Positive Internet are the new gods * * * hot badscience 2.0 action

July 11th, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science | 47 Comments »

So as you might remember, my previous web hosts suddenly noticed that I was running a site with a forum, a blog, a wiki, and 90,000 unique visitors a month (12,000 a day) on a jokey little budget web hosting plan that cost $6 a month. They promptly pulled the plug and I had to fight just to get the blog back up temporarily.

Amazingly a minor avalanche of hot web2.0 geeks came to my aid, and then Positive Internet stepped in to give us a free and rather enormous dedicated server. This is generosity beyond my wildest dreams, especially since I clearly lack the funds to keep the site up with anything like that kind of resource, and as a result, badscience.net is now spectacularly overpowered: I want you to picture a small hornby carriage being dragged up the east coast mainline at 140mph by a full-size nuclear powered freight locomotive. This is Orca. She’s hot.


Now obviously I nearly died with shock, but it’s fair to say that Positive Internet are a pretty amazing organisation. They also host, for example, Richard Stallman, free software guru and digital activist, and various free software projects, like this GNU/Linux distribution. This is clearly a company with a very strong commitment to geek politics issues, which is very much where I see us (once my book’s polished off at the lawyers I’ve got a second column in the pipeline, ramming the cultural impact of things like IP, CC, and GNU down the throats of a wider and unwilling audience).

The people at Positive have also been incredibly helpful and funny, and they hosted the Ricky Gervais podcast. I think it’s fair to say that they are the clear geek’s choice for web action, and I for one will not be missing any opportunity to explain how wonderful they are whenever I get the chance.

So the blog is now back up and fully running (your old logins should all work here) and if there are any problems just let me know and I will promptly bash my head against the desk and pass it on to some of the amazing people who’ve helped me out, specifically (so far) Alex Lomas, who is undoubtedly the main star of the show so far, and very kindly did the migration patiently and with (let me be clear) truly astonishing competence. That level of high end geekery to me is indistinguishable from magic and someone should give him an even better job than the one he already has, if they know what’s good for them.

I hadn’t seen world science expert Dr Damian Counsell from pootergeek for ten years – he was a popstar and much cooler than me in Oxford – but he popped up out of nowhere to help during the initial panic and I will be forever indebted (he is a tiny bit warmongery these days, but the kind of warmonger you can chat to, which is what it’s all about).

The forum is next to come back on, and then next come the plans to develop badscience.net into an uber-participatory quack-busting pseudoscience-fighting media-monitoring comedy community evil empire, which I think will be rather good fun. I have a small band of hot web2.0 geeks who I have ensured are neither undercover saboteurs sent in by the vitamin pill industry nor emmisaries of corporate media satanism, and hopefully now we’ve migrated some will stick around. If you’d like to chip in then drop me an email, ben@badscience.net as ever, I can offer love, microfame, booze, and I know a lot of hot girls.

A bit of money came in before through paypal when we were down which was great – I’m incredibly grateful and was slightly startled at a couple of the donations – it’s quite safe and will be spent on all the other stuff besides servers, especially the evil empire expansion, but mainly crack cocaine and sex workers. Thank you all so so much, seriously.

On a slightly weepy note, I have to say this has been a truly motivating object lesson in how the voluntary skills exchange no-dosh economy can really come up with the goods, and even if I did moan very briefly about spending all my time giving talks in schools for free and then losing the train receipts like a dick (thus losing money), and even though there were times when I considered starting a cynical vitamin pill company or tedious “readers’ health worries” magazine column (I’d rather slam my balls in the car door) just to pay the webhosting bills, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. This experience has totally put my fighting shoes on.

Hot badscience 2.0 action

So, onward.

There are a few ideas I’ve chatted around with a couple of people, and I’d be really interested to hear anyone’s views on what they’d like to see here. My feeling is there is a massive community of sharp interesting people who hang out here, and a massive amount of interesting material out there to discuss. The one boring thing I’d like to do quickly is get the forum so that it integrates with the design of the blog and uses the same login, so it’s less of a hassly different world (maybe using Vanilla).

The first proper thing I really want to do is get the links miniblog (on the right) running so that when you click on a link, you go to a page, with the link at the top, and discussion beneath. This would be great because it would allow for a lot of entertaining real-time discussion (and debunking) of a large number of dodgy media science and health stories, as well as remote parallel discussion of other loopy blogs, and crucially commentary on all kinds of stuff like webpages, commercial sites, and mainstream media, that resist commentary by design.

It would also be great because the google rank is quite high on badscience.net so it would bring more people into our discursive rational clutches. Also it would be good to expand and have more pages, especially for other people to post interesting quack/scare links.

This is just a snippet of the fun stuff and extra content to come (buckets, audio, written, buckets, seriously), but beyond that I don’t want to suggest too much here, because I wouldn’t want to colour your suggestions, and I really do want to hear if there’s anything people would be up for, especially community stuff.

And meanwhile, let’s not forget that Positive have an excellent shared hosting plan for just over a tenner a month, as well as rather delicious dedicated servers of all varieties for every scale of need, not to mention their managed servers for gigantic projects.

They are clearly the ethical choice for geeks.

Seriously though… post below, just so I know you’re still there…


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you like what I do, and you want me to do more, you can: buy my books Bad Science and Bad Pharma, give them to your friends, put them on your reading list, employ me to do a talk, or tweet this article to your friends. Thanks! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

47 Responses



  1. Nero said,

    July 11, 2007 at 10:40 pm

    Well, congrats all round and full kudos to Positive, but please get the forum back. I’m doing too much work.

  2. Deano said,

    July 11, 2007 at 10:55 pm

    Like I said – advertising is the solution!

    – although as someone who will be eternally grateful to Positive Internet for introducing me to Karl Pilkington – I’m not complaining…

    … and just in time to discuss Durkin getting ripped to shreds by the Aussies – whoopee!

    Seriously Ben don’t be that surprised at the support you get – its well earned: and I might even fork out a tenner a month for a site so I hog a little less of your bandwidth in future …

  3. spv said,

    July 12, 2007 at 12:10 am

    Three cheers for Positive.

    Pip pip, hooray!
    Pip pip, hooray!
    Pip pip, hooray!

    Now back Ben’s Da Truth According to all Clear Thinking People 2.0.

  4. spv said,

    July 12, 2007 at 12:12 am

    PS – that picture of Orca, does it class as geek porn?

  5. jackpt said,

    July 12, 2007 at 12:40 am

    There’s a lot of overlap with other existing services, but it would be ubercool to have a fully moderated media review section. So if some silly science story pops up in the media quality feedback could be submitted and aggregated. It’s similar to your link/submission/comments system idea but with appointed overlords to filter out nonsense comments and rather than just Internet related media in general (i.e. not just links, rather TV show comment/review). A good database could be built of the purveyors of bullshit. Plugging existing sites like Quack Watch and others in the process by providing links to their coverage (or other quality coverage). So, not really a new or original idea, but a useful aggregation tool fed by quality user input.

    As for Web 2.0 stuff, AJAX it to the gills. I dare say enough of it was snorted in the process of producing much media bad science.

  6. Ben Goldacre said,

    July 12, 2007 at 1:08 am

    i think voting our own comments up or down is maybe over egging the pudding, but i like the idea of being able to vote on different qualities of links, maybe, awarding plastic ducks, and big pots of grey goo for stuff we like.

    regarding comments, unless the large community of people discussing stuff changes in culture massively, its pretty obvious who’s talking sense and who is bonkers, and the bonkers people tend to be either capable of holding a discussion, or potty and shortlived (and we all secretly rather enjoy them being here)

  7. jackpt said,

    July 12, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Yeah, you’re propbably right, although it will be interesting to know how many deluded but otherwise normal people find your site on the back of silly sub Nachiavellian attacks like the one linked from your miniblog. I’m surprise how few real-people (rather than those with vested interests) with bad science beliefs find their way to this site or comment. I can only think that the purveyors of bullshit have less grass roots support than they think. It doesn’t help their cause that you’re so damn reasonable :).

  8. Ben Goldacre said,

    July 12, 2007 at 1:31 am

    i think they dont want to have a chat about the evidence, they want to say “ah well of coooouuurrrse they’re all in the pay of the pharmaceutical industry to make babies autistic with wifi”

  9. Bob O'H said,

    July 12, 2007 at 6:32 am

    “Like I said – advertising is the solution!”
    Which is why Positive Internet are doing this. 🙂

    Not that we shouldn’t be grateful – every company has to advertise itself in some way, and it’s great that they’re doing it in an, um, positive way that benefits the community.

    On the community stuff, I enjoy the miniblog already, but I do miss the opportunity to add comments on the links.

    Bob
    P.S. Needs more buckets.

  10. Monkey Doctor said,

    July 12, 2007 at 6:59 am

    I have always had a hankering for a “Thickipedia” (not related to b3ta’s sickipedia) – a who’s who of both purveyors and reporters of bad science. The array of names gets a bit confusing at times and I can’t always remember who the good and bad guys are.

    Keep it factual, but highlight conflicts of interest, shifting positions etc.

    Glad to see you back up and running. The internet does indeed rock sometimes, in a nerdtacular way.

  11. Gimpy said,

    July 12, 2007 at 8:23 am

    How about a Journal of Badscience or something? There seems to be loads of blogs by forum contributors that adeptly demolish health claims from the pill peddlers, magic water marketeers and the mad hatters in the electrosensitive lobby. You could collate them and subject them to proper peer review. Surely there are enough people here with expertise to set up a reasonable peer review process.

    Things printed on glossy paper are always more authoritative to the general public than blog posts.

  12. ayupmeduck said,

    July 12, 2007 at 8:28 am

    Very nice of Positive Internet. But I’m even more impressed by the people that chipped in to get the site moved over so smoothly. Like most software jobs, you only realize what a tough job it is when it goes wrong, and when there is nobody to help you but consultants at 50 quid or more per hour.

  13. Teek said,

    July 12, 2007 at 8:33 am

    1) congrats on getting the blog up and running again, much thanks due of course to Positive Internet and all the rest of the web2.0 geeks that helped Ben get back online!

    2) being able to comment of the miniblog would indeed be cool, how often do we look up the links and laugh/cry/spew anger without being able to say so here?!

    3) Journal of Badscience is a crakcing idea IMHO, would be keen to get involved!

  14. woodchopper said,

    July 12, 2007 at 9:01 am

    Its excellent news. Positive Interweb be preaised (in a strictly agnostic way).

    I just have one half formed thought. If we have blog posts, wiki posts, forum posts and links posts (similar to teh B3ta) then things are going to get a bit chaotic. A simple keyword search would do this a bit but they tend to be a bt confusing if they produce too many hits.

    There will be four different places where the woomeisters will be debunked. Someone looking for stuff on a particular subject would have four different places to look. We might have lots of posts on the same subject in different places.

    So there could be an overarching heirachy to enable a user to browse all the site’s content. I suggest that the easiest way to do this would be foe users to choose a theme from a preselected list (basicaly a drop down list) when they make the first post on a new subject. For example place your Steorn article in ‘perpetual motion machines’. The mods could construct the list based upon existing posts (the blog is already organised on some thematic lines). They could also add new themes as requested by users.

    Then have a ‘browse this site option’ which would easily allow a user to select a theme and then see all the relevant posts or forum discussions (not every forum post).

  15. woodbine said,

    July 12, 2007 at 9:47 am

    Ben,

    I just wanted to say “keep up the good work”, all the ideas for developing the forum and the like sound really positive, but they will be nothing without regular postings from you.

    We head over here to laugh at the blue meanies selling us blood cleansers because you make a depressing situation amusing and easy to understand. This is important for non-geek, arts graduates like myself. To be honest, we’re probably the numpties who are most likely to be seduced by the purveyors of “wi-fi will melt your babies” scare stories, putting us right and making us laugh is a really valuable service.

    Besides, nothing beats starting one’s day with a good gut laugh wrapped in some righteous indignation.

    w

  16. jg said,

    July 12, 2007 at 9:55 am

    well done Ben and to everyone that helped him out. i love my weekly dose of BS (*ahem* i probably should spell that out in full in future).
    i’m a huge fan of aggregator sites like reddit and you might wish to include a post&vote type list as part of your site.
    as for heirachial ordering of things, i think tags that any user can add to a submission would work just as well as forcing someone to make an arbitrary choice at the time of posting.
    agree with needing a good search capability.
    if the site grows (which i think it will) you might want to consider ‘deputy’ status for some members ie, energy snakeoil, medical quackery, statistical liars etc just to cope with the volume. this will play out well with your ultimate unstated aim of being declared a benevolent BS dictator for life 😉

  17. woodchopper said,

    July 12, 2007 at 9:58 am

    Re. a journal. Fantastic idea. It would have a pretty good readership. And more importantly it would be an excellent way of preserving a lot of the good work that goes on in all the blogs and forums. But …

    A full on peer reviewed journal is an expensive thing to run. Based on the experience of a few colleagues, you would need at least:

    A part time editor (say 50%)
    A part time assistant (does all the correspondence, ensures that authors deliver, initial filtering etc) on at least 50%
    A language editor (could also be part time)

    These people have got to be paid, and that’s expensive.

    You then need to persuade a publisher to take up the journal. Sales will cover some of the costs but not necessarily all in the early days. Sales may be a problem as it might be difficult to market the journal to University Libraries (the only people who could afford it). I guess that ‘Bad Science’ the journal might have a market in the people that teach epistemology and methodology. But thats difficult to say.

    However, a less ambitions project might be in order. A pdf journal containing short articles like ‘The Reasoner’ would cost a lot less. It wouldn’t have to be be peer reviewed, but would have editorial input.

    I guess that such a journal would just require one part time editor plus an editorial committee (who could be volunteers). It would also be a lot flexible – an issue could be delayed for a few weeks if the authors were late etc.

    I am though a great supporter of people getting paid to do a job. If the editor is doing that on top of a normal job the whole thing will grind to a halt sooner or later. But a 50% editorial position might be something that could be funded by a foundation or charitable trust (what about the Rowntree?). Unfortunately it might have to avoud Pharma money to prevent all sorts of allegatons about bias etc. Of course, if you could find someone who is retired to be the editor for free that would be another matter.

  18. colmcq said,

    July 12, 2007 at 10:02 am

    chat rooms?

    Can we get the css layout fixed too? This page is all mashed up!

    c

  19. alsodug said,

    July 12, 2007 at 10:36 am

    Being able to comment on the mini-blog is a great idea, couple of other suggestions:

    i) Perhaps a wiki on some of the main topics. It’d be great to have a page neatly describing the argument and linking to all the most relevant references. Could be useful for putting non-specialists into the picture. Maybe a section with ‘quick put downs’ with useful argument winners.

    ii) Could go in for a more sophisticated categorising? For example, if I’ve said my specialism is physics then when I log in I could quickly see what’s being discussed in the forums, mini-blog etc that would be most relevant to me, maybe like a facebook inspired news-feed. Certainly a personalised homepage of some description.

    Cheers to positive internet, will have their name ready if anyone asks about web hosting.

  20. rdp123 said,

    July 12, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    For an example of gathering local comments about offsite pages, the Richard Dawkins site does it quite well (www.richarddawkins.net/cat1_Reason,cat2_In-the-News). Who better to imitate ?. Although sadly the code behind the site does not seem to be available under the GPL.

  21. gadgeezer said,

    July 12, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    #22 – Somewhat along the lines of a Snopes for canards or popular misunderstandings?

    I can see people Blackberrying it to solve pub disputes…

  22. hairnet said,

    July 12, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    hooray, here i am sat at work drinking from my ‘mmr is safe etc..’ mug and badscience is back! All is right in the world again.

    Ideas wise, how about a topical section referring to medai output in the last week or so? Could be a usefull place to refer to in a hurry.

  23. Ben Goldacre said,

    July 12, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    yeah, but that richarddawkins site just posts a whole blog entry of the original piece, which i find slightly disagreeable.

    its not short and elegant for a start.

    it takes traffic away from the thing linked too.

    if the site linked to permits comments people should go there, and also have the chance to see the context/other content,

    and so on.

  24. rdp123 said,

    July 12, 2007 at 3:23 pm

    True enough about the traffic, but most of those posts (and yours?) link to news stories which don’t have comments available. Once people have gone off-site they don’t always come back to comment on a story.

    Of course the real solution is for the Web to be replaced by Project Xanadu, any day now.

  25. mrstrellis said,

    July 12, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    Ahem. I must take a little credit for this. It was my sms to my husband (a Posi director) which prompted him to donate the rather elegant Orca server that Bad Science is now enjoying.

    And, yes, there is nothing wrong with advertising. Posi do a good thing and continue to build on their reputation, while Bad Science has a new home. This is a rare win:win situation.

  26. Lave said,

    July 12, 2007 at 5:55 pm

    Great! I’m glad it’s all worked out. I’ve noticed Positive Internet from the Linux Mags I occasionally pick up when I need a new distro.

    As a linux geek, they’re officially my number one choice now.

    When I get a chance, maybe I’ll push skeptobot to their servers…

  27. Ben Goldacre said,

    July 12, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    mrstrellis!

    hahaaaaa

    i DO have friends in high places.

  28. mrstrellis said,

    July 12, 2007 at 6:10 pm

    I dragged him along to your RI talk a few weeks ago, so you must have made quite an impression on him.

  29. Ben Goldacre said,

    July 12, 2007 at 6:31 pm

    ah cool, i’m going to post an mp3 of that as soon as i’m cleared of saturday’s column. now that i have a big fast server and all.

  30. mrstrellis said,

    July 12, 2007 at 10:03 pm

    He said you seemed very…itchy. I will put that down to post-Glasto fleas.

  31. fstorr said,

    July 12, 2007 at 10:04 pm

    I’ve dealt with Positive Internet before and they’re a pretty darn good company. I didn’t realise that they were this good, though. *Very* cool.

  32. randomas said,

    July 13, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Now that is a proper web hosting company!

    One suggestion I have is that I’d like to see is a wall of shame/Quakwatch page or something of the sorts. Where people could name perpetrators of pseudoscience and mystic gobeldygook, with reference to why they’re being named and have it as a kind of service. Of course the legality of it is dubious, and it lends itself to abuse … Still I think it’s an idea worth discussing.

  33. Andrew Clegg said,

    July 13, 2007 at 4:39 pm

    I’m really into the journal idea. In an ideal world, we could get Biomed Central to host it (they are always up for new journal proposals) but in practice the article processing fees would mean most people couldn’t write articles for it.

    Unless… Ben uses his status as kick-ass ninja champion of the public understanding of science to negotiate a deal with them where they waive the fees in return for free publicity. Just an idea.

    I’m happy to do peer review/editorial committee type duties if/when something does happen—I’m sure the articles would be more fun than the ones I get sent at the moment.

    woodchopper said: “However, a less ambitions project might be in order. A pdf journal containing short articles like ‘The Reasoner’ would cost a lot less. It wouldn’t have to be be peer reviewed, but would have editorial input.”

    I’m not so keen on this idea—it seems like a step backwards technology-wise and doesn’t use the web well. One advantage of web-based OA journals is you can link straight into (and out of) specific articles. Another is that readers can post comments and authors can post updates and additional materials.

    Perhaps if BMC didn’t want to take it on as a charity case, we could hack up/adapt an existing web publishing solution (there must something open source out there) and host it here.

    Andrew.

  34. Gimpy said,

    July 13, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    I’ve added a discussion on the journal to activism on the forums
    badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2687

  35. WaveyDavey said,

    July 13, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    two things.
    One – someone mentioned the tagging thing – howsabout if there was a list of tags of bad science issues (nutrition, mcteeth etc) with bigger font sizes for biggest number of entries, a la flickr.

    Two – I am a php programmer and mysql admin and query mangler by day, and I’d be glad to help where I can – if’n you want to farm out small stuff to me. Let me know if I can help in some small way.

  36. Tom Whipple said,

    July 13, 2007 at 10:39 pm

    Help! Where’s the Saturday column? Unless I’ve gone mad, I can’t find it anywhere in the early edition.

  37. Dr Aust said,

    July 14, 2007 at 12:06 am

    From having been involved with both serious (academic) and popular journals: the key is to get a publisher to take it on. That way there is someone to pay the people you need (as e.g. woodchopper describes) to do the donkey work.

    Unfortunately, publishers publish scientific journals to make money. They would need to be convinced that enough people / Univs would take said journal for it to turn a profit – especially in a “new” market sector.

    One of the depressing things about Alt Med journals is just how many truly utterly mind-twistingly barking mad ones there are listed on PubMed, where one kind of expects to find actual science. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (aka “Ye Journale of Alchemy and Compleat Magick”) is one of the more egregious examples. I would bet they get listed largely because they are backed by large scientific publishing houses and thus can afford all the paraphenalia of managing editors, editorial board, peer-review etc.

    In contrast (cautionary tale), some years ago the “Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine” was set up in the US:

    www.sram.org/

    but my understanding was it never got a mainstream publisher and failed to make it onto PubMed.

    …Again, suggesting there is less money in truth than in HotAir, at least if lots of people are enthusiastic consumers of HotAir.

    Of course, it may be that Andrew Clegg’s idea that online-only offers a new way to do this is worth a look. Considering the huge slate of journals publishing Alt Claptrap, there really ought to be a demand for some of the opposite. There is certainly a need for a forum. For a recent example, see Lionel’s Milgrom’s blatherings about Quantum homeopathy, e.g.

    ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/4/1/7

    – This waffle is into it’s 8th (at least) “paper” essentially because multiple AltMed journals exist to publish such stuff, nonsense or not. In contrast, when Shpalman (who unlike Milgrom is a real physicist) tried to point out why Milgrom is talking rot:

    shpalman.livejournal.com/2016.html

    – the journal (OUP’s “Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine”, aka eCAM) simply declined to publish his response, even though they have a response thread for Milgrom’s paper.

    So agree 100% there is a need for a forum, but I fear it will be harder than people think to get it running in Journal form.

    Count me in, though. Would be proud to join the Editorial Board…!

  38. SteveNaive said,

    July 14, 2007 at 11:17 pm

    I used to commission journals for OUP (well before eCAM). It used to be true that (for a very successful journal) it would take about 5 years to make start making annual profit and maybe 10 years to pay off the launch costs. Of course, the financial models have probably changed a little now in the days of Open Access and online-only subs, but even so your chances of success are minimal. As Dr Aust says, you need to have a guaranteed subscribers up front before you start. Good ideas are not enough (and this is a good idea!).

  39. Robert Carnegie said,

    July 15, 2007 at 12:01 am

    I suppose the unique selling point of a Journal of Examinations of Radical Knowledge and Science would be the entertainment value. But it could be difficult to combine that with serious purpose.

    As for serious thought-out scrutiny of kook ideas and scams though – they don’t deserve the honour. Scams, lunacy, and incompetence can be identified by means outside the scientific field where the offences occur.

    A middle ground of honest, reasonable, radical theories deserves more careful examination, but is that neglected in existing journals?

  40. SteveNaive said,

    July 15, 2007 at 9:10 am

    “But it could be difficult to combine that with serious purpose.”

    I used to work in science, now I don’t and I mostly socialise with non-scientists. I’m not sure how many scientists who are emerged in that world have started to realise the extent to which science is being rejected by the general population.
    Much more study needs to be done on how this situation might be reversed. Everything needs to be covered from education to government health policy to media coverage.There are posts being created in the academic world to look at the problem and I think there could be room for a new field to emerge. Not just quackbusting, but ‘science in society’ in general.

  41. SteveNaive said,

    July 15, 2007 at 9:12 am

    ‘submerged’ not ’emerged’! It’s early!

  42. SteveNaive said,

    July 15, 2007 at 9:15 am

    Wait… there is one from Sage:
    pus.sagepub.com/content/vol16/issue3/

  43. emily sheffer md said,

    July 15, 2007 at 11:30 am

    a victory for geeks everywhere

  44. Dr Aust said,

    July 15, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    The problem with existing journals, and with the emerging “public understanding of science” field is that academically it is going to end up being a branch of social sciences.

    While that is not per se all bad – there clearly needs to be social scientists examining “why do people find it so easy to believe nonsense” – this definition of the field really will not include “critical dissection and rebuttal of nonsense ideas”.

    As a consequence, the protagonists will be social scientists, or perhaps people who started with a science degree and then moved sideways into the sociology of science.

    One meets a somewhat analogous problem in science education – the journals of science education do not publish “here is a good class experiment that helps kids understand X and is engaging” as they don’t regard developing things like this as research into science education. They all exist to publish “A post-Piaget conceptual framework for understanding the cognitive process of childrens’ science learning” and similar.

    Again, perfectly valid in its own way, but not where most of us frustrated science geeks would see the need as being. So it has been my experience that the academic “focus” of science education research (see above) mainly excludes actual scientists. I am afraid I see any “public understanding of science” field probably going the same way.

  45. theholyllama said,

    July 16, 2007 at 9:19 am

    Just a quick note to say how pleased I am that you’re back up and running. As a humanities garduate with no web skills whatsoever, my only contribution was to chuck some money over, and frankly I don’t expect that to go on anything other than crack cocaine and sex workers.

    Seriously though, the future is a couple of shades brighter. Major kudos to Positive Internet and all who have helped with the migration. Let the plans for global domination commence!

  46. blf said,

    July 16, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Just checking that I (mostly a lurker) can still login.

    Many thanks to Positive Internet, hope this continues to work out Ok for them aas well as for BadScience. And it’s good to see Ben back “on air”.

    Cheers!

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