I Have a Dream for Science on Steem

in #introduceyourself7 years ago (edited)

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Hello Steemit, thank you for welcoming me into your blockchain tribe! I’m fairly new here, but I’ve been observing this blockchain for some time and having seen its potential, I’ve decided to move my blog here.

I believe that while the Steemit platform has its problems, the blockchain technology underlying it could hold a lot of potential for fixing serious issues within the scientific world. Over my first few posts I’m going to explain how and why, but, first things first.

Who am I?

I'm Simon Oxenham AKA Neurobonkers AKA Brain Scanner. You may know me from my blog post “Meet The Robin Hood of Science” that went viral in 2016.

I’m a science blogger turned freelance science journalist with a passion for correcting bad science and the misinformation that is so prevalent in the press. I started blogging nearly ten years ago to debunk false claims about neuroscience and psychology. Since then, my work has evolved, covering science more broadly at publishers including Nature, New Scientist and the BBC but little has been as rewarding as my good old-fashioned blog which is one reason why I’m deciding to start blogging again here on Steemit.

Here are a few of my favourite topics according to my blog:
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My road to science blogging began after realising that a big reason why so much science journalism is so poor is that journalists in most of today’s newsrooms simply aren’t given the time to cover science properly. Science journalism has broadly become the blind regurgitation of press releases and little more. Furthermore, a journalism model that depends on page views doesn’t create incentives to report the news accurately, it does the opposite.

Now I know this introduction post is where I’m meant to persuade you why I’m worth your follow on here, but I’m sick of blowing my own trumpet already. Instead, I’ll simply paste some nice things people have said about my blogging.

The New York Times called my blog part of a “backlash against what is sometimes called brain porn”. Guardian columnist and journalism professor Paul Bradshaw described my debunking of a bad news article as “the best piece of bad journalism debunking I’ve ever seen”. Dr. Ben Goldacre (my not so secret source of inspiration, author of Bad Science and Bad Pharma) said of the same post: “This awesome takedown should win some kind of prize… Bravo”. The authors of Pearson’s textbook of psychology recommended my blog for its “excoriating reviews of bad science”. Neuroscientist and blogger Neuroskeptic, another big source of inspiration for me, called my blog “consistently excellent”, they later interviewed me about it here. The Brain Science and Early Intervention Research Project at the University of Southampton recommended my work for its “critical analysis of misinformation". My blog posts have been referenced and used as sources by publishers including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, New York, The Huffington Post, The Conversation, Upstart Business Journal, The LA Times, and Scientific American.

In the next few posts I’m going to explain how you too could have a similar impact using this platform as your tool. I chose the quotes above because they are from people who I respect enormously, if you’ve not discovered their work already you should check them out.

Tomorrow, I’ll be posting the next in this four-part series, explaining how Steem works, and why I think it has potential for fixing deep-seated problems in how science is communicated. I’ll release each new part daily at 1PM BST (8AM EDT) over the next four days.

PART 1: I Have a Dream for Science on Steem
PART 2: What Is Steem and Why Do I Think It Could Be Revolutionary?
PART 3: Why Science Blogging Needs Saving
PART 4: How Blockchains Could Fix Science

I hope you give me a follow on here even if you’re not someone who normally follows science. If that’s the case I’m willing to bet I can change that, give this post a read for starters. If you share my passion for fixing scientific communication and debunking misinformation then say hello in the comments and post links to your favourite science blogs already on here. I’ll kick us off with the wonderful folks over at @SteemStem!

Don't let me down Steemit, I have very high hopes for you.

You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to weekly email updates on my posts.

Postscript: I want to take this opportunity to thank Daniel Himmelstein (@dhimmel), the scientist who introduced me to Steem. Daniel shares my goal of freeing scientific data and is at the forefront of this movement. Daniel has been so kind as to mention the impact of my blogging in his recent research on the subject.

Full Disclosure: I’ve made what seems to be ballooning into a substantial investment in Steem Power so I can help encourage and reward the best science content on here and earn curation rewards for myself in the process. I’ll be using some of that investment to promote this series however that’s something I won’t be doing in future. I’m going to promote each post a few hours after it’s released to give you hard working science curators out there a good shot at the curation rewards. If that was gobbledegook to you, then check back here tomorrow when I’ll explain how this all works.

Credits: Microscope via Wikimedia Commons. Word cloud created using Tagxedo.

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I should capitalise on this opportuniity

Any science / STEM professionals or just enthusiasts who want greater visibility for their hard work are welcome to:

  • Use the steemstem tag for related content
  • Join our awesome community on Discord, home to over 1,000 curious minds here on Steem!

See you there peeps =)

XD nice opportunism mobbs

nice post.

Everything is said there! Welcome to steem!

We are working on this very problem. Please read our post: https://steemit.com/decentralizedpeerreview/@labledger/the-scientific-journal-industry-is-monopolized-and-broken-here-s-how-blockchain-can-fix-it and you can learn more about our project at LabLedger.net

Welcome to Steem @simoxenham! I'll be especially looking forward to PART 4: How Blockchains Could Fix Science as a Blockchain enthusiast. Your science journalism will be well rewarded in this Steem ecosystem and I hope that you'll become a good example for your colleagues in the field, leading them to join Steem as well :)

Hey @simoxenham, welcome to Steem! It's great to have you here! I'm a friend of @dhimmel and also a Steem witness. It sounds like you have a good understanding of how everything works already but if you have any questions about anything feel free to give me a shout.

Looking forward to your upcoming posts!

Thanks a lot, could be fun to do an interview at some point on the role of witnesses on Steem and perhaps have a little debate on the role bots are playing on the network.

Would be happy to do something like that, let me know!

Great, I'll be in touch!

@simoxenham These bots on steemit are poorly made. It's like dealing with the American SSA (Social Security) lol

Can't wait to read the next three posts and learn more about your vision! While I'm a scientist and a steem user, those two worlds seem to rarely overlap. @simoxenham, I think you're the first person I know who independently of #steemphilly and has now started using Steem. A network effect in its infancy!

Anyways I'm excited for more scientists to start using Steem, which could eventually replace centralized services such as Twitter and Medium.

a journalism model that depends on page views doesn’t create incentives to report the news accurately, it does the opposite.

Great point. It seems like the titles for many news stories are chosen not by their authors but their editors. I've seen lot's of good articles with exaggerated or incorrect titles. The incentives to produce click bait are so strong. Steem is not immune to click bait titles (see for example the plague of ALL CAPS titles), but at least here you can downvote if a title is misleading.

It's early days, that's for sure! Yes indeed, without wanting to give too much away from tomorrow's post, I'm hoping that with the launch of Steem communities the users here that are interested in high-quality science content will be better able to moderate the content they want to read, as users do on Subreddits, downvoting the clickbait trash.

Great. It sound interesting.

dhimmel!? You're on here! This is so cool - we don't really know each other but you once helped me setup a hetionet instance on Stackoverflow. So cool to run into see you on another platform. Thanks again for all the help!

Also.. I just uploaded a geeky video I had been working on for over 9 months. If you have some down time/are curious about how pixels work learn here :)

the reason why they are poor journalist covering science is because most people nowadays are engaged in entertainment rather than science, so only few people are engaged in science that means a few audience the fewer the audience the smaller the impact, so we need to figure out how to teach people about science in an entertainment way. :)

Welcome to Steem Community @simoxenham! As a gentle reminder, please keep your master password safe. The best practise is to use your private posting key to login to Steemit when posting; and the private active key for wallet related transactions.

In the New Steemians project, we help new members of steem by education and resteeeming their articles. Get your articles resteemed too for maximum exposure. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch

Just discovered you man, you seem to be very interesting STEM Steemian :)
My dream for science is rewarding scientist, publication research papers & peer review based on blockchain. Without this horrendous prices for reading scientific paper. Science SHOULD be for free to benefit further development but also scientific awareness in society!

Absolutely, indeed I think we've been having the same dream!

Unfortunately I didn't choose a path of doctorate, but damn, I would love to join this revolution :D

All aboard! :)

As I already said it many many times, some scientific communities are already there, with all papers freely available. If some did it, all could do it (in principle). :)

Welcome to steemit and to steemstem. Great to have an excellent blogger joining our steemstem community and look forward to reading the series.

Thanks for the kind words!

Welcome to Steem(it), @simoxenham! I'm glad to heave you here. We always need more people who promote and write about science, especially on platforms like this where there is a lot of misinformation that gets circulated (such as some pretty powerful users that are anti-vaccination).

Seeing as I'm a bit late to your introduction, I guess I can already go and read most parts of your first series, so I'm going to be doing that now. Anyway, nice to meet you!

Best regards from @valth

Wow really forward to your authentic work on Steemit! I agree science journalism is flawed and can be incorrect. I want someone with a strong background both in science and writing to read articles from. You have a fun repertoire. Welcome to Steemit :)

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