I was browsing Malcolm Campbell’s (highly recommended) weekly science link collection this morning, and came across an article in Nautilus on the newly described olinguito species. I was really enjoying the article, until the third to last paragraph, which triggered a bit of Twitter rant. Continue reading »
Yesterday a new carnivorous mammal was described from Andean Ecuador (Bassaricyon neblina; the BBC has an excellent write up about it), and it’s been getting a lot of media attention. While I’m happy whenever the work of a taxonomist gets talked about, I have a suspicion that cute, fuzzy things get a greater proportion of that attention.
I pointed out on Twitter that while the one new mammal got international attention, 8 new skink species, 5 new sponges, 4 new water mites, a new fresh water shrimp, a new nematode and a new caddisfly, along with 8 new species of plants (and these were just the species published in Zootaxa & Phytotaxa) were described without much, if any, fan fare.
After my grumpy little observation, Rachel Graham (@PictureEcology) made an interesting suggestion:
@BioInFocus I completely agree with you, but it seems that new mammals are also much less frequently described.
— Rachel Graham (@PictureEcology) August 15, 2013
That got me thinking: is it our attraction to cute things that puts them in the news, or, thanks to more attention in the past and fewer species in total to be found, that describing a new mammal is so unusual that it’s newsworthy? So, I looked into it a little, did some back-of-the-napkin calculations, and tried to see why we seem to hear about some new organisms more than others.
Now, before I get into it, let me state that this is a very rough approximation of the taxonomic literature based on a few hours of quick searching, and I’m 100% confident that I’ve not found every relevant paper. This is just for fun, and should be taken with a pretty large grain boulder of salt. That being said, I think it’s suggestive of what’s happening, and at the very least might jump start some conversation. Also, this is only taking into account new, living (i.e. not fossil) species described in 2012, so beware small sample size distortion.
According to this Wikipedia list, there were 34 new species of mammals (Class Mammalia — ~5.5k described species) described in 2012 (the fact that there’s an updated list of newly described mammal taxa on Wikipedia would seem to lend credence to a Mammal Bias, but I digress): 16 bats, 9 rodents, 4 marsupials, 3 primates and 2 shrew-like things. Some of those, like Cercopithecus lomamiensis, got some media attention, while the others didn’t (I don’t recall hearing much excitement over the new bats, rats and shrews for example).
Who doesn’t love this face? Cercopithecus lomamiensis, one of the bigger taxonomy stories of 2012.
Now what if we look at other, less cuddly groups of organisms? Like sponges (Phylum Porifera — ~9k described species) for example. I found 54 new species of sponge described in 2012, which is a fairly similar ratio of new:known as mammals. I may be mistaken, but I can’t recall seeing a sponge on the home page of any news agencies (although the Lyre Sponge — Chondrocladia lyra — was selected by ASU as one of the Top 10 New Species of 2012).
Same story with harvestmen (Order Opiliones — ~6.5k described species): I located 46 new species for 2012, which is a few more than the mammals, but I kind of doubt there were reporters knocking on arachnidologist’s doors inquiring about them.
Finally, let’s look at rotifers (Phylum Rotifera — ~2.2k described species), those neat little creatures that whirl around in pond water. In 2012, as far as I can tell, only 1 new species was described. One. As far as rarity of discovery goes, it doesn’t get much more unusual than that, and I think it’s safe to assume no one heard about Paraseison kisfaludyi, even though it sounds pretty interesting (it’s only the fourth species described in it’s Order, and it lives INSIDE the carapace of a tiny crustacean — seriously cool).
I think we can safely say that while mammals may indeed be infrequently described, that’s not the reason they make the news, and that we’re all saps for those large eyes and furry bodies that remind us of Rover, Kitty, and ultimately, ourselves.
So, is there a distinct Mammal Bias in the news media? Probably. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. While it’d be nice to see some of the other new & fascinating creatures being described by the world’s taxonomists be spotlighted, as long as people are reminded we still don’t know our neighbours very well, and that there are a lot of dedicated people out there working hard to introduce them to us, then I think we’re making progress.
It’s not like newly described invertebrates don’t make the news cycle (a couple of recently described dance flies were getting some attention earlier in the week thanks to some good-spirited nomenclature), it’s just that there’s a whole world of interesting biology and taxonomy waiting to be told outside of the cuddly stuff. All you need to do is look.
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Quick footnote with an anecdote: the number of people involved in the description of a new mammal species heavily outweighs the number of people involved with the invertebrate groups I looked at. For the 34 mammal species described in 2012, 107 people were listed as authors on the papers (3.14 people/new species); Opiliones – 26 authors for 46 species (0.57 people/new species); rotifers – 2 authors for 1 species; and sponges – ~35 authors (I lost count) for 54 species (~0.65 people/new species). I’m not really sure what this means (if anything) other than we could really use more taxonomists working on invertebrates, but I thought it was interesting.
In what will probably be the only blog post I ever write about plant taxonomy, I bring you one of the greatest natural history papers ever published:
Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles
R. Moran, 1962 (Madroño, 16)
Yes, that’s the full title of the paper. The introduction/methods/results/discussion reads as follows:
I got it there then (8068).
which is then followed by almost a full page of hilariously detailed acknowledgements thanking everyone who had a hand in this rigorous scientific study. You can read the full work in all it’s glory here.
In case you were curious, Cneoridium dumosum (or bushrue as it’s commonly known) is a species of flowering citrus shrub known from southern California and, thanks to Dr. Moran’s dedication to publishing his findings, northern Mexico.
Cneodidium dumosum flowers, which in this humble entomologists opinion, are fully deserving of such an awesome place in the history of the taxonomic literature. Photo by Stickpen, public domain.
I can’t help but wonder how a journal would react should you try something like this today; would they have the good nature to publish it, or is this an auto-reject-in-waiting?
Thanks to Chris MacQuarrie for his photographic memory archiving the entire discussion section of this paper and bringing it to my attention, and Rafael Maia for helping to get me a copy of the full text. My sincerest apologies to Rafael’s lab mates for his subsequent & uncontrollable laughter.
UPDATE (July 12, 2013): After George Sims inquired about the “(8068)” in the comments below, I turned to Twitter to crowd source the answer, and sure enough, got an answer! Tyler Smith (@sedgeboy), a botanist at Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada in Ottawa, hypothesized the number was the author’s collection number for the specimen, and then proved his point by finding specimen #8071 in the Missouri Botanical Garden’s database, which was collected on the same day and at the same location! Why Dr. Moran didn’t include this with the rest of the collection data in the title of the note is a bit odd, but as nothing else about this note is “normal”, I suppose anything goes!
Also, David Shorthouse (@dpsSpiders) found Dr. Moran’s obituary, which provides an interesting overview of the life of a legendary naturalist and field biologist.
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Moran R. (1962). Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles, Madroño, 16 272-272.
On Mother’s Day, many men pick up flowers or make breakfast in bed for their partners to show their appreciation for everything moms do. If you’re a taxonomist, you can go a step further and give the eternal gift of patronymy (or perhaps matronymy?) by naming a new species after the mother of your offspring!
In a recent Zootaxa paper, that’s exactly what Heron Huerta did, naming a new species of Mexican Scatopsidae Colobostema marielae, and earning extra brownie points in the etymology:
This new species is named after my wife, Mariela Trujillo De la Cruz, for her unconditional support, love and enthusiasm for my projects.
– Huerta, 2013
Scatopsidae are commonly referred to as minute black scavenger flies (or even less romantically, dung midges), and with larval habitats ranging from the decaying to the defecated, having something like this named for you may seem less like an honour and more like a thinly veiled insult. But when you consider your fly is 1 of only ~250 species known, that your fly’s relatives are found literally around the world and have been helping keep us out of the rot since the time of T. rex, and that, while not as flashy or well known as other organisms, someone has devoted their life to learning all there is to know about your fly and has decided that you are so important you should be forever immortalized as the namesake for this unique being, well, that’s a pretty powerful gift.
Happy Mother’s Day.
A Colobostema species from Alabama. Colobostema mariela apparently looks much like this, but with a uniquely constricted tergite 7 (you’ll just have to take Heron’s word on this one). Photo by Robert Lord Zimlich, used under CC BY-ND-NC 1.0 licence.
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Nominate this species for New Species of the Year!
HUERTA H. (2013). New species of the genus Colobostema Enderlein (Diptera: Scatopsidae) from Mexico, Zootaxa, 3619 (2) DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3619.2.6
Bring up flies in casual conversation and undoubtedly you’ll receive a look of disgust from your company, often followed shortly thereafter by the words “hate”, “disgusting” or “gross”. Thanks to the culturally unsavoury and occasionally deadly deeds of but a few, flies the world over are generally regarded as creatures to crush, worth more dead than alive.
Considering the media’s tendency to only get excited over new species that are fuzzy, feathered or fossilized, you could be forgiven for not realizing that more than a thousand new species of fly are described every year by taxonomists from around the world. Even other taxonomists rarely acknowledge how cool and extraordinary flies are, as they’re the only major insect order not to be selected as one of the Top 10 New Species of the Year by Arizona State University’s International Institute for Species Exploration (yet; I encourage you to nominate you’re favourite new species via the link I’ve included at the end of the post).
So welcome to what I hope will become a weekly feature, where I’ll highlight a newly described species of fly, sometimes sharing the nuances of biological nomenclature, sometimes the tireless work of taxonomists, but always the incredible diversity of Diptera. Because as Vincent Dethier concludes in his entomological exploration To Know a Fly:
To know the fly is to share a bit in the sublimity of Knowledge. That is the challenge and joy of science.
Today is Black Friday in North America, a day where all manner of consumer goods go on sale to jump start the holiday gift-giving buying season, and people go crazy trying to grab their share of the deals. Instead of fighting the crowds for a slightly cheaper sweater or another widescreen TV, why not stay at home and fund some exciting arthropod science this year?
Joseph Parker is planning an expedition to Peru in search of tiny little rove beetles (Staphylinidae: Pselaphinae) that live within ant colonies. I met Joe at the Entomological Society of America meeting last week, and he wears his passion for beetles on his sleeve (and his Twitter handle – @Pselaphinae). While Joe spends most of his time as a post-doc at Columbia University studying the mechanisms that drive insect size, he’s been working on the taxonomy & phylogeny of pselaphine beetles as a “hobby” for several years, and I think it’s about time Joe gets the chance to leave the lab and play in the dirt looking for beetles!
It’s not all about Joe though, because he’d like to repay your donation with anything from a sincere “Thank You”, to his services IDing insects, and even the opportunity to name a new species! Even though Joe has reached his financial goals, every dollar raised above his goal will go towards DNA sequencing costs, meaning there’s always room to help — believe me, DNA don’t come cheap! You can follow along with Joe’s progress & trip to Peru on his Facebook page.
If sneaky beetles living on the forest floor aren’t your thing, perhaps you’d rather help researchers in Spain study arthropod diversity high up in the canopy of a protected forest that’s under threat from human activity? Jorge Mederos is a biologist (and crane fly enthusiast) with the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona who loves to get up high in the forest canopy, a place he calls “the nearby cosmos”. Just as we’re discovering new things about the cosmos light years away, the biology of the forest canopy is poorly understood, even though it’s only metres above our heads. Jorge’s work revolves around Collserola Park, a large protected forest on the edge of Barcelona, which is under growing pressure from human activity and urban development. Jorge needs your help to purchase weather monitoring equipment and lab supplies that will allow him to understand what life is like for insects living out of our reach.
Jorge is also on Twitter (@jmedeCCF) and will be acknowledging those of you who help fund his project in the scientific papers he publishes. Jorge still needs help to reach his funding target, and time is quickly running out on his project, so don’t delay in helping him reach for the sky!
So there you have it, two exciting scientific projects which need a little help from you this holiday season! Remember, sweaters go out of fashion and electronics are outdated before you get home, but scientific papers & species names last forever. 😉
Well look at that, I’m actually getting a Flypaper out on back-to-back weekends! That means this one is pretty short, but with the semester just starting, that means you’ll still have plenty of time for homework/grading/lesson prep! OK, that’s not really a great alternative, sorry.
General Entomology
DEET: good for keeping mosquitoes away, bad for mixing in your drink. The tragic story of two Canadian tourists in Thailand.
A new IUCN report suggests 20% of invertebrates are at risk of extinction. Holy crap.
Wolbachia is a strange bacteria that makes insects do crazy things, like eat their own brains.
Do you know what the label around the neck of a ketchup bottle is for? The answer will probably surprise you.
I could probably include every post by Piotr Naskrecki in these weekly roundups because his writing and photos are so damn good, but I’ll keep it to just these two this week; The benefits of constant rain & Leaf-eating Leaves.
Perhaps I should have named this The Biweekly Flypaper since it seems summer activities are conspiring against me, but hopefully I can get back on track soon.
(Inter)National Moth Week (NMW)
I don’t know if you noticed, but the Bug-osphere took (Inter)National Moth Week by storm and scaled new heights with their mothy contributions! Here’s but a sampling of the moth-related postings from my fellow bug bloggers.
A Bug Blog talked about a bat-sensing moth, as did the group behind the Audubon Field Guides.
OMAFRA’s Field Crop News explained how you can recognize butterfly and moth damage in your soybeans and corn crops.
The Bug Geek started off with some of her unidentified moths, and ended with a moth with a special surprise.
The Home Bug Gardeners posted some great moths all week, and eventually found themselves as new moth-er enthusiasts.
The National Moth Week team had a whole suite of great posts during the week, as well as showing off some cool moth sidewalk art spotted in Ottawa.
Itsy Bitsy Beetle found a little moth street art of her own on a wall in Berkeley California.
Brian Cutting showed off some of his tropical moth photos and ended Moth Week with a bang!
Bug Eric’s Wasp Wednesday turned into Not Actually a Wasp Wednesday in honour of NMW.
Matt “the Biology Geek” Bergeron got ambitious and took on the micro moths.
The Dragonfly Woman fought the elements to share moths with the public at an official event at her new job.
And of course CaterpillarBlog joined in on the fun attending a mothing event organized by her and her lab mates. Continue reading »
Exciting news since the last Weekly Flypaper: Piotr Naskrecki, orthopteroid taxonomist, photographer, and author (Relics and The Smaller Majority) has started a new blog — The Smaller Majority. So far Piotr has been killing this whole blogging business, with fascinating posts on tropical entomology and macrophotography tips. I’m pretty sure I bookmarked every post he made for future reference, but here are a few of my favourites:
Now onto the rest of the best from the last 2 weeks!
General Entomology
If you ever need a gift idea for the Dragonfly Woman, she’s got a nice wishlist of field guides that any nature nut would appreciate.
Speaking of gifts, we’re right in the midst of wedding season, and if you need nuptial gift ideas, why not take a page out of the insect world.
Erica McAlister, the Diptera curator at the Natural History Museum, London, takes you on a backstage tour of the NHM insect collection and shows off some spectacular specimens, including a grasshopper hugging a mouse. Seriously.
What’s the biggest bug? The North Carolina State University Insect Collection has a couple of options to answer that.
Entomology is a hobby all unto its own for some people, but it also happens to be a sub-hobby for some fly fisherman!
My wife and I had a date night this week and went to see The Amazing Spider-Man. I really enjoyed it, but was a little disappointed that Peter Parker didn’t snack on a fly or two at some point in the movie. Even if you’re not an arachnid-infused superhero, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t consider eating bugs as Doug Yanega explains to the University of California Food Blog. The Weird Bug Lady even has a tasty sounding recipe for entomological power bars to get you started!
Flies – Diptera
Apparently I missed the memo about Photo Bombing blogs, as Matt Bergeron, Dave Stone and Alex Wild all showed off gorgeous photos of bombyliid bee flies.
Brian Brown is having a pretty good month for publications, with his latest discussing phorid flies which are parasites of endangered ants.
Researchers have bred “super” smart fruit flies which can count. I for one, welcome our new Dipteran overlords.
Black flies take the majority of bad press for Northern pests, but don’t forget to watch out for moose flies while in Alaska.
Robber flies are popular with a lot of people, including devoted beetler Ted MacRae. And with their own special facial hair, the mystax, it’s no wonder.
The Geek demonstrates that sometimes when you’re photographing flies, you’re only able to snipe one photo before they take off.
Beetles – Coleoptera
Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) has continued it’s inevitable march across eastern North America, this week being detected in Connecticut for the first time. What’s important about this is that Cerceris fumipennis, a solitary wasp which specializes on buprestid jewel beetles, was the first to detect it’s presence in the state. This is the sort of Bio-surveillance that Phil Careless and the rest of Team Cerceris had hoped for, and now hopefully more government agencies will invest in expanding this simple monitoring tool.
Cerceris fumipennis is also a useful tool for collecting other jewel beetles besides EAB as Ted MacRae recently found out.
Of course you don’t need to always rely on other species to find your jewel beetles for you, as the Geek reminds us to always look.
Some people can be picky eaters, but the same holds true for dung beetles, with species preferring different types of brown sauce, and Bug Girl is on it.
Why might it matter what type of dung a beetle prefers? Because places like Australia and New Zealand don’t have any native dung beetles, making agricultural waste a significant problem. Becky Crew has a nice feature on the work being done to bring dung beetles to New Zealand.
Not all scarab beetles like to feed on dung though, like these Green June Beetles that Derek Hennen found in his yard.
With summer comes the opportunity to watch fireflies flashing in the night. Check out this nice flash guide to see if you can recognize any of the species in your backyard, and contribute to a citizen science program.
Ants, Bees & Wasps – Hymenoptera
This photo of a flying bumblebee by Adrian Thysse might be the best of it’s kind that I’ve ever seen.
The Gratton Lab at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is working on an automated bee identification project.
Urban beekeepers in Edmonton are pushing for changes to bylaws that keep their hives in hiding.
Meanwhile in Edmonton, Matthias Buck has discovered 2 new species of paper wasps right under our noses.
The School of Ants is holding a student essay contest with a nice cash prize.
Eric Eaton shows that solitary wasps can be used for monitoring other insects, like stink bugs (potentially including the mega-pest Brown Marmorated Stink Bug) or membracids.
Moths & Butterflies – Lepidoptera
National Moth Week is coming up this week, so expect most of the bug-blogosphere to get a little scaley!
The Dragonfly Woman started a little earlier by announcing an event she’s helping with at her new job.
Other Insect Orders
Troy Bartlett thinks ants mite do a better job of taking care of their herds of membracids.
Ever wondered why your car attracts some insects like dragonflies and horse flies? The Dragonfly Woman has a great explanation.
It looks like the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is becoming ground zero for mantid research in North America.
The Neuroptera are an amazing group of insects with incredible diversity. Jonathan Wojcik provides a nice overview of that diversity, and introduced me to an amazing group called the Spoonwings (family Nemopteridae). Brian Cutting showed off a member of another one of my favourite groups, the Mantis flies, while Derek Hennen found a spectacular antlion adult.
Spiders – Arachnida
“Oh look at that lovely lady beetle! It looks so cute and cuddly and OH MY GOD!!!”
Next time I go to Chicago, I’m definitely rewarding the Chicago Hilton with my business for being so awesome with their natural history and outreach!
I hate when I get a spider web across my face while out walking in the woods, but I think I might have to learn more about spiders and their webbing from a book Bug Girl recently reviewed, Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig.
Now if all spiders lived among the canopy of trees like this Hentzia mitrata that Chris Buddle and colleagues are studying, then I wouldn’t have to worry about silk wrapping my face…
Speaking of Chris, he went, he saw, he videoed; Beringian pseudoscorpions in the Yukon that is!
Taxonomy & Systematics
A parasitic isopod was recently described and named after Bob Marley. Too bad the authors messed up and published the name a few months earlier in an ecological paper before formally describing it. Everybody repeat after me — in taxonomy, the order in which you publish or publicize MATTERS.
Of course, because this species was named after somebody famous, the media took off with it and the BBC published a top 10 list of what I’m now going to start calling “Celebronyms”. Have I mentioned how much I hate these top 10 species lists lately? Because I do. With a passion. Ugh.
Where should money be invested to solve the taxonomic impediment? Quentin Wheeler of Arizona State University thinks technology leads the way (i.e. the University of Arizona’s new funding to revitalize and digitize their collection), while Bob Mesibov of the Queen Victoria Museum (Tasmania) argues that more taxonomists need to be hired first. Me? I think technology will be useless if there’s no one around to develop, maintain and actually use it. I’ll also need a job in 3-5 years, so I might be a bit biased here.
The Willi Hennig Society Meeting was held at the end of June, and Itsy Bitsy attended. So did Salva at Computer Cladistics, who has a fantastic detailed review of the conference.
Kevin Peterson is literally uprooting the mammal phylogeny with a new technique he’s developed. My question is what makes this new technique more accurate to the true evolutionary history of the mammals? Micro-RNA is also being used to study Diptera evolution, but I can’t understand why it’s considered more “accurate”. It’s a wonder I get any sleep at all with these types of questions rolling around in my head…
Does the way that we traditionally draw and think of phylogenies (i.e. a “tree” of life) block us from considering new ideas on relationships?
Academia
My post on Citations, Social Media & Science gathered some attention last week, including that of the researcher who’s improperly cited blog started the whole discussion. The author of the paper also stopped by and explained they tried to include the citation, but the publisher wouldn’t allow a blog to be cited like a journal. I’m not really sure why a publisher has so much control over the content of a journal rather than the editorial staff of said journal, but I find it troubling.
This is pretty handy for people just starting out in academia/grad school – Field Guide to Scientific Conferences: An Ecological Review.
Also handy, this complete walkthrough by Steve Hamblin on laying out and developing a poster for a conference. Many, many good tips here for balancing form and function. It’s also a pretty interesting view inside the head of a Post-Doc…
It’s good to remember that it matters how you write in academia, not just what you write.
Science Communication & Social Media
Bora Zivkovic (aka the Blogfather) drops a massive backgrounder on the history and rise of science blogging.
I’ve seen a bunch of people start blogs only to watch them peter out after a few weeks/months. As a blogger who has a relatively small (yet loyal) readership, I can sympathize with this post on Why Blogs Fail.
Here’s 10 Apps That Put Science In Your Pocket.
Dr. Olin Sander compares Twitter popularity during the recent Evolution meeting in Ottawa to a sage grouse lek. Awesome.
Photography
Ted MacRae demonstrates why the placement of your lighting sources and choice of background can have a dramatic effect on a photo’s feel.
Alex Wild has a nice flowchart of his digital darkroom workflow.
Adrian Thysse has a lovely interview with renowned nature photographer Heather Angel.
Other Fun Stuff
David Winter does a great job of explaining why red heads are here to stay. Looks like my wife won’t be getting rid of me that easily!
This fish grows ant-shaped appendages to get laid. I feel like there’s an inappropriate joke in here somewhere…
Who needs cable TV when you can get all kinds of drama & comedy from social media?
Aquaman makes a terrible marine mammal. He also makes a terrible superhero.
What would happen if a pitcher threw a baseball at 90% of the speed of light? I suspect he’d be investigated for Perfomance Enhancing Drug use and never make it into the Hall of Fame.
Video of the Week
Carl Zimmer was a plenary speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for the Presevation of Natural History Collections a few weeks ago, and they just posted his talk on YouTube. It’s long (more than an hour), but it’s an interesting talk and well delivered.
Further Reading
Bora Zivkovic – The Science Blogging Weekly, July 13th 2012 – (I made the Top 10 posts list! W00T!)
Ed Yong – Missing Links, July 14, 2012
Ed Yong – Missing Links, July 21, 2012
This morning I was reading a newly published paper that I found intriguing, not only for its content1 but also for who it cited — sort of.
Among the regular cadre of peer-reviewed journal articles supporting the author’s findings were two blog posts by University of Glasgow professor Roderic Page. Rod is a major proponent for digitizing and linking biodiversity literature with all aspects of a species’ pixel-trail across the internet, so I was excited to see his blog being “formally” recognized. As I finished reading the paper and reached the References section, I skimmed through to see how a blog citation might be formatted. Much to my dismay, after breezing through the L’s, M’s, and N’s I found myself within the R’s, with nary a Page in sight.
Despite having directly referenced Rod’s work on three separate occasions, the authors failed to formally acknowledge his contributions to the field. I may still be a little wet behind the ears in this whole academic publishing game, but I suspect that if someone didn’t properly cite a Nature paper, they’d be quickly reprimanded by the editor of the journal they submitted to and be told to include the citation or face rejection.
I’ve been thinking about this situation all day, and I can’t come up with a reason why the author’s didn’t include a proper citation, other than the continuing bias against blogging (and social media in general) among the scientific community. Certainly there are those in the scientific community who realize the potential of social media and blogging in science2, but in large part it seems the message is being ignored because of prejudices regarding the medium in which it’s published.
But why do scientists have such a hard time accepting blogging & social media as valid outlets? It can’t be because of the holy peer-review process, as Bora Zivkovic3 elegantly points out:
“One of the usual reasons given for not citing blog posts is that they are not peer-reviewed. Which is not true. First, if the post contained errors, readers would point them out in the comments. That is the first layer of peer review. Then, the authors of the manuscript found and read a blog post, evaluated its accuracy and relevance and CHOSE to use it as a reference. That is the second layer of peer-review. Then, the people who review the manuscript will also check the references and, if there is a problem with the cited blog post, they will point this out to the editor. This is the third layer of peer-review. How much more peer-review can one ask for?”
There’s also plenty of evidence that the content being produced by today’s bloggers, tweeters and G-plussers is slowly earning the attention of the academic community. Kate Clancy, a tenure-track anthropologist who blogs at Context and Variation, had someone skim one of her blog posts and intellectually plagiarize her ideas by publishing them in a traditional journal, further evidence that “attention” doesn’t necessarily mean “respect”. Just this week Eric Michael Johnson, a science history PhD student, wrote an incredible article summarizing the arguments between kin vs group selectionists and published it on his blog, The Primate Diaries; it has since been recommended by E.O. Wilson himself, via his Facebook fanpage no less! And of course there’s Rod’s work which was included in the paper in question, even if it was improperly cited, and which started this entire digression.
So if the quality of content published on blogs is of interest, well supported and being recognized by our peers, why do we still see this disconnect between traditional literature and social media when it comes to proper credit? I think the social media movement4 is so new, seemingly free of traditional rules & roles and so quickly evolving that many academics have yet to take the time to explore its potential before dismissing it as a waste of time best reserved for celebrities and teenagers. Frankly, with the ever increasing pressure to publish, find funding and shoulder more responsibilities within academic circles, I can’t say I totally blame them. But just like those in academia have (mostly) accepted and embraced other technologies, I’m confident that social media, including blogging, will find its place among the scientific community and will revolutionize the ways we go about doing, discussing and disseminating scientific research. Certainly it will be an uphill battle for those who aspire to change the way this new technology is perceived and credited within the academic community, but ultimately I think it’s in all our best interest to push the boundaries!
Perhaps Rod Page summarized this entire post in a single tweet:
.@bioinfocus I suspect because blogs don’t fit into the “normal” landscape of publishing – yet
— Roderic Page (@rdmpage) July 10, 2012
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1- Which I won’t comment on here for a variety of paranoid political reasons, but I would still highly recommend you read the paper.
2- I’m talking about you, the people (person?) who took the time to read this blog post; thank you!
3- Nicknamed The Blogfather among the ScienceOnline community, he also appears to have the distinction of having the first blog post cited by a technical scientific article. Fitting.
4- Which is exactly how I see it. Much like the cladistic wars of the 1980s and the Darwinian debate 100 years before that, it’s only a matter of time until social media is embraced by the scientific & academic communities.