Aug 19 2009
New SBM Resource
On the Science-Based Medicine blog today I wrote about a new SBM resource – a topic-focussed reference page. The first topic- Vaccines and Autism – is mostly complete. This is designed to be one-stop-shopping for science-based information about major topics in medicine.
For me the most important feature of this new resource is the thorough list of relevant key research. What I find most challenging as a science writer and podcaster, is that after years of school and reading about science my head is full of information about prior research. I can often remember that there was some study that showed some important point I want to make, but I can’t remember the specific reference. I am constantly tracking down references I vaguely remember. Wouldn’t it be great if I had all those references in one place?
That is what this new resource will do – divided by topic. Take a look and tell me what you think.
Also – we plan to duplicate the same format on the NESS website for other non-medical skeptical topics. You may have noticed that we recently did a major overhaul of the NESS site. The new site is pretty spiffy. But more importantly, it is entirely built on WordPress, which makes it easy for a non-programmer like myself to build new content as I wish without having to nag my programmer to do something.
At present we have over a hundred articles archived on the new site, as well as some skeptical cartoons we have published over the years. We are also building a thorough listing of skeptical links, and announce upcoming events.
But we are looking for new skeptical resources to add to the site. I think the topic-focussed reference guide would be an excellent resource. Look for that soon, and let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions on this idea or what other kinds of resources you would find most helpful.
8 Responses to “New SBM Resource”
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These resource pages sound like a great idea, for both SBM and the NESS sites.
I personally wish that the wider scientific community would start a collaborative project in which they had similar pages on as many topics as possible. If such pages had a summary of the research history, information on the current consensus of the scientific community and legitimate controversies and debates, as well as a list of references – well what an awesome resource that would be. A Wiki run by scientists.
Such a project does not yet exist as far as I’m aware and I’m sure there are many flaws in the idea; as a result we’re left to discover all this information ourselves.
But that brings me to what I think the major criticism of your idea will be: that the references you present will be selected according to your various biases. That’s not to say that the information gathered by a lone individual isn’t subject to their own biases; of course it is. But don’t market this as a “One Stop Shop.” Bad Idea.
I understand that you don’t want people to stop looking for information themselves and become reliant on you, that’s the polar opposite of what you want – but your critics may hit you hard if you don’t make this explicit. I urge you to make it clear.
This is a fantastic idea. I’ve always wanted something like this. My idea was to have a webpage listing all of the anti-vax arguments, with a quick refutation and reference responding to each one. This might be better and more comprehensive.
Could a similar thing be done with evolution and other topics perhaps? Maybe on the SGU main site?
A minor nitpick. I think that “Summary of Key Research” should come before “Index of SBM Posts”. So the order should be:
Sections:
Topic Overview
Summary of Key Research
Index of SBM Posts
Outside Resources
“What I find most challenging as a science writer and podcaster, is that after years of school and reading about science my head is full of information about prior research. I can often remember that there was some study that showed some important point I want to make, but I can’t remember the specific reference. I am constantly tracking down references I vaguely remember.”
I have the same problem. Usually the reference is something that I read on a blog somewhere, which makes it a tiny bit easier. Search the blog, and then find the paper in question. This is why this is such a great idea!
One last thing.
Steve, have you ever considered being a part-time science writer for major news publications? Do you know what it would take to get your articles published in the NYT, Time magazine or other sources? I know that they regularily publish Carl Zimmer’s work, and your articles are of the same quality (though they do focus on different topics).
Skeptics and scientists have done a great job penetrating the “new” media. But we haven’t made as much of a dent on the old media.
Thnanks doc! This is awesome, I’m very excited to see more of these.
I vote you populate the chiropractic section next.
This could evolve into a kind of wiki with trusted moderators populating topics.
I normally don’t use the word populate this much
Steve, that’s a fantastic idea!
Excellent idea, Steve.
I definitely think it has massive potential. My friend uses the bookmarking application Delicious in a similar way and has created an entire personal library of web pages with tags that allow him to search his own internet history. At least I think that’s what he can do. Will – it sounds like you should look into this.
Having a professionally maintained skeptical wiki would be a useful resource too. I remember this being mentioned a long time ago…
Also, and this reminds me of another idea I had, It would be great if you built something similar for the SGU podcast. I know you provide links on your site pages, but it would be amazing if there was a browse or search feature, whereby you could search chiropractic, say, and the episodes were shortlisted. This could be even better improved if the actual segments were listed too. This would take a lot of work I think, but could be started if the SGU podcast had an SGU upgrade version like the NakedScientist one and the Quackcast one, where the episodes have chapters. Then, it seems it would be a relatively simple (I don’t know) task to tag these chapters with key words, like ‘chiropractic’, ‘monkeys vs birds’ etc. This upgrade would build upon the library of somewhat ‘locked-in’ information and advice that is the SGU podcast.