Blog News: Answering the Critics

We thought that we would slowly respond to some of your useful comments about the Blog.

As to the number of posts you suggested maybe “one a day”

As we showed you before the more we post the more you come back for more.

I am trying to spread research content plus other fluffy stuff, but G keeps posting so you have given him a new lease of activity. The number of posts kind of reflect, what is being reported. This varies from day to day sometimes nothing……leading to fluff, sometimes loads (e.g last 3 days 0 new, but 75 papers today…most not relevant to you. This’ll appear in next few days).

MouseDoctor sees off another critic. Was it a retorical question too far?

You said “You asked about likes & dislikes, here is a minor dislike: The posts about research have become a little mechanical. I don’t think you need to always copy-paste the whole abstract into the blog. I prefer the more freeform posts from before you started the current format”.

This is due in part to our laziness……or our desire to save time making the posts. Rather than rewrite the article, it is quick to copy and paste the abstract and then do a summary (in italics), rather than try to cherry pick, deconstruct and reconstruct.

Many times you do not have comments so it is not worth spending a lot of time deconstructing something you either understand or are not interested in. Sometimes you do make comments and we can then see if we need to spend more time doing a more freeform post. Sometimes our special agents find a story on the web and this needs more explanation or investigation.
We put the link to the abstract of the work, because this allows you to see the source and also this often links to the full journal copy. Sometimes we remove bits because they are irrelevant or add to confusion. For some of the manuscripts you will need a subscription (which some of our readers may have) to view it but sometimes we can put a link to the actual article. It varies.

Furthermore, some journals make the original article “open access” after a period of time. So whilst you may be unable to access the new study now in a few months or a year you will be able to go to the actual source data. We get new readers who do trawl through the older posts to find a bit of golddust

Some of you like to read the source material and make your own mind up about interpretation, some like the summary of Prof G, as it gives a sometimes alternative view or puts the work into a different perspective.

More responses next time

 

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