At Talk Science to Me, we often receive requests from people who are right at the beginning of a career shift from science to science writing. Although we don’t have entry-level positions available, we do have experience in making The Switch. In this two-part series,...
If you follow science communications in general out there on the Web, you’ll have noticed last month’s Open Access (OA) Week, when the academic and research publishing world celebrates making knowledge available for all. Maybe you’ve wondered what OA is all about, and what makes...
Apart from sticking to deadlines for timely submission, what other useful habits could/should writers adopt to help workflow? Here are some habits that could help keep the words coming, and why they might help. Inbox zero and muting the ping! File this one under “removing distractions.” How...
Peanut butter for non-allergic babies may reduce later allergies: http://t.co/6ZWc1ItSnD #BehindTheHeadlines pic.twitter.com/WOJzabsYWS — NHS Choices (@NHSChoices) February 25, 2015 How do I know it’s OK? This often goes through my mind when I’m writing about science. The mere fact that I’m a scientist doesn’t give me authority...
We were curious about this question, and we decided to take the opportunity presented by the annual meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science and the first conference of the newly formed Citizen Science Association, which both took place in San Jose last week and this weekend. We put together a short survey and tweeted/blogged/Facebooked it to the attendees and our followers: to you laypeople, this is what's known as a "convenience sample" (convenience sampling is the reason so much basic research is done on university students). We figured a few thousand people keen on advancing science generally and citizen science in particular would be a great way to find people who had supported science crowdfunding.
The response, unfortunately, was not what we'd hoped. We had seven responses, with one respondent giving reasons for supporting science via crowdfunding. A huge thank you to those who participated. While we sure won't be publishing any papers with these responses (and that was never the plan anyway!), we can talk about the data points we got—and for those who are keen to learn more, we've added some links at the end.