Oct 27 2008
SkepticBlog
Yes – another skeptical blog. We can’t get enough of them.
SkepticBlog is a group skeptical blog featuring regular contributions from Michael Shermer, Phil Plait, Yau-Man Chan (yeah, the Survivor guy), Mark Edward, Kirsten Sanford, Brian Dunning, and Ryan Johnson. Oh, yeah – and me. That’s a pretty solid line up of skepticism, if I do say so myself.
You can read my introductory post here for more info. Essentially, the blog has two functions. The first (and the impetus for the blog) is to help promote our pilot skeptical reality TV show The Skeptologists. That project is still moving forward, and the blog is a way to help promote it. If the show gets picked up then the blog will likely continue as a companion to the show – although I honestly have no idea what would happen once TV executives own the show.
Completely aside from The Skeptologists, we just wanted to run a group skeptical blog for its own sake. This blog will have a life of its own, whether or not the show gets picked up.
I will be contributing to the blog every Monday – and you can read my first Monday contribution here. I will continue to contribute at the same rate to NeuroLogica, including a regular Monday post.
I am already getting the obvious question – am I spreading myself too thin? Well, yes and no.
In terms of work load, yes I am extremely busy, what with my academic medical career, 2 podcasts, and now 4 blogs. But honestly, the amount of time I put in is about average for an academic, and less than many of my colleagues. Rather than spending all of my time in the lab, or maintaining a textbook, or publishing hundreds of papers, I am promoting science and reason and exploring the new media.
Also – popular science bloggers write more blog entries than I do each week. Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy) wrote 18 blog entries in the last week, and PZ Myers (Pharyngula) wrote 31. I typically write 6-7 blog entries per week, and now will increase that number to 8. I just spread my work around to 4 different blogs.
I don’t know if this is a good strategy or not, but it fits my goals. Phil and PZ have built their media-science careers around their very popular blogs. My media flagship is my podcast – the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. NeuroLogica is my personal blog where I explore whatever interests me, including issues of neuroscience. The Rogues Gallery is a companion blog to the SGU, and so there I focus on issues that relate more to the podcast.
Science-Based Medicine represents the intersection of my medical career with my promotion of the public understanding of science and anti-pseudoscience watchdog activities. This site, which is also a group blog, has a very specific purpose – to promote higher and better standards of science in health care, and to oppose those efforts to either change the definition of science in medicine or to eliminate the scientific basis of the standard of care in medicine.
And now SkepticBlog also has a specific purpose – to promote The Skeptologists. But also to serve as a collaboration among various skeptical organizations (Skeptic Society, JREF, the NESS) and individuals. Skeptical activists have been pretty much left to do their own thing, without any existing organizational infrastructure to climb. This has had its benefits, actually, encouraging independence and experimentation. But as the movement has grown, I think there is great potential in trying to pull together some of the various threads into collaborative projects to achieve things that individually we cannot.
Whereas up until now the skeptical movement has been dominated by individual efforts, now I think we are entering a new phase that will be shaped by collaboration and partnerships. SkepticBlog and The Skeptologists are manifestations of that.
We’ll see where it takes us.
8 Responses to “SkepticBlog”
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Dr. Novella,
Congratulations on the successes on the many levels of effort to educate those of us in the public who are curious & giving us tools with which to evaluate various approaches or explanations.
Here is a specific neurological curiosity I just read in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/video/seattletimesvideo.html?bcpid=1543292770&bclid=1543290205&bctid=1878208652
This video clip has a good sample of a woman from the Olympic Peninsula who has acquired what is called “Foreign Accent Syndrome” related, by the woman, to a chiropractic adjustment that caused some type of insult to her neck area.
Is this for real? In the sample, she has a moment when her words become completely jibberish but then she recovers back to speaking meaningful words with an odd accent.
I’d sure like to know what’s going on here. & you’re probably the guy who would either know or know where to find out.
Thanks in advance,
Gary Goldwater
Thanks and kudos for your efforts.
“…although I honestly have no idea what would happen once TV executives own the show.”
I’m guessing maybe you do have some idea – or fears, lol. Two likely scenarios:
1) If the show is not a hit, it’ll get dropped like most new shows do. No reflection on the participants.
2) If the show is a ratings success, the TV execs will nonetheless fix it and fix it until it is broken. Mythbusters offers an example (not that it’s broken, but it has definitely changed). First, the TV execs will decide the show isn’t young and sexy enough. A young male cast member or two will be forced in after memorizing a short list of sciencey-sounding terms. A young female cast member or three will be forced in, probably wearing tight lab coats. Very tight lab coats. Subject matter will be dictated to match the presumed interests of their desired target audience: 16-32 singles. Amid good, relevant topics we’ll see more and more of this type: The Science Of Dating or Are Love & Sex The Same? At least one original cast member will quit when the TV execs try to force Does Your Astrology Sign Dictate Your Scientific Specialty? down your throats. Eventually, the show devolves until it’s basically a “here’s the evidence, you decide” show where 99% of the ‘evidence’ is unchallenged proponent propaganda and the skeptical involvement has become the standard 10 second sound bite generic denial.
[Says Devil's Advocate, generally disgusted with most TV treatments of science and skepticism, uttered with tongue firmly in cheek.]
I hope it’s a great success, but without ratings it gets cancelled, and with good ratings the risk of tampering is high.
*sigh*
PZ and Phil tend to write shorter blog posts though. Your posts tend to be more like artcles, or essays.
So I’m not sure that you and their posts are analogous.
Best wishes for this new effort of yours, Steven.
I must say that I have some reservations about Shermer’s presence, though. Not that he ever came across exactly as a towering intellect, but his ideological libertarian commitment and his recent questionable propensity to sell out to the Templeton Foundation have now rendered him liable of suspicion, too.
This is great!
Two quick problems: the link on the right to the introductory post goes to a page not found thing, and there’s no linkto the the blog on the Skeptologists website.
All the links are working. The site was just temporarily down as updates were being made. It’s up now.
Great news for us readers, the skeptical community in general and… emmm… more work for you Steve! Still it’s good to hear that you don’t view all your blogging commitments as chores (yet) and I hope you realise there are many people out there such as myself who really appreciate all the efforts you put in. So… Thanks again for the good news!
I obviously can’t know how much time all of your online activities take, but I find it rather difficult to believe that very many academics put in more time than you.