Notes from the Biomass

You can call me vain for linking to an overview of science blogs in Nature that mentions my views; Rolf Apweiler even considers bloggers as exhibitionists, so you'd have company.

Nature's feature explains the pros and cons of blogging in the sciences thoroughly, after I was somewhat discontent with Nature's coverage of Google Base last week. The article also reflects the opinion of many people on blogs as coffee room chats. I appreciate most things I picked up in lunch breaks and over coffees - and from blogs, much of it directly relevant to my work. And I don't want to think about the number of irrelevant, useless but peer-reviewed papers that I worked through. The number of valuable blogs (to every individual) is dwarfed by the number of irrelevant chatter out here but the same arguments can be applied to books or the scientific literature - it's only a platform after all.