at Science 2.0 issued a thorough smackdown of the Kanazawa piece (seriously, read it), but went a step further to slam Kanazawa's field of study:

But the real problem is not Kanazawa. Every discipline has someone who creates a goofy study. Others criticize it, science moves on. The problem is evolutionary psychology is chock full of this stuff and virtually no one inside the field is willing to police their own. Marc Hauser just got suspended for questionable practices. And now they have taken to fuzzy epigenetics to make the picture of the human condition even murkier.

He then lists a bunch of posts that illustrate his point.

Another reaction from a different community came from Karen Walrond at Chookooloonks.  She offered a more emotional (and in my view very impactful) response:



But here's the thing:  Walrond's response is one that Campbell dismisses.

I tried to look around for other perspectives, basically one that is not an old white guy like me or some shrill, lefty do-gooder reflexively saying how awesomely beautiful all women are...

And when I decided to try a little outreach here by linking to Walrond's video in Campbell's comments, he responded:

Saying all women are beautiful is saying none are, and that is just not the case. The great thing about diversity is that attraction and beauty are subjective. Anyone attempting to homogenize beauty into generic 'we all are' psychobabble for the other side - and cynically marketing themselves in their video in the process - isn't really any better than Kanazawa.

This comment illustrated the enormous gap between the two communities. First, Campbell clearly doesn't know Walrond.  She is adored in her community.  She is a powerful and positive force.  Those who know her best say she's essentially the opposite of cynical.  And she very clearly has a much different view of "beauty."   I asked Karen if she wanted to respond, and she was characteristically graceful in a series of tweets to me:

My response wasn't intended to be scientific - b/c (a) I'm not a scientist & (b) I don't think beauty is a science. I think beauty is an emotion. So arguing with a scientist about beauty at all is ridiculous. Besides, he's entitled to his own opinion on his own personal blog, I wager. ;) The underlying point of my response was to tell women not to buy into Kanazawa's crap. That's all.

So two very smart and accomplished people who essentially agree that Kanazawa's piece was lousy have profoundly different responses that reflect their respective communities and cultures.  Campbell's post strikes me as aggressive, confrontational, data-driven, dismissive of emotional reactions and even willing to question the motives of people who have them. He views "beauty" as a term that can be measured empirically.  He's standing up for what he sees as scientific integrity.   Walrond's video is positive, supportive and above all emotional.  To her, reducing "beauty" to scientific nomenclature is insulting. And she finds the idea of arguing this topic with a scientist to be "ridiculous."

There's nothing wrong with people who have different backgrounds having different takes on the same subject.  Clearly both viewpoints have some merit.  But for those of us who want science and scientists to have more influence and credibility with people in other communities, it shows we have more work to do.

speaking of #scimom...

The Wandering Scientist reads my "reflections" post and says I left out #scimom's who don't work in academia.  It's a valid point. And she's been paying attention to this a lot longer than I have - and not just because she's actually a #scimom.  Back in 2009 she put together perhaps the first #scimom list.

She says academic #scimoms can be more visible in the blogosphere and are more able to write about their work.   And she says being a mom prompts some to take you less seriously at work.   I think perspectives vary a bit on this (the CEO of the company where I work is a proud mom and grandmother), though I understand her point.

I'm curious to know what #scimoms think.  The impression I get is a lot of #scimoms write under a pseudonym whether they're academic or not.  Again just my impression but I get the feeling that anonymity has declined in the mom-o-sphere generally as it's grown more commercialized, but #scimom's still see a significant downside to sharing their names.

I know this topic has been the subject of much discussion at ScienceOnline and elsewhere.  I come from a different online community - public relations and issues management - where transparency is paramount and hiding your identity means hiding your true interests.  So it's hard for me to accept.  But that doesn't make this any less real.   Again, curious to know more about what others think.

The Science-to-English Dictionary Doesn't Include the Words "Fuck Off"

Some interesting discussions in the field of science communications in the past few weeks.  First, Chris Mooney interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson and writes about it at the Intersection.  He also included this somewhat noteworthy exchange between Tyson and Richard Dawkins:



While quite funny (and a bit salty at the end there), it illustrates a growing tension among scientists - whether they should take the time and effort to persuade those less science literate than themselves, or whether they should essentially "speak truth to power" in debates where sides are growingly intractable - climate change, evolution, vaccines, and so on.

I realize it doesn't have to be an either-or thing, and there may be a time and place for each approach, but in general I count myself squarely in Tyson's camp on this.  On the very important debates where the goal is to encourage or change behavior, I've never found the words "fuck off" to be especially effective.  There really is a better way.

To me the answer lies in creating a groundswell of support on the pro-science side of these arguments, and that means establishing a large, deep reservoir of goodwill between scientists and the general public. Doing so aligns the incentives of policymakers (who respond to the public) and scientists more directly.

That's why I was so impressed with Maggie Koerth-Baker's presentation at the SAGE Weston Lecture Series at University of Wisconsin-Madison.   Koerth-Baker is the science editor at Boing Boing, and I thought her advice to scientists about being more persuasive with the general public was outstanding:

I think the best recommendation that I have is to go to presentations and go to public lectures on subjects that you know absolutely nothing about. Step outside your expertise and start thinking like somebody who doesn’t know about this. And when you do you are going to find questions that you’re not asking about your own work. And you are going to find sources of skepticism that you aren’t applying to your own work. And you can kind of turn around and start doing that. One of the things I think you are going to run into if you do this is the issue of how long it takes for basic science to find its way to the commercial sector. This is really, really, really poorly understood. And neither journalists nor scientists do a very good job of giving the public what it needs to understand.

Of course, understanding others by listening to what they have to say is only part of the task.  When you're speaking, Koerth-Baker says you have to do so on the most basic of terms:

Sacrificing storytelling and understandability for extreme accuracy is often just as bad as sacrificing accuracy for the sake of storytelling. To start off with that what I mean is dumbing down is OK. I hear lots and lots of people, even journalists, making fun of USA Today because it is written at a 6th-grade reading level. It should be. We should write more at a 6th-grade reading level. If you are not writing about your science at a 6th-grade reading level you are probably doing something wrong. And not enough people are understanding what you’re talking about.

And finally, her advice to science communicators sounds quite a bit like PR or marketing counsel to me:

Basically everything that I have told you here boils down to two basic lessons. First: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. And Second: KNOW YOUR MESSAGE. And finally, be able to match the correct audience and the correct message so that people really understand what you’re saying.

It goes back to what I was saying about climate change and strategic communications a while back.  Scientists really have a choice: lift people up or put people down. One approach will bring people closer to your understanding of the nature of the world around us, while the other will push people away.    With the issues we face, the stakes are far too high to settle for the smug satisfaction of knowing you're right.

This ONE TIME you can call me a princess

Normally "princess" isn't something you call a guy.  But I'll join in this one.  Just this one time. Go git'em, Susan.  Go ahead, call me a princess.  Find me a damn tiara already. Put me on that LONG list of people calling themselves princesses and supporting you.

Susan Neibur is amazing - astrophysicist (that's "ROCKET SCIENTIST" to you and me), mom, wife, blogger, and cancer survivor.  And she's a damn fine writer.  I've been kicking some ideas around with her on something for almost a year now that I hope will try to bring both of her "worlds" together - science and parenting.  We'll pull it off.

Susan, you're not alone and you never will be.

#scio11: What's Next for Science Online?

Last week (and weekend) I attended ScienceOnline 2011 as a sponsor for the second straight year.  (You can find my reaction to last year's conference here.)

My immediate reaction to this year's conference is by no means unique or especially insightful, but I'll add my voice to the chorus: Anton Zuiker and Bora Zivkovic are passionate and skilled advocates of the science blogging community, and they put together a strong conference.  (They got some essential help on the ground from other passionate advocates like Dawn Crawford.) They flat out DELIVERED for their community - an amazing accomplishment when you consider how much they had going on in their personal lives this year.

The conference program was solid.  I won't be as ecstatic over the content as some because thankfully, ScienceOnline is not about me.  I'm on the periphery of the science blogging community at best. I'm not a scientist, I'm not angling for a book deal, and I'm not a science journalist.  I think it's also safe to say 2010 was the year of the "science blog network," and once Bora launches the Sci Am blog network  I'm wondering just how many more science blogging networks we need at this point.  Rather than more networks I think we'll see further "professionalization" of this online community on the individual level, just as we've seen in other blogging communities.

So here's what I'm looking at for the science blogging community in 2011 - will this be the year science bloggers have real influence beyond their own community?   And if so, who will be the bridge figures that emerge to carry this influence forward?

For example, and I know this surprises some people (cough VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN cough cough), there is a lot of political discussion on science blogs, and for good reason.  But the people who write and implement the public policies that affect all of us don't generally read science blogs. (Seriously, they don't. I checked.) Of course, Congressional staffers and political operatives DO read the political blogs - and they respond to political bloggers who write about science issues, regardless of how (un)informed those bloggers may be.  Yes, there are some people who write competently about both topics, but I'd argue those people are more regularly recognized for their political writing - like Daily Kos' Greg Dworkin, who also manages the Flu Wiki.  (I also note that one of the more widely read reviews of science blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum's new book came from Daily Kos, so maybe that's a start.)

There are several other examples, but I'm hopeful. #scio11's most important moments for me focused on the nexus of science communication and other important communities such as parenting. I walked away from them with new contacts and reasonably specific actions for follow-up.  Some of the ideas that were actually born at #scio10 may bloom sometime before #scio12.

At this point I have many more questions than answers.  But hey, it's January.

My personal history with "the gay"

Col. Cammermeyer

Tomorrow President Obama will sign legislation to eventually repeal a series of rules at the Department of Defense known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."  For the past 13 years, it's been OK to BE gay and serve in the military, as long as you don't ever let anyone actually KNOW that you're gay. (Of course, if someone outs you, you're discharged.)  And theoretically, the DoD isn't supposed to care who you sleep with - i.e., for 13 years or so they haven't asked people who enlist about their sexual preferences. Of course that hasn't stopped them from discharging 14,000 people under this rule in that time.

It's always been an important issue to me, one I've always followed very closely - not just on the merits, and not just because I've always known a lot of gay people.

(No, this is not where I tell everyone I'm gay.  Sorry.)

This issue (then referred to as "gays in the military") was the first item I ever worked on as a paid Senate staffer.  It was 1993, I was fresh out of college (and a stint in Connecticut on the presidential campaign), and I had just scored a job as a staff assistant on Senator Kennedy's Labor and Human Resources Committee.   My boss was responsible for "gay issues" (among many other things) for the Senator and I was basically the guy who help his small office run - answered the phones, hired and fired interns, wrote the speeches/letters/memos he was too busy to write, do some help with research on this or that.

Politically, I don't think this was an issue any of us really expected to address at that time.  President Clinton had just entered office, the new session of Congress was just starting. The economy was top on everyone's agenda, and while candidate Clinton mentioned his support for lifting the ban on gays in the military, it was never considered a top-5 issue at the time.  But opportunists saw a wedge issue that played on people's fears and made the President look weak.  Republicans quickly tried to codify a ban and dared Democrats to oppose them.  The Senate Armed Services Committee, then led by Sam Nunn (a conservative Democrat from Georgia), almost immediately called for hearings. And this is when I started learning about how politics works in the big leagues.

On the merits, this was never a complicated issue to me.  Granted, I've always had a bias in favor of advancing civil rights and protecting minorities.  But to me, the merits have always gone something like this:

General: A lot of soldiers think gay people have cooties, so we can't have them in our military.  I need my soldiers to focus on killing enemies, not avoiding cooties.
Liberal guy: But gay people really don't have cooties.  You're just condoning prejudice.
General: I don't have the luxury of adopting your Utopian world view.  I have wars to fight, and I can't take on every social issue you want me to.
Liberal: But gay people are already in the military, you just don't know they're gay.  Gay people aren't the source of the cooties, it's the perception of gay people that brings the cooties.
General: Hmm... never thought about it that way.  OK, from now on, nobody is ever allowed to think about gay people.  I'm not going to bring it up, and you're not allowed to say you're gay.   Anyone who talks about the gay is out.   There - problem solved.
Liberal: Wait, that's not what I meant...
General: LA LA LA LA LA!!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! NO GAYS HERE! LA LA LA!

Of course, there was much more to the debate than this.  I saw a lot of nasty, nasty stuff.  I watched Senators tell gay people directly they had an affliction and they needed medical help.  I watched people tell decorated veterans they were condemned or unnatural.  I heard the same arguments that racists made against integration and that nazis made against Jewish people - things like gays spread disease, they hurt morale generally, they can't control themselves, they are all part of some big conspiracy.

I also saw what I thought to be cowardice but what was probably political reality - Senator Kennedy spoke up strongly in favor of lifting the ban in 1993 while most other Democrats were largely silent.  Today we see he was truly ahead of his time.  The political "compromise" that was struck represented little more than an accommodation for a new president who couldn't afford a total loss.  In substance, DADT wasn't a compromise at all.  Before 1993, the military began the discharge process as soon as it learned a person was gay.  That's still the policy today.  DADT was, however, a tacit acknowledgement that being gay wasn't the problem.  It took 13 years for that logical concession to result in a real change.

But what I'm struck by most is the courage I saw from so many people.  "Coming out" is a difficult thing to today, let alone 13 years ago.  I watched my boss, an openly gay man, stare down hate and work closely with people who had no bones about telling him he was an abomination.   I watched another young man, then in the closet while working for a Republican senator, risk his job by coming by the office after hours to provide strategic counsel and intelligence.  (That man eventually became one of the most influential liberal political bloggers in America.) And I watched a host of veterans who served in our military with distinction come through our office and tell their story - knowing the consequences would be significant.

One of those veterans was Colonel Grethe Cammermeyer, a decorated army nurse who acknowledged she was a lesbian during a security clearance interview in 1989  About 3 years later (military bureaucracy being what it is) she was "separated" from the military and quickly filed suit.  Her story was the one that really catapulted the issue to the forefront - she wrote a book, the book turned into a movie (Glenn Close played her character), and she testified at the Congressional hearing, where I remember Senator Strom Thurmond openly questioned her mental health.  I never spoke with her that much but she came by the office a few times and I remember her as personable, courageous, engaging, and smart.  Eventually she won her lawsuit, was reinstated in the military, and retired in 1997.

Earlier this year the Undersecretary of Defense issued a press release without much fanfare, announcing some additions to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, "an independent advisory committee that provides the department with advice and recommendations on matters and policies relating to the recruitment and retention, treatment, employment, integration, and well-being of highly qualified professional women in the armed forces." Tucked in a list of ten names was Col. Cammermeyer.

These changes have come far too slowly.  And more changes are still needed.  But tomorrow I'll be thinking of all the brave people I met and all the lessons I learned and I'll smile.

Posts I'm Thankful For This Year

I'm obviously thankful for a lot this year - family, friends, a job that gives me flexibility and keeps things interesting, and so on.  I"m very grateful for the opportunity to contribute at some great blogs beyond my own - Science Cheerleader, Earth & Industry, and Global Voices Online.  I thought I'd put together a post with some of my favorite links from the year -all from other people (aside from my participation in one podcast) that help me appreciate the variety of the communities I navigate.  I'll get right to it...

Links to all the posts that reviewed ScienceOnline 2010.  Looking forward to #scio11 as I've gotten to know the organizers a bit more over the past year.

Earth & Industry's Gang of Four Predictions for 2010.  Listen again to this podcast and see how we did. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to collaborate with three real-deal green bloggers.

So I went to the White House today... few posts demonstrate the influence and independence of political bloggers than my pal John Aravosis' summary of his meeting with a few folks at 1600 Pennsylvania.  Since then other contributors to Americablog have met with the President directly.

Three Bad Ideas for Helping Haiti. This was the post that really turned me on to Alanna Shaikh's ideas about global development. I'm very grateful that I had the chance to chat with her - it was the first time I ever spoke with someone in Tajikistan...

The Great Backyard Bird Count.  I admit it - since I moved to NC and have a bigger backyard I've become a bit of a bird nerd.  Identifying birds and bird calls has become a bit of a family thing now, and that's a lot of fun.

Nothing is Going to Change Until We're in the Room.  Joanne Bamberger makes a pretty simple point here.  And she's right.  Her writing reminds me the mom-o-sphere is absolutely the most important online community there is.

Team WhyMommy's Virtual Science Fair.  To me this is one of 2010's best examples of a community coming together to support one of its own.  I'm very thankful that I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Susan Niebur this year, and watch her bridge communities.  I spent some time this year trying to think of ways to get mom bloggers involved with science bloggers and this remains better than anything I've tried.

Visualizing the BP Oil Spill.  To me the #1 story of the year was the underwater volcano of oil that gushed for three months in the Gulf of Mexico.  A lot of clever people used social media and technology tools to help spread the word and help people understand the magnitude of the crisis. This was just one example.

A Farewell to ScienceBlogs.  To me this post is the science blogging community's equivalent of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the door of All Saints Church.  (OK, that's a stupid analogy for so many reasons, but still, it was a big deal.)  Bora Zivkovic's departure from SEED Media's mothership wasn't the first act of defiance, and it probably wasn't the most impactful from a financial point of view.  But Bora is the heart and soul of this community and he's been at the forefront of a renaissance in science writing.

What is UP With All the Tutus?  Another great example of the mom-o-sphere coming together to help one of its own.  Catherine Connors didn't want to be the Belle of BlogHer, but a comedy (tragedy?) of errors made that happen.  The sad, sweet story of her nephew and how she enlists the support of other mom bloggers to help is enormously touching.

New Media, Old Media.  The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism published an eye-opening report on the differences in coverage between the traditional media companies and the new-skool social media crowd.

Why Veterans Day Deserves To Be Celebrated.  Julie Marsh issues the serious smackdown to Penelope Trunk.  I know Julie pretty well and I think she really took her writing up a notch this year.

Ending Isolationism in Politics, Science, and Social Media - The Battle For Mom

One of the things I like about my job is the freedom I have to work with (online) communities that interest me - parenting, environmentalism, politics, and science.  One of the things I don't like about my job is how so few people in one community really know or care about people in another.  From a work perspective, moving from project to project, or from community to community means I often have to "shift gears" considerably - I have to reacquaint myself with a community's vocabulary, cultural norms, influential players, current events, and so on.   It's not crippling but it requires some time and effort.

The promise of the "World Wide Web" - breaking barriers, bringing people together and solving problems for the greater good - has been largely unfulfilled. Arguably, social media has contributed to even more isolationism, more homophily, more entrenched positions in our civil discourse. I'm by no means the first person to suggest this.

But it really struck home for me when I saw this: half of the incoming GOP Members of Congress deny the existence of man-made climate change.

The incoming Congress is preparing to conduct hearings and investigations based on a premise virtually all climate scientists know to be demonstrably false.  Their actions will prompt the collision of three of "my" online communities - politics, science and environmentalism.  The key to how things shake out lies with the fourth community - parents, mainly moms.

First, consider these points:

• The Internet has transformed American politics.  In 2008 it gave Democrats a fundraising tool to to compete with the GOP. In 2010 it gave Republicans (or more specifically, hard-right conservatives) an organizing tool and communication platform.  It has also prompted the rise of a new community of punditry - political bloggers.
• The blogosphere has given science writers a home. The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that science topics get ten times the amount of coverage in blogs than in traditional publications. 
• One of the reasons commonly cited today for "why the Democrats lost" this week is the decline in support from women - I realize not all women are moms, but moms are actively engaged in civic and political activities.
• Environmentalists are currently struggling mightily to find their collective voice - their "organized" communications efforts range from ineffectual to disgusting.   

I'm not trying to make a political statement on energy and the environment here.  People can and will have strong differences of opinion on policy; about diversity of fuel portfolio, about efficiency standards, subsidies, and so on.  But these discussions should be based on facts.  The facts are crystal clear: climate change is real, man's activities contribute significantly to it, and the consequences of inaction are measurable. It's really not even an issue of "agreeing on a set of facts" - facts are facts, whether you agree with them or not.  So we're asking communities who frankly don't talk with each other much - scientists, environmentalists, and political activists - to begin a vital conversation with either accusations of fraud or declarations of lunacy.

And this is where the moms come in.  Mom is the opinion leader of everyday life.  She decides everything from what we're eating for dinner to what car we're buying to what the local school will teach the kids.  She represents the demographic that tips the balance between winners and losers.  Most importantly, mom is the one who is going to tell each side to stop yelling, accept reality, and figure out a solution anyway - because that's what moms do everyday.  And nobody - NOBODY - has really made a meaningful effort to do anything with this community beyond selling it stuff.

So from a competitive standpoint the side that engages mom first and best will probably win.  But more importantly, if ANY side engages mom at all, we all win.

On the road again...

gonna be a busy couple of weeks so posting will be light.  Again.  just a couple of quick things.

First, the latest iteration of old-school vs. blogosphere happened in, of all places, a chemistry journal. Just the same old arguments - bloggers can't be trusted etc - from another obsolescent form of publishing. I was going to write the obligatory I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I post but the science bloggers did it better, so you should read this from David Kroll and this from Deborah Blum if you care to get the smart reaction.

I also noticed Maureen Dowd recently lamented the rebirth of anti-intellectualism on the right wing. I'm not going to do the "it happens as much on the left" thing because honestly, it doesn't.  

My take on it is simple - we've allowed our politics to descend to new depths of stupid.  We're poised to elect people who essentially believe dinosaurs and people lived together on this earth and belching a gazillion tons of smoke into the air really doesn't do anything bad, and it's totally OK to ignore challenging questions from reporters or even citizens, and it's even ok to hide where you get your money to broadcast your made-up crap.

We've allowed it to happen because no one with real power on the left (or even in the middle) has actually done anything to make it stop.

It's especially harmful to people in my line of work because most people see politics and PR as largely the same thing these days.  PR is actually about getting to the truth.  It's about telling people what's important.  Sadly our politicians (and too many PR folks) think PR is about changing the subject or hiding what matters most.

If you do this right - or if you really want to do this right - you think Campaign 2010 is inherently bad for business.

I haven't stopped blogging

I just do it in several places now.

One of the great parts of my professional life is I sometimes get to reach out to other online communities and try to make a substantive contribution to their discussions.  Lately I've been very fortunate to add just a bit to the collective excellence at Global Voices Online and Science Cheerleader.  (I hope I haven't ruined their blogs.)

While I haven't done much podcasting lately at Earth & Industry, I've been conspiring with the Gang of Four to do an election preview.

Things have been really humming for me at work lately - obviously the Alltech Sustainable Haiti Project is ongoing, plus some work that remains out of the public eye.   When I get a chance I'll dive back in...

Why science blogs give me hope

Lately I've been watching the Democratic party implode because they've stopped talking about their plans and vision for the future, and they won't stop talking about whatever ridiculousness the other side dreams up.  Sadly, it's an all-too-common problem I see from companies facing PR crises - "Hi, I'm [name], and before I tell you anything meaningful about myself, I'd like to outline all of the criticism that's been leveled against me in great detail and then provide my lawyer-approved response."  

For a while now I've thought the online community of science writers was caught in a similar trap.  I heard (and sometimes still hear) bloggers complain about how the mainstream media gets the facts wrong so often. How critics stack the deck against science with false attacks cleverly planted on television.  And so on. This has concerned me because science is so critical to solving the world's most pressing problems, and science writers are the societal interface for the rest of us.  And you can see what this approach has done for the Democrats.

My inner flack keeps saying  "stop hitting back, start hitting first."  And it keeps saying "talk with the people you want to influence, not just yourselves."  And it keeps saying "just build a plan of attack and go do it. Get them to worry about you for a change."  (My inner flack is apparently a loudmouth.)

The past few weeks, though, have seen some things that really give me hope. While I can't claim to be the authoritative voice on the history of the science blogosphere - that's probably Bora - I can say this online community is really on a hot streak right now.   The community went from the perceived collapse of its most prestigious blog network in a scandal to the birth of three impressive blog networks - Scientopia, Guardian Science Blogs, and PLoS Blogs - and a science network aggregator Scienceblogging.org.   And you should really check out the aggregator to see just how much content is out there.  The rumors of ScienceBlogs' death have been greatly exaggerated.  There are other great networks out there as well.

Of course, most if not all of the bloggers in these networks have already been writing, as Ars Technica's John Timmer points out. But there's an unprecedented level of promotion and cross-talk, highlighting the writers and where they're going and what they're doing.  Most importantly, while the writing has always been generally good and credible, I'm sensing it's increasingly assertive and positive in tone.   The  new networks (and concurrent promotion) are positioning the writers to have influence far beyond their own community.

It's a very important step, one that I hope will be followed by a coordinated effort to build and leverage influence.

So what do you do about it?

My previous post elicited a rather thoughtful response from Wandering Willa:

Given your PR background is it possible that your natural inclination and goals are not necessarily the same as the bloggers in question. If these were your clients, how would you explain what you perceive their goals are and should be? How would you take their concerns for the integrity of their connections in designing a strategy to represent them? Do you offer a valuable service to them considering you expect them to approach someone who can't even do her job? What is accomplished by doing so?

 Why Willa, I'm so glad you asked. 

Of course it's quite likely that my natural inclination and goals are not necessarily the same as members of the science blogging community.  But since my job is part of the discussion now, I should stress my comments on the issue are not related to any client.  I have no material relationships to disclose in any of this nonsense, and I'm not using this as some sort of business development opportunity - though I do think there is professional value in being "the PR guy that science bloggers read."  Science writing has been an interest of mine from some time - you can see the communities I read on my communities and links page. (since the SB exodus I have to update some links, I know.)

Given the current environment I'm a bit hesitant to make generalizations about science bloggers. (Though I admit I've done so before, but hopefully not in a mean way.) I don't think the science blogging community has "goals" in the sense that a company has a PR goal.   The consensus I see among many scientists and science writers is the desire to "win" in policy debates and culture wars on some very basic issues where the science is not in serious doubt, and more generally, to have more respect both individually and as a group. 

The challenge with asserting a community-wide goal is two-fold - first you have to define the community and second you must have a way to measure it.  (I'll let members of this community define it, it's not my place to do so.)  It's easy to say you want to increase public sentiment toward scientists and science bloggers.  The ways you'd measure that may sound surprisingly scientific coming from a PR flack like me - establish a baseline, develop an intervention, and then re-test.  In my line of work you can conduct opinion polls that measure favorable vs. unfavorable attitudes toward certain people or groups.   But any big PR firm in the world can get the percentage of people who agree with the sentence "scientists are nice" to bump up a few points after an ad campaign or something.   Typically the only thing that accomplishes is give some folks at an ad agency a few bucks.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) 

To me the goal should be two-fold - increase the ability of scientists (and science writers) to be influential in a variety of public forums and civic structures, and forge enough meaningful relationships between the community and other elite civic leaders to have a substantive impact on policy in real time.  These goals take quite a long time to accomplish.  I'm putting together some ideas and will have more on that soon.

As for "integrity of connections," it's obviously quite important. One must have standing within one's own community if one claims to speak for it.  I think scientists know this better than most.  But I also think most science bloggers will say there's still a role for industry and commerce here.  Transparency has always been non-negotiable, especially in this community - I'm reasonably certain as long as all relevant material relationships are disclosed this sort of thing is handled rather well among scientists.

Do I offer a valuable service?  All I can say is the "advice" I dole out on this blog is free and you get every penny's worth.  But I am personally committed to the community and want to see it thrive. I also see professional advantage in forging strong relationships in this community.  It's called "social networking." It works.

But as for Ms. Heffernan "not doing her job," I'll simply say this isn't the first time someone who worked for a newspaper got something wrong or said something unfair.  I've seen far worse screw-ups from world-renowned journalists.  And what can be accomplished by converting her into an ally, or at least into someone who understands and respects the community? She works for the New York Times Magazine.  Yes, THAT New York Times.  With all those readers.  With all that influence.  Write her off and call her stupid, and she has an excuse to do it again.

Put together a day for her.  Introduce her to some folks.  Have a drink or two.  Let her discover what she has in common with the people she's covering.    Now do that for a dozen big-league journalists.  Then a couple of mayors. Maybe a member of Congress.  A whole truckload of PTA members.  some local businesses. 

Next thing you know you have a good reputation and good things start happening.

BREAKING: Bloggers Are Misunderstood

UPDATE:  Seems this post got some attention, thanks to links and tweets from Bora.  (I like Bora a lot.) And folks aren't happy with me.  Someone even went as far as dusting off the old fallacy of moral equivalence - I think communities who care about how they are perceived have an obligation to do outreach, so apparently I think women who dress in suggestive clothing shouldn't be surprised if they are raped.  The only thing that argument does is trivialize rape, and sadly, those comments sorta prove Heffernan's point.

Here's the point that perhaps I could have made more clear - we all know someone took an unfair shot at the science blogging community. Science bloggers have a choice - they can call that person stupid, or they can view this unfair shot as a fabulous PR opportunity.

What would happen, for example, if Heffernan were invited as a speaker at ScienceOnline2011?  Would science bloggers throw tomatoes at her?  Or would they take the time and demonstrate the patience to calmly, rationally, educate her on their community and what it offers?  Isn't that a better strategy and wouldn't that create a better outcome?  And wouldn't that encourage more people to read science blogs?

What did the Washington Nationals do with Miss Iowa this week?  They took a PR turd and created a nice opportunity to bridge a cultural divide.  Basically the same deal here.

I've been kicking an idea around with some great bloggers from different communities on exactly this issue.  I hope the folks who have commented on this post will be willing to join us when it's ready - Nothing would make me happier...

I read with interest Virginia Heffernan's piece in NYT Magazine over the weekend, giving her spin on the whole SciBling exodus thing.  Frankly, I'm about done with the meta-discussion and kinda want to get back to reading good stuff about science too.  But there were a couple of things in her piece that made me scratch my head.  First:

I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings. The bloggers evidently write often enough for ad-free academic journals that they still fume about adjacencies, advertorial and infomercials. Most writers for “legacy” media like newspapers, magazines and TV see brush fires over business-editorial crossings as an occupational hazard. They don’t quit anytime there’s an ad that looks so much like an article it has to be marked “this is an advertisement.” 

I'm pretty sure the issue was that the "ad" needed the disclaimer but didn't actually have it.  I'm also pretty sure there would be a few defections from the "legacy" media types if content at NYT was for sale. 

The other item, though, got me thinking a bit.

What’s bothersome is that the site is misleading. It’s not science by scientists, not even remotely; it’s science blogging by science bloggers. And science blogging, apparently, is a form of redundant and effortfully incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word “science” and from occasional invocations of “peer-reviewed” thises and thats. 

My first reaction was simple and snarky:  "of course we've never seen 'incendiary rhetoric'  from, say, the New York Times op-ed page."  And then I thought Ms. Heffernan isn't reading the same blogs I am because I see plenty of good science there all the time.  Ms. Heffernan is clearly smart enough to know she's painting a community with a rather broad brush.  David Dobbs sorta shrugged this criticism off - "this is neither novel nor surprising."

But then I thought maybe the science blogging community, rather than taking offense, might get beyond the over-generalization and take her comments to heart a little bit - especially if they want to be taken more seriously by people outside their own community. 

Right now the most prominent voices in the science blogging community - at least in terms of "share of voice" - are probably PZ Myers and a guy who calls himself "Orac" (though his real name isn't hard to find.). Thanks to all the ScienceBlogs defections, Myers probably accounts for more than half of all the traffic on that network.   I read their blogs regularly and I know they're both very smart.  I'm pretty sure neither of them presume to speak for an entire community.  But to put it kindly neither one pulls punches.  They can be downright NASTY.  Of course they have a right to be nasty, and frankly I personally think their targets deserve to be called out in some way, though my style is a bit different.

But here's the thing:  the scientists and science writers/bloggers I talk with care very much about how they are perceived beyond their own community.  They are concerned about the waning influence scientists have on policy, on public opinion, and on culture.  At the same time, they think they have a critical job as "media." If you care about your role in media and how you're perceived, you should think about how the most prominent voices in your community "represent" you.

When people outside the scienceblogging community think of science blogs, they think of PZ Myers and Orac.  And if they don't have the back story, they are not likely to get beyond the most provocative things these two have published.  And they're going to react the way Heffernan did.  By the way, Heffernan has a PhD in English Literature from Harvard. PZ Myers reacted to her column by writing a blog post tagged "stupidity."

I have some personal experience here.  When I spoke at ScienceOnline2010, I asked people to work with me on reaching out to other bloggers in other communities.  In doing so, I delivered a message that wasn't all that well received - it's hard to convince someone to reconsider a position when you're calling them a dick.   And let's face it - the most popular blogs on that network devote much of their time calling people dicks. 

It's not my place to tell PZ Myers or Orac or anyone else what they should publish on their own blog.  And I'd bet Myers and Orac would be the first people to say they don't presume to speak for anyone but themselves.  (I'd even be willing to bet they're probably nice guys.) But I know this - the scienceblogging community cares a lot about what people outside their community think of them, yet they do very little real outreach. Of course there's a place for provocative thought and for these two great writers - but the scientists and bloggers who want to be known for their own thoughts and their own work have to do more to make sure they're not drowned out by the loudest voices.

A consensus seems to be developing among science bloggers that says "if Heffernan knew us, she wouldn't have written that."  I say if science bloggers took the time to introduce themselves and their work to people outside their own community - people like Heffernan - she would have known you.