Dr Justin Marley

Blog Review: Significant Science

The blog reviewed here is ‘Significant Science‘. In the About section, we learn that the author is Hope Leman and is intending to cover topics such as Health 2.0, Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0 in the blog.

Appearance and Design

There is a white background and a central pane containing the articles. The articles consist of black text on a white background with light blue headings. At the time of writing, each page consists of several articles and the reader must scroll down to reach the index. The index allows the reader to navigate the blog by month or category.

Content

The first article dated October 14th 2009 is a look at how social media such as twitter can be used to recruit subjects for research and Leman looks at a case study. A tremendous strength of Leman’s blog is that she takes the time to approach and interview people relevant to her main themes. So for instance, this post features an interview with Chris Tryzna from the MyClinicalTrials who explains how social media are being used in the recruitment of research subjects as well as discussing some of the broader aims of the website. There is another interesting interview here, this time with Jon Brassey about the trip database. There is a very interesting interview with e-patient Dave which includes a look at participatory medicine, the concept of involving patient communities in the process and this will undoubtedly be a very interesting area to follow. The subject of Open Science is the topic of discussion in this post which features an interview with Anthony Williams from ChemSpider, which is an open science project focusing on chemistry. I thought the methods used to overcome ‘linkrot’ were extremely interesting. So for instance, how do you deal with blog posts that have disappeared from the web but which you have linked to? Williams has an interesting solution. There is also another interesting interview here, this time with Cameron Neylon about open science and particularly open access. Incidentally there is a short video interview with Hope Leman here.

Conclusions

In conclusion, this is a  young blog which contains relatively few articles. However the articles are of a very high quality and usually involve interviews with influential figures in the open science/health movement. There is a lot of very useful information geared to those with an interest in open science. Leman has a good sense of who the key players are in this emerging area and if past articles are anything to go by this is the blog to follow to keep a finger on the pulse of the open science movement.

Twitter

You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link

Podcast

You can listen to this post on Odiogo by clicking on this link (there may be a small delay between publishing of the blog article and the availability of the podcast).

TAWOP Channel

You can follow the TAWOP Channel on YouTube by clicking on this link

Responses

If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail justinmarley17@yahoo.co.uk

Disclaimer

The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

27 comments

  1. Dear Dr. Marley:

    I just want to thank you for your most generous review of my blog, Significant Science. It is particularly gratifying to see it reviewed in a medicine-related site because I am trying hard build bridges between the world of Open Science and that of Medicine 2.0, as they have so much in common.

    Also, I would like to urge those looking for funding in the health sciences to look at the grants and scholarship listing service I work on, ScanGrants:

    http://www.scangrants.com/

    It is a free service and useful to basic scientists, clinical researchers, students and health services researchers.

    Additionally, I would like to alert you and your readers to a conference I am helping to organize, Science Commons Symposium – Pacific Northwest

    http://sciencecommons.org/events/salon/

    http://scs.eventbrite.com/

    It is being sponsored by Science Commons and hosted by Microsoft Research and will feature as speakers Antony Williams and Cameron Neylon, both of whom you refer to in your post about Significant Science, as well as other major figures in the field of Open Science and Open Access such as John Wilbanks, Jean-Claude Bradley, Stephen Friend, Heather Joseph and Peter Binfield. It really is the ideal way for medical people, librarians, information scientists, those in the search industry, and technologists new to the subjects of Open Science and Open Research to get a handle on those growing fields.

    Thank you again for your courtesy. This is an exciting time in online science, scientific communication, medicine on the Web, and sci/tech publishing.

    Hope Leman

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    • Dear Hope,

      Thank you very much for taking the time to write this detailed response. I agree that open science is an incredibly important area for medicine and in my area of interest psychiatry. I’ve used the term Psychiatry 2.0 in a number of my posts and am still exploring it’s meaning. I thought that Neurolex and Medpedia could form an important part of the psychiatry 2.0 network but for the process of open science a number of your posts have provided important insights. Your conference looks extremely interesting! I will look forward to reading more of your posts!

      Regards

      Justin

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  3. Dear Justin:

    Thank you so much for your very nice note. I am so very grateful for your work in apprising those in the medical world about Open Science.

    I enjoyed, for instance, your review

    https://theamazingworldofpsychiatry.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/blog-reviewscience-in-the-open/

    of Cameron Neylon’s blog Science in the Open

    http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/

    and, on the subject of Open Source projects in medicine, this one
    https://theamazingworldofpsychiatry.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/blog-review-open-mrs/

    (I wish they had a user-friendly video so that non-geeks could get a grasp of that very worthwhile project.)

    I’d be very interested in your views on the Neurocommons project:

    http://sciencecommons.org/projects/data/

    (which, interestingly, is not, as I had expected, about neuroscience only but about online science in general)

    And thanks for the mention of Neurolex, which I had not heard of before.

    In the interview I did with Cameron Neylon, he mentioned Duncan Hull. So I checked out Hull’s blog and saw his post on this quite interesting project:

    Blogging a Book about Bio-Ontologies

    http://duncan.hull.name/2010/01/21/ontogenesis/

    (I looked at that again, because your reference to Neurolex got me to thinking about various formats for scientific communication: e-books, wikis, etc.).

    I had not heard the term Psychiatry 2.0—so thanks for that, too!

    Thanks for the encouragement on my own blogging efforts. I have spent the morning sending off email messages to people I admire in the Open Science movement asking for interviews for my blog. We will see what happens.

    Anyway, you are doing valuable work connecting those of us interested in Medicine 2.0, Open Source projects in medicine, Open Science and the neurosciences in particular up to date on important developments. Keep up the good work!

    Hope

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    • Dear Hope,

      Thank you for your detailed comment and the links to the 2 blogs – i’ve put them on my to-do list! It would be good to keep in contact and exchange ideas!

      Regards

      Justin

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  4. Hi, Justin. Definitely. I don’t know if you are heavily involved in Medicine 2.0, but the next conference is probably going to be in Holland and you might want to pop over to it. I gave a paper at the one in Toronto in 2009. Here are the papers presented in there:

    http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2009/schedConf/program

    Gunther Eysenbach, as you probably know, is the leader of that movement:

    http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2009/about/contact

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    • Hi Hope,
      Thanks for the tip on that conference. I’ve looked on the website but there doesn’t appear to be a date just yet. Holland is not too far away so for me this is a great conference and thanks for the link to the conference blog – another neat resource. I’ll keep you posted as I come across anything else of interest!
      Regards
      Justin

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  5. Hi, Justin. Yes, it is rather weird that there is no up-to-date info on the next conference. Rotterdamn was proposed as the next meeting venue.

    This is the journal that Gunther Eysenbach edits:

    http://www.jmir.org/about/contact

    and Walter Jessen led this session at ScienceOnline2010:

    http://www.scienceonline2010.com/index.php/wiki/Medicine_2.0_and_Science_2.0/

    Walter’s Next Generation Science blog is excellent and he is knowledgeable about online science and medicine.

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