Some answers for Henry Gee

Henry was the first Nature Network blogger to answer a few questions about science blogging that we discussed in the Nature Network Bloggers forum. Some more posts can be found here and here.

1. What is your blog about?

I am interested in how the internet is changing the way we publish and communicate science. I write from the perspective of someone that consumes and sometimes produces science. Journal publishers, science librarians, patients and others will look at this topic from a different angle. This blog started as Publish or Perish 2.0, but I later changed the name to Gobbledygook. Mainly because I liked the word.

2. What will you never write about?

Of course I don't know. But I hope that I will not have to write blog posts that are evaluated, measured and put on a resumé similar to scientific papers now.

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?

As a medical doctor in a university hospital I spend part of the day treating patients. I very much like the combination, but sometimes it is very exhausting. And research, both basic and clinical research, can lead into many dead ends. I've been there more than once.

4. What would you do instead?

Start a Web 2.0 company. Become a professional chef. Not really.

5. What do you think will science blogging be like in 5 years?

I wrote down some of my thoughts on this in the post Science blogging is the new email. Science blogging will be very common and at the same time very specialized. Some science bloggers will be able to make enough money to earn a living from it.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?

Many, many things. Most importantly, meeting a lot of very interesting people both online and in real life.

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?

Fortunately not too often. When I sounded patronizing.

8. When did you first learn about science blogging?

From an article in Cell by Laura Bonetta: Scientists enter the blogosphere.

9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?

Most of them don't know about my science blogging. The rest doesn't really care. I hope that will change in 5 years (see #5).

10. How the heck do you have time to blog and do research at the same time?

Only because blogging means something else to me and doesn't really count as work. I don't blog during work hours. And I blog for fun and not money.

11. Extra credit: are you able to write an entry to your blog that takes the form of a poem about your research?

There once was a doctor from Hannover,
it was cancer he tried to uncover.
Doing a mouse model was all the hype,
but instead of a phenotype,
all he got was a hangover.