In a prior post I discussed the topic of blogmersion, or the urge to connect with others, which is easily facilitated by the internet. I define blogmersion (a term I just made up) as the use of weblogs to connect with other people and even past times and places through the internet. Also facilitated by email, YouTube, file sharing sites, myspace, yourspace, etc. etc.
As I have said before, blogmersion can have a liberating effect. Let's look at its effect on doctors (my own particular corner of the universe). Once doctors sat in their white coats and stared at you from the other side of their desks, or wrote papers that went into journals that were read by only a few other doctors.
Enter blogmersion. Now doctors can make their (very important) views known to the world, on a range of topics, and without the filter of "peer review" or politics. And they can dump that stodgy and boring writing style used for journals and just say what they want to.
And there are a lot of them out there. Dr. David Colquhoun has noticed that there are a lot more people interested in his caustic remarks about pseudoscience on his dcscience.net website than his latest biochemistry results. He recently proudly announced that he had passed half a million viewers. Go professor!
The Last Psychiatrist engages in navel gazing and pondering various abstruse topics such as the meaning of YouTube and porn.
The good doctors at sciencebasedmedicine.org have realized that by banding together in a group of five that one of them can write a blog essay every day which keeps their content fresh and drives them up in those highly sought after google search ratings. They let their inner Mr. Hydes run loose against a range of peeves including woo and failures of logic. If someone says in the comment section "I can tell you from experience..." they snap back "No you can't."
And now as if we weren't already too excited, we have Orac, a frequent ranter about the evils of pseudo-science, revealed as Dr. David Gorski, a surgeon from Detroit! I love blogging doctors!
I can go on. Not to mention how they cite and link to each other and put each other on their blog rolls. Dr. DCScience.net, could you put me on your blogroll? Pretty please?
Doug Bremner MD is author of Before You Take That Pill