Blogging on!

The Human Landscapes Blog is back! Last year, I began an upgrade to WordPress – and got stuck- much harder than expected.  More importantly, after starting to use twitter (@erleellis, @ecosynth, @globalyzer), I’d basically stopped blogging.

Yet, I’d been feeling that something was missing – twitter isn’t a real replacement for blogging about the papers we publish and the work of others that inspires us. Today, a nice paper came out in PNAS (Kuehne & Olden 2015) on how important it is for scientists to publish “Lay summaries” of our research- to make good on our social contract. Scientific understanding – and our struggles to gain it – are just too important to keep within the ivory tower.  We need to tell our stories. 

I started blogging in August 2008 and encouraged my students to blog. I tried to make sure that we posted about each of our papers as they came out. The blogging format remains a challenge- and a learning experience. Some of the early posts could have been better.  But the practice of blogging has definitely improved my skills in communication and helped to get the word out.   

So, here’s my first blog post in more than a year, with more to come!

References Cited

Kuehne, L. M., and J. D. Olden. 2015. Opinion: Lay summaries needed to enhance science communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112:3585-3586.