A Blog Around The Clock

Today I have to be very, very careful, because Liz Allen is the person who hired me for PLoS and is my immediate supervisor. This means, in PLoS terms, that we work great as a team, talk on the phone a couple of times per week and exchange approximately five gigazillion e-mails every day, enjoying every second of it as we are both true believers in our mission – getting everyone to LOVE Open Access and Public Library of Science. Liz is the Director of Marketing and Business Development at PLoS and the person in charge of communications, online and offline. Some of you had the good fortune to meet her in person at the second Science Blogging Conference four weeks ago. So, I hope you all behave nicely in the comments, OK?
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job?
Thanks Bora. It feels a little strange to be writing this to you from home, since we live in each others virtual pockets at PLoS, myself in our San Francisco office and you in Chapel Hill. This distance has proved to be no obstacle to our partnership in which we attempt to bring the joys of open science to the research community – ready or not out there here we come.
What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
I think we can both safely say I am already truly grown up. My job, as head of Marketing and Business Development for PLoS, is to be the number one PLoS cheerleader (although sadly I look nothing like). Previously, I was fortunate enough to spend 11 years at Nature, and I can honestly say that both then as now, I’ve never had a dull day. I tell my friends my working life at PLoS is “all doable as long as you assume that every day is launch day”. This isn’t a surprising statement when you realize that PLoS has started 8 websites in 5 years and built a formidable brand to rival that of others with a 140 year track record. It’s a lot to pack into a short period of time and it frequently feels like it.
How did you end up working for PLoS?
I moved to San Francisco from Chicago and Mary Waltham, who was previously Managing Director and Publisher of the Lancet and worked with me at Nature, told me about the position – she’d heard about it through her connection with Barbara Cohen, an inspirational founding employee of PLoS, who was also previously at Nature.
Barbara called me up and a few interviews later, I agreed to join as a consultant and rapidly converted to a full time employee when I realized the enormity of the communications task that lay ahead of me.
The challenge of starting at PLoS nearly three years ago was best summed up by the blank stare on the faces of most scientists back then when I told them I worked for PLoS (rhymes with floss I would say – still no flicker of recognition). All in all, a very different experience from saying that you worked for Nature – this statement would be greeted by reverential silence and the red carpet would magically be rolled out to smooth your path to whatever it was that you wanted. I realized that my job was to get the word out about PLoS and build a brand around the fact that great peer-reviewed science could be published online and made freely accessible to all. I am happy to say that now, when I say that I work for PLoS, I usually receive a nod of recognition and the carpet, while not red, is definitely warming in hue.

My readers know my side of the story on how I got the job with PLoS (see here). They may not know the PLoS’s side or that you were personally quite instrumental in this happening. What were you thinking!?
I was thinking this: “Here I am stuck at the airport in Denver and the only thing to eat is a brand of Tex Mex fast food with a reputation for Botulism. What shall I do instead? I know, I’ll call that interesting sounding Zivkovic guy that all those bloggers (sciblings as I now know them) are raving about in the blogosphere and give him an interview off the cuff. He’ll probably be up for it, after all, he’s one of the first people in history to apply in public to the equivalent of a situation vacant posting in a blog, he’s probably as strange as me”. I called you up and we got on famously, the rest is history, as they say.
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
Well I have to confess to having a weakness for a blog called patently silly but that’s not really scientific. Naturally I follow all the scienceblogs.com sites religiously – I am quite intrigued by the ocean sciences (but am too chicken to dive) so anything with that theme attracts my personal attention and I am also quite a fan of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. At the conference, I enjoyed meeting Karen from the Beagle Project and now I follow her blog, she’s even been nice enough to comment on a PLoS ONE paper, which I was delighted to see.
You have also given quite a lot of thought to online social networks and how they can be used in organizing scientists, spreading scientific information, etc.., both using the general sites like Facebook and sites specifically designed for science networking. What are your thoughts on this?
Good question. So, PLoS ONE is a network of scientists that comes together around the articles. The PLoS Facebook group on the other hand comes together to bond around issues affecting PLoS itself, web technology and the philosophy of open access. From what I can see, folks in both environments still have a fledgling relationship with the articles or with the organization, and less frequently with each other in an open enviroment. This is understandable given the competitive culture of science and the grip of academic tenure. Researchers who build successful relationships often do so within international collaborative project groups and for that they might use their lab pages, project wikis, or email but they aren’t yet using these forums. I could see this changing over time if tools were introduced to facilitate that. At the end of the day though, I still see researchers bonding as a group around the science itself, and with each other because of their shared passion for the work and the associated career opportunities.
Is there anything that happened at the Conference – a session, something someone said or did, a new friendship – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
Yes, a few things. At the conference it was good to feel a very warm and positive vibe towards PLoS (that’s not to say it was uncritical at all times!) and frequently I got the feeling that really the organization does truly belong to the community which is of course true. We were founded by scientists for scientists and we hope to continue that way. It was also good to discover that although PLoS is relatively small in size (but mighty in terms of influence we like to think!), with the collective support of folks I met at the conference, it could be possible to make progress on issues such as getting PLoS content into the hands of more people in the developing world.
It was so nice seeing you again and thank you for the interview.
You are welcome, can I go to bed now?
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Check out all the interviews in this series.

Tom Levenson is the author of three cool books so far: Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science, Einstein in Berlin and Ice Time: Climate, Science, and Life on Earth and has recently taken the science blogging world by storm with his new blog, the Inverse Square. We finally got to meet at the second Science Blogging Conference four weeks ago.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real Life job?
I’m Tom Levenson – and my career feels to me much more as a series of happy accidents than anything that could have been planned out. I left college a long time ago with a degree in East Asian Studies and sort of an intention to be a foreign correspondent. My first year out of college, bumming around in Manila, I got a stringer’s job writing features for Reuters. My only problem was that I had never studied the Philippines, didn’t speak the local languages and knew nothing of the ins and outs of daily life there. But I was lucky enough to find science writing – or rather to have it find me. An international coral reef biology conference led me to writing about environmental issues there – and I found that (a) stories that start from a foundation of verifiable observations about the world are very satisfying; and (b) that a story about science can lead to all kinds of other insights – what people do when confronted by certain kinds of facts tells you a lot about those people, their place and time, and so on.
That probably tells you that my formal science background is near zero, though I did do a fair amount of history of science as an undergraduate. Science-and-history is still probably my first love – my three most recent books (one still gestating) are all history-centered, and even my first, warning of climate change, had a strong historical strand running through it. I got to books after about four or five years writing on for weekly or monthly magazines – mostly Time and Discover – and then developed a parallel career as a science documentary guy, working for the PBS series NOVA for several years, and then setting out on my own as an indy doc producer. It’s a completely different mode of communication, but I have found that making films has had an enormous and very positive impact on my prose.
Those two tracks have led me to what is now my day job: professing science writing and film making at MIT. The best part of that is that I get to spend every day surrounded by people who really believe in the power of rational thought and sustained effort to make a difference in the world. The worst part – by far –is grading papers.
What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
A better writer. I want to achieve the kind of gorgeous precision I find in a few places: some of Cormac McCarthy’s pure description. Eudora Welty’s ear and eye. Lots more, really – what I love is that moment when words become transparent to experience. …I’d like to be a real photographer, and not just a snapshot guy…and in the realm of true daydreams: I’d like to be really physically fit, for one last time before senescence.
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
I did my best to ignore blogs for quite a while. Given my all-star status as a procrastinator, the last thing I needed was another clearly legitimate way not to sit down to my writing desk. But I started with the political blogosphere around the 2004 election, and found science blogging soon after, looking for writing that would not remind me of the pain of that November.
Favorites include a lot of the usual suspects…I use the Science Blogs front page to guide me to specific posts across a wide range of blogs – that’s how I picked up the delightful poetry thread Shelley Batts started at Retrospectacle and John Wilkins extended at Evolving Thoughts. (And I found out about Shelley’s writing while at the Conference, so I guess the answer to that part of the question is yes). I check in with Pharyngula fairly often, especially when there is a good comment rant going. I like to keep some nose in physics news, so Cosmic Variance and Cocktail Party Physics come up on the screen fairly often. But I graze a lot – and I use blogs to lead me to other blogs as much as possible. That’s how I found Cosma Shalizi’s really sharp Three Toed Sloth, for example.
You started blogging relatively recently, but apparently imediately “hit the groove”, so to speak. Do you think it takes a certain personality to become a good blogger?
Yes – but it’s not really one kind of personality, I think. I look at someone like PZ Myers, who, as I write this, has six posts up in the last twenty four hours. I get tired just looking at that kind of productivity, and I have no idea how he does it.
I write relatively slowly. I do put up some short, quick stuff that hits my this-is-odd sensor, but most of what I come up with are informal essays, medium long in blogospheric terms. (I go for 500-1000 words – a far cry from my MIT colleague Henry Jenkins, who thinks little of going on for several thousand words, but not like Atrios/Duncan Black either).
The trick and the pleasure for me in blogging as opposed to my really long form writing comes in finding one fact that leads to an idea that in turn permits a twist in either story, argument or both. Blogging this way plays to a couple of my personality traits – the soapbox impulse, and puzzle-solving aspects of writing. Jennifer Ouellette said at the conference that she uses her blog as a writing lab. I think that’s right, at least for me too. I get to play here.
You are writing your fourth book right now. What is it about?
I’m writing a book about one key episode (at least I think it is) in Isaac Newton’s life. Between 1696 and 1699 Newton worked as a kind of upper-mid level civil servant, running the Royal Mint. His duties ranged from doing time-and-motion studies of the process of making coins to chasing and prosecuting counterfeiters. My book follows one such case. As that story unfolds, the book uses Newton’s life as a cop as a way to get into much more about his work, his methods, and what it was like to live through a time marked by revolutions in science, economics.
What are your plans for the future (at least what you are willing to disclose) in your life, work and blogging?
Life – much the same as now: work too hard, play with my delightful son, try to see more of the world and so on.
Work – I’m starting up a new film project that is going to try and meld broadcast and web to do my part to push the documentary form kicking and screaming into the century of the fruitbat. (That’s me and everyone else in the business trying to figure out that problem. I’ve got a couple of books in mind to follow on Newton – one that picks up directly where my current project leaves off, with a look at fraud, murder and the birth of modern economics, and two more that diverge a little more from my Newtonian stem.
Blogging — Inverse Square occupies as much blogging energy as I can muster right now. I want to focus on refining its voice and sharpening up my sense of what to cover there for the next few months. All the same, I do have a structured blog project I want to start up soon – but until I’m ready to roll with that, the less said…
Is there anything that happened at the Conference – a session, something someone said or did, a new friendship – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
Easily the most important quality of the Conference for me was its un-Conference-ness. Coming in as a reasonably grizzled old-media type, I was struck by the sense of a common purpose across the science blog community that made itself felt in the rolling discussion/argument format of sessions. That quality carried over into the conversations in the halls and the bar.
I’m not sure if anything actually changed my views about science communication – my biggest worry after a quarter of a century committing same is that we may mostly be preaching to the choir. Blogs probably help expand the reach of good science to a public that may not know they are interested in it – but other blogs can do so for crap science as well. But I think I came away from the conference believing that the capacity for a community to hone its arguments through blog post to blog post conversation is very valuable, because in the end a way of exploring the world that works will trump ones that don’t.
And the other thing is that the conference was simply fun. I count a number of new friends out of the experience — Jennifer Oullette, for one, a bunch of the Science Blogs crew of course, among them James Hrynyshyn, Abel PharmBoy, Shelley Batts, Tara Smith and Dave Munger – not to mention one Bora Zivkovic. It was good to renew my acquaintance with Chris Mooney; and meeting Eric Roston allowed me to resume an old love of the carbon cycle – but while the list goes on, the point is that the Conference brings together a couple of hundred people all of whom are engaged in some form of common enterprise. That’s exhilarating.
It was so nice seeing you at the Conference and thank you for the interview.
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Check out all the interviews in this series.

I’ve bumped into Christina’s blog every now and then before, but only started reading it more regularly when she signed up for the first Science Blogging Conference. We also met at the ASIS&T meeting in Milwaukee, and then again at the second Science Blogging Conference four weeks ago.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background?
Hi Everyone! Thanks for inviting me to interview, Bora!
My background is a bit unusual. From high school (a small rural school in Maryland), I went to the University of Maryland where I majored in physics and participated in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) through a cross-town agreement with George Washington University. When I got my BS, I was commissioned in the Navy and then after training served more than 4 years both on a destroyer (small combatant ship) and at the Navy Historical Center in DC. After a year at a Dot Com, I went on to get my Masters of Library Science. While studying for that part time, I started working at a large, very busy, ethnically diverse suburban library in reference (these are the people who man the info desk to whom you should direct questions). When I got my MLS, I then took a job as a solo librarian at an EPA chemistry lab library and then from there moved to my current job as a librarian at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. In 2005 I started back to school part time, working toward my PhD in Information Studies. I’ll finish my coursework this Spring (wooo-hooo!)
What is your Real Life job? What does it mean to be a Science Librarian?
I have absolutely the *best* job in the world with the best people! Imagine a treasure hunt every day or maybe a word puzzle. Working in a research lab that’s 76% technical staff of whom 20% have PhDs, I’m around amazing people all day long. I’m also like a goalie – 10 people have to have tried to get the information first before they call me! So, the questions I get are either really tough or the scientist or engineer needs an exhaustive literature review. I do the fun part, interviewing the scientist to see what he or she needs, then doing the searching, summarizing and presenting the results — and they do the hard work of making the world a better place… while I get to move on to the next project. There’s a lot of variety. I also do some training and marketing things but I try to make them very targeted to tasks the people I serve need to complete.
What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
I always want to be a librarian, but I want to do research, too. I think it’s very important to help scientists and engineers find, keep, re-find, and use the information they need to be creative, to solve problems and make good decisions. If we do not have good evidence then we can’t design good systems and help make the world a better place.
Internet has turned the job of a librarian upside down. What does that mean specifically for science librarians? Is there a clash of cultures between librarians and information scientists, when the two are supposed to work together in rethinking The Library?
What? The librarian *is* an information scientist! We were there first. It’s very exciting for us right now because there is so much information available, we have really had to change our search methods and tools to emphasize precision over recall (too techie, but I’m sure everyone gets precision). Others in my field are asking tough questions on organizing information, preserving this huge amount of information, and issues of information policy which are totally new. I work closely with computer scientists, records managers, archivists, information architects, taxonomists, and other folks in “information professions”. Most of them do not have the future of the library as a concern. We are re-thinking the library and we’ll take any help we can get from people of any research area to help us figure this out.
I, for one, get really frustrated when someone in an adjacent technical field “invents” something we’ve been doing for a hundred or more years. We also need to do a much better job in telling and showing people what we do so they aren’t left to reinvent our work on their own!
In discussions of Open Access on science blogs, at meetings, between scientists and publishers, most people talk about Gold, while librarians appear to prefer Green approach to Open Access. Can you explain to my readers what is the difference between the two and if you could speculate why people with different backgrounds may prefer one or the other?
Wow, what a huge question. I think green is self-archiving of published, peer-reviewed articles and gold is open access available from the publisher. First, it’s not an either-or type thing. I do think that anyone who can, should archive a pre-, e-, or post-print on their web site and in institutional and disciplinary repositories. The thing with archiving on your web page is that it isn’t really that findable and there’s no plan for long term preservation and migration to new formats. IRs are much better at preservation, but the findability just isn’t there, which is very sad. (OAI-PMH, Google, and sciencecommons all help but you still need controlled vocabulary, etc.)
I also like that money from grants, etc., be set aside for open access through journals. I trust journals to provide good access, good findability, and good preservation. We know the content will be indexed in powerful databases. I think journals do a good job of managing the publishing process and peer review. Innovative publishers like IOP are almost disaggregating the journal and then you have re-aggregations in the form of virtual journals from AIP/APS… so maybe it’s not the actual “journal” model that makes sense, but these societies and professional publishers do add a lot of value that’s really needed.
I’m really interested in what’s happening right now in high energy physics. Essentially, the idea is to redirect library money that now goes for specific journals to pay for all articles in HEP to be open access. From what I’ve heard from my colleagues, they are very concerned that if all of the articles will be free, then their budget will not go to this pool, but to say, more chemistry journals. The other thing is that wealthy institutions will be subsidizing mid-range institutions and public schools. Maybe they should do this, but it shouldn’t be by accident. If library money is diverted to pay for open access, then we could be in trouble, because we would run up much higher bills than we currently pay for journals, and this still wouldn’t pay for research databases and the like which are also immensely expensive.
I’ll leave more detailed analysis to people who know more about this.
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favorites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while following the Conference?
I’ve been blogging since about 2003 and I think I knew about a couple of physics blogs way back then. After my boss insisted I look into blogs more (thanks, Susan), I actually got really interested in retrieving information from blogs so I wrote a couple of articles for librarians on how to search blogs. Since I’m a science junkie, it was natural for me to search for science information on blogs. I am almost done a research project that looked at how and why physicists and chemists use blogs so I will *not* name favorites! I love you all 🙂
You are one of the “repeat offenders”, i.e., coming to the 1st Science Bloggers Conference did not discourage you from also coming to the 2nd one. Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
I really, really enjoyed the session: Real-time blogging in the marine sciences. It clicked with a recent IEEE Spectrum podcast on how new communication technologies allow astronomers to redirect a terrestrial telescope within 2 minutes of a satellite imaging something of interest. Seems like a funny connection but the marine researchers spoke about contacting scientists ashore to get feedback while they were acquiring data and how blogging might support this. There were other elements related to the outreach responsibilities of some missions, too, that were neat. Boy, things have changed a bit since my at sea time!
It was great that many of us were in the same hotel. We chatted during meals, driving to events, and in the bar. The unconference started mid-day Friday and ended Sunday morning! I learned a lot during these sessions, too.
It was so nice seeing you again and thank you for the interview.
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Check out all the interviews in this series.

Aaron Rowe writes for WIRED Science blog and we have first met at the Science Blogging Conference three weeks ago.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Who are you?
I am an Eagle Scout, doctoral student in biochemistry, colossal foodie, storyteller, and amateur comedian. My recreational tastes are far from the mainstream. I don’t enjoy watching sports, drinking alcohol, eating meat, amusement parks, or loud music.
Most of my hobbies could be described as constructive — cooking, writing, making videos. What I want to do more than anything is assist, educate, entertain,
and protect people.
The topic of my research is electrochemical aptamer biosensors — DNA that can identify tiny molecules quickly. Previously, I have worked on the organometallic synthesis of testosterone analogs that inhibit the enzyme aromatase.
My favorite hobby is science blogging. I have always loved sharing the things that excite me with other people. Also, I have a very strong desire to improve science education.
What’s your story?
I grew up watching Mr. Wizard on Nickelodeon and fell in love with chemistry from a very early age. It also helped that my parents subscribe to Science News and often leave it lying around in the bathroom. Sometime before the first grade, I begged my grandmother to buy me a chemistry set. Perhaps due to some arrogance on my part and the influence of my peers, I gravitated away from biology and toward engineering in High School. That was a mistake. It took years of
reading popular science magazines like Wired, Scientific American, Chemical and Engineering News, and Discover to realize that my true love is the molecular life sciences.
And, what do you really do?
On a typical work day, I wake up, go to lab and do hours of benchwork while reading news and scientific literature between experiments, try a new restaurant at lunchtime or on the way home from work, then read some more literature and chat with friends while blogging.
On a longer timescale: Give tons of unsolicited advice. Read lots of scientific literature within and outside of my field. Worry about my friends and family. Have tons of ideas. Follow technology news religiously. Make tons of dry, twisted, or silly jokes. Visit ethnic grocery stores. Watch independent films. Go camping in the desert. Listen to unsigned bands on KCRW — a public radio station. Deviate from established scientific procedures with the hope of finding a better way to do things.
Oh, and how did the conference blow your mind and change your life?
It was one of the few times when I have met so many people that feel like my brothers and sisters. Simply reflecting on some of those amazing connections has nearly brought me to tears.
For example, Bill Hooker and I began a very energetic conversation about the topic of my research. His questions were extremely insightful and it made me think that blogger scientists are, figuratively speaking, the spiritual descendants of those great researchers throughout history that zealously communicated with one another through letters. Blogging is sort of the next step in the evolution of scientific communication, and those scholars who have a knack for collaboration are drawn to it.

What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
In short, an accomplished writer and a scientist that very directly helps people.
Vernor Vinge, Ben Stein, Ben Franklin, Craig Hawker, James Economy, Kevin Plaxco, and Isac Asimov are some of my role models. Vinge won a Hugo award while holding down a faculty position in computer science. Stein has a graduate degree in economy and quite a Hollywood career. Ben Franklin was a true Renaissance man. Craig Hawker and James Economy returned triumphantly to academia from industry. Plaxco wrote a book on Astrobiology and published game changing papers in two very different fields of molecular life science. Asimov was both a science communicator and a fantastic storyteller.
Some of my close friends have also been tremendously important role models, but they don’t seem to have noticed yet. 🙂
Perhaps I will eventually be a professor that writes popular science books and contributes creative content to television, video games, and new media. My best guess is that my road to a tenure track position will be very far from traditional. Before pursuing an academic job, I will be a professional writer, science reporter, and work in the molecular diagnostics industry.
Although I am single right now, my best bet is that eventually some girl will be silly enough to marry me. Betting odds are that she will be a scientist. It really sucks that female scientists often get stuck following their male counterparts around. Since my career plans are pretty flexible, that norm will end with me.
When and how did you discover science blogs?
The first science blog that I read was Bodyhack on the Wired website. Since high school, I have loved the magazine. When I started visiting the site regularly, I already had a keen interest in tissue engineering and hoped that it might offer some information about that subject.
Reddit brought me to the Seed scienceblogs. While perusing the front door, the Retrospectacle blog jumped out at me because it is about neuroscience. One of the stories looked familiar because it had been on BoingBoing just days beforehand. After reading four posts and the sidebar, I was completely hooked.
What are some of your favourites?
The Chem Blog
Carbon Based Curiosities
Retrospectacle
Nobel Intent
Nanoscience and Nanosociety
Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
Pondering Pikaia is off to a good start
The INFO Project blog is fantastic
Research Blogging
Is there anything that happened at the Conference – a session, something someone said or did, a new friendship – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
Deepak Singh is cool beyond words. Some people know a little about everything. He knows a lot about everything and is a very unpretentious guy.
Moshe Pritsker, the co-founder of JoVE, is incredibly selfless and creative. Just before going to the airport, I offered him a ride to brunch. He did a quick calculation and decided to take the hotel shuttle instead. If he had accepted my offer, which would have undoubtedly been more comfortable for him, there is no question that I would have missed my flight. Also, he seems very humble and receptive to suggestions — no matter who they come from.
And now a special movie for my readers:

We made it for a Discovery Channel spoof contest and were picked as semifinalists. Unfortunately, they did not show it on television. My costars are Steve London, who was my 9th grade English teacher, and the potheads are played by his two sons Zack and Josh.
It was so nice seeing you at the Conference and thank you for the interview.
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Check out all the interviews in this series.

Gabrielle Lyon is the Executive Director and Cofounder of Project Exploration. But the story is much longer. She went to grad school (U. of Chicago) with my brother and he thought that Gabe and I would be interesting to each other due to our shared interest in dinosaurs. So we got in touch and kept it over e-mail over many years. She sent me a vial of Sahara sand and a small plant fossil from the trip, Project Exploration materials and t-shirts, etc. and I promoted PE here at my blog. We finally met in person at Scifoo last summer and conversations we had there, led, through some circuitous routes, to the Nigersaurus paper getting published in PLoS ONE. At the Science Blogging Conference three weeks ago, Gabrielle started her first blog, after years of resistance, where, for now, she is exploring the tools by making fun of me.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
Famous. (It seems this will take a long time).
Have you personally made a fossil discovery? Look there: something sticking out of the sand – a bone!
I have personally made a fossil discovery. Thousands and thousands of fossils – most were unremarkable. I am well known for having a keen eye for good looking rocks. One dinosaur I found has been named and, perhaps, even more exciting, has been translated for the public as a Carnegie model:

You can buy it here but I won’t benefit in any way from the proceeds.
Can you tell us something about Project Exploration? How did it get started, what are the successes to date, and what are the plans for the future?
Project Exploration is working to literally change the face of science – one student at a time. Project Exploration is a Chicago-based, nonprofit science education organization dedicated to bringing the excitement of discovery to the public–especially minority youth and girls. We get kids interested, keep them interested, and give them the tools they need to support their interests. We work in three areas–youth development, services for teachers, and public programs like traveling exhibits and a free educational web site.
I know that lots of science bloggers are involved with Science Debate 2008 – from a national-issue perspective, Project Exploration is directly addressing four critical issues in science education:
* Inequality of opportunity
* Lack of diversity
* Outdated teaching methods
* Workforce development
[For those that want to read the funnier parts of this interview, skip on down to me talking about Sean Carroll’s proselytizing. For those who are interested in learning more about how I’m trying to change the world, read on…]
The short version of the history is that Paul Sereno (my husband and a paleontologist at the University of Chicago) and I spent about 10 years doing fieldwork together in the Sahara, South America, Asia…and after each return, after each science announcement we were increasingly struck with the question: whose job is it to make sure that regular kids – kids like the ones in the schools I was teaching in the south side of Chicago – had access to science? We found a few patterns over and over again: Chicago is lucky to have great cultural institutions and science museums, but for the most part they are designed on a 19th century model. Objects/collections are at the heart of their design. Furthermore they are mostly focused on the macro-level – getting lots of people through the door. We were interested in the opposite: finding ways to connect people directly with scientists and the questions they ask. Furthermore, when we looked around to see what opportunities existed for KIDS to get involved with science we found one of two scenarios: science opportunities for students target students who are in the top 10% or students whose families could afford high-caliber opportunities. Again, we felt there was a real role for an organization to play to do something different, to do something no-one else was doing – and to create a model that would change the way people thought about science.
Paul and I founded a non-profit education organization, Project Exploration, in 1999. Since then my own understanding of the field of science and the historic, systemic disenfranchisement of minorities and women is much more informed and sophisticated. I am increasingly excited about the importance of our work to the national conversation about science and the possibilities for changing the status quo in how science happens and who it is for….
As far as Project Exploration goes, youth are still at the heart of work. We are having some remarkable and humbling results.
Our science immersion programs serve more than 250 Chicago Public School students, ranging in age from 12-17, with intensive after-school, service learning, and summer science programs. We inspire students about the natural world and their own potential, and we coach their development as successful learners, enabling them to achieve academically and personally.
* 70% of participants are female
* 85% percent of our students are from low-income families
* 65% are African American, 25% Latino, 10% Caucasian.
Track Record to Date for Youth in our Programs
Students engaged in our science field programs are significantly more likely to graduate high school, attend college and to major in science than their peers.
* 93% graduate high school (compared with 47% of all Chicago Public School students)
* 70% enroll in a four-year college
* 50% of all students who graduate high school as Project Exploration field alumni are majoring in science
Project Exploration girls are nearly five times more likely to pursue science in college than the national average.
STILL HUNGRY FOR MORE about PROJECT EXPLORATION? – Here are some other big ideas in a bite-sized and tasty readable Q&A form about Project Exploration (Bora asked – I’m only answering)
How are we different? LOTS of reasons!
* We don’t just focus on getting kids interested in science, we also keep them interested–and equip them to pursue science.
* We focus on personal relationships. Most science organizations (like museums) target thousands of people–they work at the MACRO level; we start at the individual level.
* People get to actually meet and work with scientists – not just hear about things second- or third-hand.
* We change the way people think about science and how it’s done.
* Most of the people who work in science don’t look like most of America’s population. We’re working to literally change the face of science.
The Status Quo vs. Project Exploration
Status quo: Most high-caliber science programs are only available to students who are academically successful or whose families can afford them.
What we do: Our youth programs are free to participants and target students who may not be academically successful, but who are curious and open-minded.
· Most of our 250+ students are minority Chicago Public School students
· 70% are girls
· More than half of our students are first generation college bound
Status quo: Most programs are a “one-shot deal”; students come in for a short period of time and don’t have a long-term involvement with the organization.
What we do: We work with students over many years; we also offer ongoing opportunities to be involved with science through service learning, internships and fieldwork programs.
· More than 90% of our students are still involved with our programs two years after their first experience with us.
Status quo: Most science programs focus on a specific skill or subject (how to build a computer, river ecology, etc.) and fail to address the nature of science and how it works.
What we do: We focus on how science works and highlight intersections with other fields, especially writing, arts, and communication.
At this point it’s rude to talk more about Project Exploration – visit us online: http://www.projectexploration.org. Feel free to make a donation of any size. We will put it to good work .We run a tight ship and donations go where they’re supposed to.
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while following the Conference?
I discovered blogging from my friend Sean Carroll. (Not Sean Carroll the lepidopertist, Sean Carroll the theoretical physicist). Sean’s blog is called Cosmic Variance. When I suggested he change the name to “Comic” Variance he was non-plussed.
To be completely honest, when Sean said I should blog I thought he was nuts. I thought it was nuts for me to blog and I thought it was nuts for him to blog. For him, I saw it as a self-indulgent exercise in publishing what in the 19th century would have been called a diary; (perusals and private reflections normally published after death, if at all, for insights and contributions towards a person’s life’s work, the writings of which are primarily of interest to personality cult followers who simply can’t get enough of the real thing… like watching all the special features on the DVD version of your favorite TV show because the show has been cancelled and you just can’t get enough – or any more – any other way.)
For me, I saw blogging as an unimaginable expenditure of time in a life already so fractured I had a hard time capturing moments in my young child’s life in a preprinted baby book.
I would like to state for the record that I have come to realize these initial reactions were naive, uniformed, and possibly arrogant.
I have seen the light. (Yes, the computer screen light).
I have seen the error of my ways and humbly thank Sean – and now, too, Jennifer – for their unflappable encouragement. They are standard bearers for the movement and tireless in their efforts to reform a blogless sinner like me.
You started a blog at the Conference. May I link to it here or do you prefer to keep it anonymous for now? What do you plan to do with it?
SciPhi08 is now in the public domain. It is an exercise to help me learn how to do things – a chance for me to put myself through some “paces” and learn what’s what. It is also an awesome opportunity to talk about you, Bora.
Is there anything that happened at the Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
I primarily went to the conference out of a sense of responsibility. I felt that I, as the leader of a science education organization, ought to understand what was happening with blogging and what opportunities (or distractions) blogging might hold. I also felt some responsibility to learn about new tools and leverage this learning on behalf of students and teachers in our programs. I also felt that blogging was attracting a cohort of people who really care about communicating science well to the public and I wanted to meet some of these people. These were both good reasons to go. But they didn’t prepare me for what I would leave with…
In addition to meeting some fascinating people and making some great allies for my work, I left the conference carrying two big ideas with me that crystallized during my time in NC…
Firstly, I left with an extremely deep sense of the power Web 2.0 holds for building community – and the enormous potential it holds for Project Exploration as an untapped tool in our work to make science accessible. This feeling had been percolating around in a diluted way for the last six months thanks to a few trips to Google in CA and in Chicago, to talking with people who blog who are also activists… but to spend two days seeing web 2.0 take form like a golem in action (with activities like live-streaming video sessions, new wikis being created as sessions were taking place, Wayne reading a live question from the UK during the rowdy panel discussion at the end of the day on Saturday) brought it all home. The embodiment of the “open access” movement in the atmosphere of the conference served as a catalyst for making these ideas real…
Secondly, during the dinner conversation at the restaurant at the edge of the universe, one topic led to another and the guy I was sitting next to (Tom) made a comment about how change happens… that it happens with a small group of people setting things in motion…Tom wasn’t the first person to say something like this, and you can find posters attributing such sentiments to Eleanor Roosevelt or Margaret Meade on any given Sunday, but to hear Tom say this at a time when so many other ideas were ripening for me was juicy stuff. I’ve been thinking a lot about Kuhn’s nature of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts and Project Exploration’s work. I returned to Chicago inspired by the small group we’ve gathered and the ripple effect we can have – and the work ahead to become ever-more conscious about the critique we need to articulate about science and access…
These are exciting times of extraordinary change – in the world and possibly in ourselves.
Sooo – about a real blog.
I think blogs are for people who have something to say. I think I’m almost ready to have one…
Yes, you are. It was so nice seeing you again and thank you for the interview.
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Check out all the interviews in this series.

Bill Hooker blogs on Open Reading Frame, is a vocal proponent of Open Access publishing, has attended both Science Blogging Conferences to date, and I am happy to call him a friend.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job?
I’m a molecular biologist.  I did my graduate degree through the University of Queensland, cloning and characterizing proteins from Schistosoma japonicum with potential as vaccine targets.  My first postdoc was with David Harrich, working on the fine detail of HIV-1 replication.  I moved to the US for personal reasons (married a native), and changed fields because most of the HIV work here in Portland, OR is focused on the local primate center, and requires more immunological expertise than I have.  Right now I work with Peter Hurlin, and my focus is on the basic biology of Mnt, a probable tumor suppressor.  I think it’s going to turn out to be quite an important protein in cancer and development, but to date it remains surprisingly under-studied.

But “who am I?” is a much larger question, and by its very nature makes me probably the last person to whom you should look for a direct answer.  I should think anyone who really wanted to know could get as good an answer by reading my blog as by any other method.
What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
A grownup — that is, a grownup scientist, in the Janet Stemwedel sense.  When Janet talks about “being a grownup in your own profession” she means seeing yourself as a full partner in that profession, with all of the obligations and opportunities that entails.  It’s a subtle transformation that I didn’t have a good name for until Janet’s phrase.  I want to step up, take my own risks and make my own mistakes, and not continue to feel as though I should be checking in with one authority figure or another.

Further, I want to do my research as openly as possible.  Open Source Software is a mainstream concept, and Open Access (publishing) is getting to be one.  What’s not so widely known is the idea of Open Science, which is the application of the same principles — knowledge as a public good, cooperation over competition — to the entire enterprise of research.  The defining edge case for me is Jean-Claude Bradley‘s Open Notebook Science, a wonderful term that is almost self-explanatory.  Jean-Claude is the first to acknowledge that not all research is suitable for an Open Notebook, but I’d like to get as close to that ideal as I can.

Can you tell us more about your scientific research?

As you know perfectly well, I (like any scientist) can talk about that until your eyes glaze over.  But I’ll spare your readers, and try to be brief. 

The small bHLHZIP protein Max is the center of a very important transcriptional control network, the best known player in which is the proto-oncogene MYC.  Depending on how you estimate it, dysregulation of Myc protein is involved in 30-70% of human cancer.  Since mice lacking MYC die very early in gestation, and conditional knockouts of MYC cause a variety of defects, this network is also important in development.  Consistent with that observation, other members of the network play important roles in differentiation.  My main focus is on one such protein, Mnt, which also functions partly as a Myc antagonist.  MNT knockout in cells can rescue the growth arrest caused by MYC deletion, and although MNT knockout mice die late in gestation, conditional MNT knockouts cause tumors similar to those caused by overexpression of MYC.  For such important proteins, we still know surprisingly little about them.  For instance, what I’m doing now is trying to work out the details of post-translational regulation of Mnt (it’s phosphorylated, but where? and by what kinase?) and how that relates to the cell cycle (what does phosphorylation actually do to the molecule’s properties and functions?).  The bigger picture is that Peter, my boss, has some really interesting ideas about connections between mechanisms that underlie both cancer and developmental defects, and so everything the lab does is in a sense digging down towards those mechanisms to see whether Peter is right about the commonalities there.

When and how did you discover science blogs?  What are some of your favourites?  Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while following the Conference?

I think the first science-themed blog I remember reading was Genehack, by computational biologist John Anderson.  (I don’t think the word “blog” had been coined yet, it was just a “website” back then.)  I remember when Nodalpoint started up.  I have also been reading psychiatrist Eliot Gelwan’s Follow Me Here for a long time, but he covers a lot of stuff besides science.  

As to favorites, I simply couldn’t pick.  Even my blogroll doesn’t cover all the science blogs I think are worth reading, because I just can’t keep up.

You are a strong proponent of Open Access publishing.  What was the personal evolution of your views on this topic? Where did it begin?

I was online when things like GenBank and Project Bartleby started up, but I never made the broader connection.  Looking back, the earliest direct influence I can remember was Stefano Ghirlanda’s Free Science Campaign, which started in the late 90’s and has since gone offline.  It is an enduring regret that, although I agreed very strongly with his goals, I didn’t sign his supporters page.  What seems deeply weird to me now is the reason I didn’t do so: I was reluctant to put my name to anything on the internet.  It was a new world to me then, and I wasn’t at home in it.  These days, of course, I am a signatory on every OA petition and declaration that comes my way!

I also remember following Harold Varmus’ doomed E-biomed proposal, which did manage to give us PubMed Central.  All of those ideas sort of fermented away in the back of my mind until I came across BMC, PLoS and Peter Suber’s blog — I honestly can’t say which I found first — and then the light went on and I realized what OA really meant.  I’ve been doing my little bit to help the cause ever since.

How is a scientific paper going to look in 20 years from now?  How is that going to affect the way scientific research (and teaching) is done?

Over the next 20 years, the two most important things that will happen to the scientific paper are: universal adoption of Open Access, and the richly deserved death of the Portable Document Format.

Although it will do a number of wonderful things, Open Access won’t dramatically change the way a paper looks, at least not in the next 20 years.  Both because researchers are a conservative bunch, and because the format has served well for a very long time, I would guess that papers will look something like they do now — Intro/Methods/Results/Discussion — for some decades yet.  The most important things that will change in a 20 year timeframe are the level of detail available with a single click, and the number of entities which can understand the paper. 

Right now, even if yo
u can access a paper what you get is pre-digested in the form of a PDF file — useless for anything except being read by humans (which, of course, is very useful indeed — but nowhere near as useful as a paper could, and should, be).  If there is any supplementary data, which there usually isn’t, it’s another bloody PDF!  In 20 years, something like XML will provide a way to make papers a machine-readable platform for accessing data, not just a pixelated proxy for a hunk of dead tree.  Instead of photocopying that graph three times at 200% so as to be able to draw lines on it and estimate the underlying values, you’ll be able to grab the raw data into your own favorite graphing application, so that you can re-work it and look at it from your own angle.  You’ll be able to zoom in on that spectrum and see the fine details.  You’ll be able to get an unretouched version of that photograph and do the Photoshop work yourself, so as to emphasize whatever you’re interested in.  All of this will be possible, not by writing to the authors and waiting three months for an answer, but with a single click right from the paper itself. 

The other thing that this sort of markup will do is to greatly enhance the number and scope of research tasks that can be automated.  We already rely heavily on search and filtering interfaces (Pubmed, Google, GenBank, and so on) to keep us afloat in a sea of information, and that situation is only going to intensify.  When machines can read papers, they will be able to do something no human can do: read every paper, and find connections among them all.  For a taste of what this might be like, check out iHOP, a text-mining navigation interface to the research literature.  Now imagine what iHOP could do if it could not just read text, but could place that text in context, and then again what it could do if it could access data as well as text.  (Note also that none of this makes sense without OA: good as it is, iHOP is currently crippled because it can only pull sentences from abstracts.  Imagine what it could do with the full text of all those papers!  To fully realize the power of machine readability requires that the entire knowledge base be Open Access.)

What that will mean for research is speed.  You can already see it happening in physics, where OA has been the de facto norm for more than a decade thanks to arXiv.  Brody et al. showed that, in the high-energy physics section, the time between deposit in arXiv and citation in another paper has been dropping steadily since the arrival of arXiv in 1991, and was cut roughly in half between 1999 and 2003.  That’s the research cycle — the uptake of published ideas in further work — accelerating in real time.  Multiply that by the power of text- and data-mining, driven by the combination of OA and machine readability, and you get a tremendous acceleration in the rate of scientific progress. 

I’m not a teacher, so I’m hesitant to make predictions about that field — but what is clear is that teachers and students will have much greater access to detailed information.  On that basis, I guess I’ll venture one (hopeful) prediction: science teaching will focus more on primary sources, on the actual data rather than predigested information in textbooks.  Rather than trying to absorb a body of knowledge being handed down from on high, learning science will become much more like doing science, with students being asked to think, explore and experiment rather than simply memorize.

 
Is there anything that happened at the Conference – a session, something someone said or did – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

Someone — I think it was Moshe Pritsker from JOVE — suggested a possible solution to the scooping problem, which we talked about in one of your posts.  Writing about the conference afterwards, Janet Stemwedel observed that a good conference feels like home, which is exactly how I felt at both SBCs and something I’m going to keep in mind whenever I am involved in organizing any kind of meeting.  The session on open access in developing countries was amazing, and I’ll be thinking about the things I learned there for a long time.  It certainly changed my thinking about science communication, since I tend to focus so much on “first-world” problems in that field — whereas there are all these thousands of scientists for whom detailed definitions of Open Access are all very well but close to meaningless until, say, their dialup connection works more than three days a month.  In conversation over dinner, Aaron Rowe taught me what aptamers are — I’d never heard of them! — and I was just blown away by the potential of these reagents.

In more general terms, I have returned home from each SBC charged up, full of ideas and positive energy, and I definitely take that into my work and my blogging.  My wife says she wishes I could hang out with the people from SBC on a regular basis, as it does me such obvious good.  If I should ever get a foot on the faculty ladder, one of my overarching goals will be to make working in my lab feel like being at SBC every day.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview.

Likewise, and you’re welcome; and thank you for doing this series of interviews, which I am thoroughly enjoying.

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Check out all the interviews in this series.

Jennifer Jacquet is the Blog-mistress of Shifting Baselines, where you will get disemvowelled if you eat Chilean Sea Bass in the comments. Especially if you smack your lips while eating. At the Science Blogging Conference three weeks ago, Jennifer spoke on the panel on Changing Minds through Science Communication: a panel on Framing Science
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock.
It’s a carbon-neutral pleasure to be here.
Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you?
I am a child of the Regan era born in a state without oceans who was transplanted to Vancouver, B.C.
What is your scientific background?
It all started with the magazine Ranger Rick and a lust for manatees. But my love for Sirenians had a harsh collision with my pragmatic upbringing and I ultimately chose to study half-science, half-economics. I have a B.A. in Environmental Economics from Western Washington University and an M.S. in Environmental Economics from Cornell University. I am currently enlisted in a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia working with the fabulous Dr. Daniel Pauly.
What is your Real Life job?
Anything behind a computer.
What do you want to do/be when you grow up?
Better yet, what do I not want to be? My supervisor likes to call me the next Ann Coulter while my neighbors back home in Ohio call me a communist. I don’t know who to believe, but I’m making efforts to not become either…

[Jennifer Jacquet (at the NY scienceblogs get-together) isn’t certain about Ann Coulter or the Cubans but she is MAD about role model Alfreda E. Neuman.]
Your blog is called “Shifting Baselines”. Can you elaborate on the name? What does it mean?
In 1995 Daniel Pauly coined the term shifting baselines, which refers to our collective amnesia about reference points from the past. Because people believe the nature they experience when they are young is ‘pristine’, this reference point erodes with each generation and we experience a shifting baseline. We become happy that the beach is only closed two days a week due to pollution rather than demanding it be open all week. While Shifting Baselines emphasizes the importance of historical reflection, it’s usefulness is most pronounced in how we then allow our knowledge of the past to shape the future.
What are your plans for the future (at least what you are willing to disclose) with your work and with your blogging?
Speaking of shaping the future…I will continue to write the blog and my dissertation. I believe it’s very important the blogosphere support (rather than replace) non-corporate controlled media (e.g., The New York Times, BBC) and so I will continue directing Shifting Baselines readers to stories from such outlets as well as write things of my own. The blog will continue to benefit from the insights of Randy Olson, founder the of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Projects, and Ocean Champions, political lobbyists for ocean health.
When and how did you discover science blogs?
It sort of discovered me. Just weeks before I was asked if I wanted to run the Shifting Baselines blog I honestly had no idea what a blog was or how they operated. Then, voila. Randy Olson cyberpicked me from my blissful ignorance and into the burgeoning blogosphere.
What are some of your favourites?
I really like all the ocean blogs, including Scienceblogs’ Deep Sea News. I also think great work comes from Cognitive Daily, Pure Pedantry, A Blog Around the Clock (of course) and I can’t resist The Intersection.
Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
I’m pumped for Dave Munger’s latest project http://researchblogging.org
Is there anything that happened at the Conference – a session, something someone said or did, a new friendship – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
I really enjoyed meeting so many people that were in blogging for their love of science–not the money, or the hits, or the flagrant discussions–but their love of communicating the latest advances affecting our lives and shaping our world.
It was so nice seeing you in again and thank you for the interview.
The feeling is mutual…
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Check out all the interviews in this series.