The SmartS Club

Somebody told me: 'start every blog-post with blood!'. I do, sometimes. They get twice as many clicks as the others. Or mention sex. Five times as many clicks. A combination of both (last post) ? One seems to annihilate the other or was it the mention of 'science'? Some years ago, when everybody claimed that GooglePlus was the Big Thing and Facebook was evil, clicks were still the most important reputation-currency in the virtual world. Shady companies sold 'likes', 'friends' and simple clicks to bolster your ego-metrics. And in those days I wrote a little snippet about one of the then upcoming blog-sites, which I hated and adored. It stood out in the deluge of self-help sites which babbled about 'ten ways to beat your boss' (and they did not mean physically). This guy essentially wrote about 'ten ways to beat your boss' - and he meant it. Physically. It was amazing how he built a reputation by an incredibly honest and direct s...

Not too long ago journalists were absolutely clear about what scientists have to deliver to get their science-stuff into the magazine: catch-phrases, blood, sex, pictures. They were bossing everybody around. Obey or go away. They called it science-journalism but it was annoying, damaging crap. The public was fed a shale derivative of science. It never really went away because it takes some time to deflate the Ego of those know-alls. But then it got worse. A new breed of smart-*sses was angrily demanding: Every scientist should be blogging! Yeah, right. Those autistic geniusses from the basement of the engineering-department were supposed to chatter about their passions? Oh, and Twitter! Use Twitter! 140 characters are enough! And let the public devise your next research project; they must be involved - being tax-payers, lalala... That has gone by. Finally we are told that professional science-communicators are hip. Now we are talking. It took them only about 25 years to discover...