Fundamentally, I agree with you. Yes indeed, knowing the audience is critical. And I also agree with you regarding defining blogs. The consequence of such an open style is a mixture of semi-serious (and hopefully well-written) posts with rants and other “stuff”.

I don’t think there’s a philosophical difference. I was just trying to draw a distinction between different kinds of writing and their respective audiences. Criticizing a piece of writing without taking its audience into consideration is like shooting fish in a barrel. As a writer, I’m extremely conscious about whether I’m writing at a high enough level of precision. I’m simultaneously constantly trying to decide what I have to sacrifice in precision to write in something lay readers want. It’s like that snail crawling along the edge of a knife. From the time stamp on my post you could tell, in fact, this stuff keeps me up at night. I should have made that more specific.

Essentially, my point was that scientists must write peer-reviewed journal articles with a certain level of precision or they will have no readers. Similarly, science media must present information with a certain narrative tone, and by doing this they sacrifice some precision. Finally, bloggers–a category so vast it is almost meaningless, a description of medium, not content–each find their own balance between precision and tone, for the audience they are trying to seek or build.

Anyway, I’m a fan of the site.

As for the imprecision and/or error in my own writing for this post … well, come on … I’m not claiming to be science writer. I have a little blog with no ads, I’m not trying to sell a book, I don’t link to other posts I’ve written somewhere else. This isn’t my job.

I guess you’re saying I can’t critique writing unless mine is perfect? I disagree with that philosophy.

I will continue to critique science writing…but that doesn’t mean I think they are the “enemy”. As I said at the end of the post…it’s everybody’s fault in misunderstanding. Including mine as a scientist.

If science writers (Disclaimer: I’m a science writer) are dangerously imprecise, where does that put blogging scientists? Look at this sentence from your response above: “By saying a new epoch has begun rather than we (humans) are recognizing that we need to create a new epoch is misleading to me.” “We (humans)” seems maddeningly imprecise. To apply the level of rigor to blog language that you are applying to mainstream science writing, this appears to either make you a spokesperson for humans, or suggest that “humans are recognizing…”, something patently not true, since all but several thousand humans have no idea what an epoch is. I would also question the precision of the word “frickin’,” and efficiency of the phrase “By saying a new epoch has begun rather than we (humans) are recognizing that we need to create a new epoch” as the subject of a sentence. Form is content. Besides, everybody knows that you can’t “create” a new epoch because of the Law of Conservation of Epochs (kidding).

My overall point is that science writers and scientists are not enemies. In fact, developments like the NC Science Blogging convention, Science Blogs, and the World Science Festival show that scientists and science writers are starting an “epoch” (wink) of better mutual understanding and collaboration, in an effort to raise the general level of scientific literacy among those who think conversations like this are internecine squabbling. Another argument is that I should take something for sleeplessness.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2008/01/nparticle.2008-01-25.1681228573
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2008/2008012526150.html

You’re absolutely right…the physical phenomena of Earth history certainly exist without us and our constructs to understand them. My main beef is perhaps a rather subtle tone.

The phrase I talked about above from the article:

“Humans have altered Earth so much that scientists say a new epoch in the planet’s geologic history has begun”

By saying a new epoch has begun rather than we (humans) are recognizing that we need to create a new epoch is misleading to me. The tone (at least to me) sounds like we’ve “discovered” a new temporal boundary. I think it is important to report the process of reclassification and recategorization in science. It’s not discovered or happened upon…it’s made to happen that way actively and with a lot of work and discussion.

Does anyone see the difference? Or, am I just way too nit-picky?

And Brandon, like I said, I don’t want to come off as against all science reporting…the vast majority of reporting I think is good. This is how I get most of my info for science outside of my little specialty.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/name-our-age-th.html

Re: science journalists overhyping discoveries and not providing context — you’re right, and we need to avoid that. I try to, but don’t always succeed. And unfortunately, the nature of the business is stacked against that sort of coverage — unless a journalist is lucky enough to be writing long-form pieces for a large magazine, they’re probably stuck trying to write a smart, accessible article about a complicated finding in the space of a few hours. And not just a few hours of writing, but a few hours to look at a study, do research, talk to scientists and *then* write.

But at least we’re not (the best of us, anyways) just rehashing press releases. And just look at how many press releases go straight to the top of Digg — compared to that, crappy daily science journalism is Pulitzer-worthy.