Science blogs are not among the most popular on the net. But they exist and some are highly ranked. News-nature has just listed the 50 most popular science blogs (i.e., blogs written by scientists). The most popular (Pharyngula) has rank 179 of the approx. 51 million blogs out there (per 13 August 2006) listed by Technorati.

Being linked to by high-rank blogs will probably soon have the same status for science communication people as a paper in Nature, Cell or PNAS has for scientists, and it is therefore probably just a question of time until they will flash their blog’s ranking on their CV’s.
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An article in the current (5-11 Aug) issue of the leading weekly magazine of progressive global capitalism, The Economist, asks why economists spend valuable time blogging? Because it is “a place in the intellectual influence game” as an interviewee puts it. The article concludes that blogging professors may actually help raise the economic status of their institutions: “Prominent professors with popular blogs are good publicity” for a university — and thus for its income.
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How far has the museum world come in thinking in terms of the ‘augmented museum’ (or ‘museum++’ to paraphrase William Mitchell’s Me++: The Cyborged Self and the Networked City, 2003)? To what extent are curators thinking about digitally augmenting the reality of material artefacts into ‘augmented artefacts’?
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I hate spam! And so do billions of e-mail and web users. Most of it is (rather harmless) advertising for viagra, porn movies or on-line poker games. Nevertheless it fills the mailbox and complicates making blog comments. That’s why almost everybody, including Bill Gates, hates it.

But as Gustav Holmberg (in the Research Policy Institute at the University of Lund) just pointed out in a comment to my last blog post, spam has one good side —
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My spam mail filter (Spamfighter) is pretty efficient and I usually empty the spam folder without paying much attention to its content. But sometimes I take a closer look. Last night the filter had caught a mail that wanted to sell me laboratory mice with the following argument:

Dear Colleague,

Mice generated by Ozgene have been published in scientific journals such as PNAS, Nature, Science and Blood. For a complete list of publications visit our website at www.ozgene.com.

The latest publication involving mice generated by Ozgene was in June 2006:
York IA, Brehm MA, Zendzian S, Towne CF, Rock KL. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2006 Jun 13;103(24):9202-7

Why not get Ozgene to help generate the mice for your next publication?

Best regards,
Dr Frank Koentgen
Director & CEO
Ozgene Pty Ltd
http://www.ozgene.com/
koentgen@ozgene.com
—————————————————————————
PRIVACY POLICY: Your email address is safe with us. Ozgene will not share your personal contact information with anyone, for any reason. If you feel that this email is of no value to you and you do not wish to receive further info from us, simply reply with “remove” in the subject line.
—————————————————————————

Indeed I didn’t reply with “remove” because I rather wanted to discuss what is going on here. This is not an ad that wants scientists to use research animals to combat human suffering, as we outsiders always thought. What Ozgene actually say is that they sell mice to help scientists pursue their careers. Animals shall perish so that people can publish (and not perish in the academic competition).

Don’t misunderstand me —
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Synspunkter på årsskriftet kan skrives her. Klik på kommentarer. Husk at de kan læses af alle!

(Added 18 July: Registration dead-line has been extended to 30 July)
The ‘science wars’ of the 1990s is already history, but the relations between scientists and scholars of science studies and recent history of science and medicine continue to raise concern. The Centre for Science Studies at Lancaster University is organising a conference ‘Getting Underneath the Fact: Natural Categories & Biological Facts as Historical and Emergent Objects’, 28-29 August 2006.
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The Museums and Galleries History Group is organising a meeting, “Past and present: negotiating museum and gallery history” at Newcastle University at 7-8 September. The organisers tell us that:

This is a chance to review the nature and roles of museum and gallery history, looking at: trends in and uses of museum and gallery historiography and attempts to link contemporary museological concerns (such as access, inclusion, diversity, restitution etc.) to historical precedents. The proceedings will also focus on the ways in which museums and galleries today work with (or against) their historic identities, buildings, collections, displays and the historical paradigms of knowledge, culture and society inherent within them.

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The art of drawing of/in science and medicine is a summer theme in 2006. Here at the Medical Museion we are opening the exhibition “Sygdommens Ansigt” (The Face of Disease) on Thursday 24 August. 23 artists are participating with drawings of disease inspired by Sontag’s idea of disease as a metaphor. Each artist fills a window on the street level of the museum buildings in Bredgade and Fredericiagade. The exhibition is curated by Copenhagen artists Peter Brandt, Tomas Lagerman Lundme and Maria Wæhrens and runs until 13 October.

The exhibition at Medical Museion runs parallel to the exhibition “Lines of Inquiry: Thinking Through Drawing” that opens at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge on 15 July:
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Phoenix Arts Association have been awarded a grant from The Wellcome Trust for artist Anna Dumitriu to work on a project about allergy entitled “Sensitive”:

“The project is transdisciplinary and crosses the boundary between art and science enabling a greater understanding of allergy through scientific research and innovative art techniques (such as live art, video and installation). The project looks at both the medical and emotional impact of this increasingly common condition, raising awareness of different coping strategies and developing participants methods of expression”

(quoted from the project’s website)

They also have a blog that documents the progress of the project. Welcome to the growing club of project blogs 🙂