LabSpaces.net's Blogs

The Press Releases: An ongoing dilemma

Views: 375 | Comments: 18
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Oct 26, 2010, 8:54am

There has been a lot of criticism again about why I post press releases on this website and what purpose they serve. PalMD of WhiteCoatUnderground and ComradePhysio Prof have been very vocal about their contempt for this practice on my website.

Let me first start off by saying that I entirely see where PalMD and CPP are coming from, although I think it’s disingenuous to comment about my intentions without first reading my post about why I post press releases. I’m trying to develop a site where the public and experts can come to discuss science. I would love to have experts rate the releases so that visitors can be better informed on their veracity. The fact is that thes . . . More

But I don't wanna make an account to post in the forum: Creating a community

Views: 5063 | Comments: 42
Last by Evie on Sep 21, 2010, 11:12am

Last night, I retweeted Genomic Repairman’s request for the twitterverse to sign up for an account at LabSpaces. He wanted users to join in on the discussions he was having in the group he created. We were greeted moments later by a tweet from DrugMonkey saying that THE Facebook for science is dead. Considering I just wrote a blog post on that exact topic, I found his tweet Ironic. The emphasis in that previous post being that there probably will never be ONE single social hub for scientists, but that doesn’t preclude the formation of multiple niche venues. Please excuse me while I get this out of my system:

(rant)What exactly is a FaceBook for science anyway? Is any site with a science spin, groups, a forum, and/or user profiles a “FaceBook.” If that’s the case, then there are hundreds of FaceBooks for science out there. I’d argue that the term is deprecated. Many sites employ social tool . . . More

THE FaceBook for science is dead: What's next?

Views: 3344 | Comments: 21
Last by JanedeLartigue on Oct 15, 2010, 12:49pm

I recently got an e-mail from David Bradley asking my opinion of Web 2.0 as it relates to science, where it’s heading, and how we can get scientists more involved in web 2.0 / data sharing / and the semantic web. I thought this would be a great topic for me to write a real post on since I’ve been involved in this field and trying to promote the ideas of web 2.0 in the sciences for the last 5 years.

For starters, I really have no idea what it will take to get scientists to be fully engaged with the on-line world. It's hard enough to get them engaged in the real world (I wish that was a joke…). I think for most scientists to get involved with a network, we're going to have to develop something that significantly increases scientific productivity, and I'm not talking just a free reference management site or being able to post lab retreat pictures to a profile. The last 4-5 years have showed us that scientists really are not interested in FaceBooks for science. The marginal success of ResearchGate, NatureNetwork, and LabSpaces can't be cited as triumphs because very little of wh . . . More