Four years of blogging

Our blog turns four today! As Mike pointed out when the blog was only one year old, our longevity has greatly exceeded the brief lifespan of most new blogs. Readership keeps growing, in fits and starts, and I remain amazed at the number of visitors the site receives each day. We truly thank you, our readers, for your ongoing interest.

Rather than repeating the story of how this blog began, and why I continue to blog, I’ll refer you to my post from the blog’s second birthday. I’ll repeat only one point: this blog has become such a valuable “online catalogue” for me, and the process of blogging has become such a useful way for me to organize my thoughts, that I think I’d continue to blog even if no one else was reading...

The blogging professor

There's an interesting article in the May 4 Chronicle of Higher Education on blogging in academia by Martin Weller, a professor of educational technology in the UK. He notes: "In terms of intellectual fulfillment, creativity, networking, impact, productivity, and overall benefit to my scholarly life, blogging wins hands down." I must agree with the good professor. He goes on to raise two important questions: Is blogging scholarship? (He argues yes!). And how do we recognize and reward academics who blog?

Weller notes that being an active blogger has reduced the number of journal articles he has published; however, blogging has increased his peer network, allowed him to stay up to date with knowledge in his field, increased research collaboration, and increased the number of invitations to give talks.

An additional advantage of blogging, I think, is the ability to address issues in real time. For policy issues, the journal format is often not timely enough and in some cases, too formal, to have the impact of a blog. And truth be told, it's a lot more fun to blog.


Graphic:  Hubspot

Early summer slow down

For various reasons, I suspect we'll be posting less frequently over the next two or three weeks. I know I will, anyway, and I think Eli will also be otherwise occupied. Unfortunately, this isn't because any of us will be lounging in hammocks. The photo is just, you know, a metaphor for less blogging activity. Or maybe it's just a pretty picture.

The blog turns 2!

Two years ago tomorrow, I had a meeting canceled and found myself with the unexpected gift of a few free minutes. Mike and I had been talking about starting an infection prevention blog, so I typed “how to start a blog” into The Google. Twenty minutes later, I posted for the first time. I can’t believe we’re still at it, and with a steadily increasing readership.

Mike and Eli can comment on what drives them to blog, but I know my initial motivation (one that Mike shared) was that there was no other venue in which to express timely and unvarnished opinion about the hottest topics in infection prevention. Publication turnaround times are slow, and even opinion pieces are often peer-reviewed and edited to the nth degree of blandness. One formative experience for me was having a letter to the editor of one of our major infection control journals rejected—not because it contained erroneous information or was poorly reasoned, but because it would give “aid and comfort” to those who didn’t share the dogmatic views on MRSA control held by the editor-in-chief.

Many of my early posts, then, involved me getting some things off my chest. For example, my day one post, entitled “Why I hate contact precautions, Vol. 1” (because I fully intended, and did, proceed with follow up posts containing additional reasons that I hated them!). Once some of those things were covered, including some memorable exchanges around the MRSA active surveillance debate, I found that the blog served many other important functions. Over time it has become a kind of “online catalogue” to which I refer frequently when writing proposals and manuscripts. It also keeps me on the lookout for interesting and useful items in our literature, and forces me to assess papers a tad more carefully than I used to—not just to see if they are “bloggable”, but to determine when there are flaws that ought to be pointed out to our readership.

I hope to spend time at SHEA next week talking with Eli and Mike about where to go with this blog over the next year. Feel free to make suggestions in our comments section or by e-mailing one of us directly. Most of all, thanks for your interest in this blog, and in preventing HAIs.

The opposite of why we blog...

To be honest, sometimes when I read great posts like Dan's today on public reporting or Mike's on MRSA mandates, I get a little sad.  How can we possibly turn the tide against such well intentioned but misguided efforts. Just because at first pass something makes sense, doesn't actually support the contention that it actually makes sense, if that makes sense.  It should really come down to the science.

Initially, I wanted to comment, but then decided it might be better to just sit back and enjoy the show.  This feeling usually doesn't last too long. but it is nice to take a break, occasionally.  So for today and for the next few days, I'm going to enjoy imagining a world where we swab everyone, everywhere for every possible organism - linezolid-resistant S. aureus - check; ampicillin-resistant E. coli - check, etc etc and where we publicly report everything to everyone even if we don't validate what we are reporting.  This seems to be where we are going with infection prevention in the US, so I might as well get to the future now.  I'll let you know what it's like when I get there.  Wish me luck.


Source: http://xkcd.com/164/

  

Communicating beyond the walls of academia

Tara Smith has a nice post discussing the methods for and importance of moving scientific discovery into the public sphere. She goes on to suggest that including additional funding for the purpose of outreach might be necessary because currently, only peer-reviewed communication with other scientists "counts" towards promotion and tenure.  She also recently gave a nice talk on Science Denial and the Internet; I've posted a link describing her talk below.  David Dobbs, a blogger at Wired had a recent post in the Guardian discussing similar issues, particularly why the scientific publication in the traditional sense is of little value or may actually be a cost.  It should be the data that counts, not the publication.

When I think about all of the wasted time we spend trying to format our papers for specific journals, then waiting 3-6 months to hear back from the journal, and then repeating the process until the paper is accepted, it makes me wonder how much more we could accomplish if we removed these hurdles.  This process enriches not scientists, but societies and others and serves as a method for "conflicted" direct-to-physician advertising. It's not like we find articles by reading the paper journals anymore.  Perhaps we could adopt a process where we publish a working paper online and then journals could compete for the rights to publish the data in their journal.  Wouldn't it be cool to turn a journal down?

Any other ideas for re-working the scientific communication system, both within the scientific community and creating incentives for outreach? We have to try harder to advance science against the pervasive pseudoscience that is forever expanding on the internet and within public policy. For example, if we could spend time communicating the benefits of vaccines instead of spending 15 months getting our vaccine paper accepted, we could serve the public more effectively and the public might actually see the value of science

Smith's Aetiology post: "Moving science communication into the public sphere"

Smith's recent talk on scientific communication, the internet and the anti-vaccine movement 

Dobb's Guardian Post: Publishing your science paper is only half the job

Why do we blog? - Please comment!

I can't speak for Mike and Dan, but I suspect that we all enjoy blogging for many of the same reasons.  It's a great way for the three of us to share ideas with each other and our readers/friends/colleagues without spamming them with emails. Unfortunately, I still do that occasionally.  Sorry guys! However, it would add to the fun if we received more comments.  I'm sure you all have insights, additional links, etc. that you want to share, and we want you to share them.  Do you have some ideas as to how we could improve the blog? Are there topics you want to see covered? Comment away!

Apparently, I'm not the only blogger to feel this way.

Dissonance, the hyperlink and blogs

“Learning how to think, means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.” - David Foster Wallace

I've been meaning to write about this all week, but I got distracted. I was probably reading about where LeBron James is headed and clicked on some links, ended up reading about the Cubs then the Illinois Senate race, then the South Carolina Governor race...you get my point. Nicholas Carr's latest book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” has just arrived on bookshelves and he has posed some interesting questions, some of which I think relate to how we use or perhaps should use the internet to communicate. A major question he poses is if links should be listed at the end of web posts. Carr credits Steve Gillmor, who eliminated hyperlinks from his posts a few years ago, with starting this crusade, which is apparently starting to catch on, and with good reason. Have you noticed how hard it is to NOT click on a link in the middle of a post? Do you ever even finish one of our posts before ending up in some far-away place and forgetting how you got there and even forgetting that conference call that you were supposed to be on 15 minutes ago. Me neither.

Carr describes links as "...tiny distractions, little textual gnats buzzing around your head. Even if you don't click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it's there and it matters. People who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form. The more links in a piece of writing, the bigger the hit on comprehension." So what to do? The general feeling is that links should be listed at the end of the text. This allows you to calmly read through the post and THEN decide which primary, or at least non-tertiary, sources you would like to review. I think it's a good idea. Cheers.

New York Times Sunday Book Review of Carr's new book
New York Times Nicholas Carr Q&A
Carr's original blogpost on the subject
Link to Amazon's DFW "Infinite Jest" page (What Carr is Reading)
Link to Amazon's DFW "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" (What I'm reading) - "Forever Overhead" - wow

Welcome to Connie!

As our regular readers know, we’ve now survived our first year on the interwebs. In an effort to keep bringing you fresh perspectives on infection prevention, we have invited Dr. Connie Price to join us. We are pleased that she has accepted, and look forward to working with her. Many of you probably know Connie, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado and hospital epidemiologist at Denver Health and Hospital. For those of you who don’t, you can read all about her background and interests here.