If a site like the Huffington Post takes a fair use snippet of your article here and then links to you, their snippet will rank higher in Google than your actual article in keywords related to your article.
A little crazy but okay, you might say, they earned that, right? With content and quality.
We'd like to believe the political blogosphere, and certainly the political populace, has confrontational overtones science does not, but who are we kidding? If you get on the wrong side of a science blogging mullah's pet position, they will whip the faithful into a militant frenzy that would make any cult leader proud.
It's the science way; science is about clarity and facts and that means going after someone if they are wrong (and sometimes just if they disagree but that is less common) - the downside to that is it means everyone thinks they can tee off on scientists, including if the critics know nothing at all.
Science and religion have always been in something of a conflict. Science seeks to explain the world according to natural laws while religion leaves larger questions as articles of faith. There is some overlap - 40% of AAAS member scientists in their recent survey are also religious - but AAAS covers a broad cross-section of scientists whereas biology is ground zero for a conflict with religion over man as we exist today and how we came to be. So there is less overlap in the life sciences but there have been ongoing attempts to reconcile the two camps, usually with scientists conceding that whatever 'sparked' life has no basis in current data so it is left to philosophy or religion as well.
Results of a survey in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy titled "How Much Is Enough? Examining the Public’s Beliefs About Consumption" showed no huge surprise, people think we should consume less, but how the authors interpret the results is.
Yesterday I wrote about journalist and science blogger Ed Yong's unfortunate run-in with the kind of anachronistic journalism dinosaur that will be extinct one day soon - a PIO who resents blogging.
I'll tell you flat out, I love Public Information Officers - PIOs in journalism parlance. Without them, I would never get anywhere near the good stuff I get to write about. I would much, much rather deal with PIOs directly than through paid clearinghouses like AAAS Eurekalert, which seems to be run by sub-literate pygmies bent on keeping science from being written about. PIOs, on the other hand, love to get more coverage for their researchers without having to bribe AAAS.
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