Blogging and science
Medical Hypotheses, Figureheads, ghost-writers and quant bloggers:
The term ‘quant blogger’ (i.e. quantitative analysis blogger) was invented by Steve Sailer [8] who is the practicing ‘blogfather’ of an interconnected group of mostly pseudonymous bloggers that have been in some way inspired by Sailer’s example and his (often distinctly ‘non-PC’) interests in issues such as IQ; immigration; evolution; education; politics and sports – often analyzed by sex, class and race. Sailer has blogged many interesting quantitative analyses, including an influential hypothesis of the relationship between ‘affordable family formation’ and politics in the USA.The Sailer-influenced quant bloggers include the pseudonymous Razib who hosts GNXP (Gene Expression) which includes several other quant bloggers such as the pseudonymous Agnostic and (his real name) Jason Malloy [9]. Other pseudonymous quant bloggers in this Sailer-descended group include Inductivist [10], Half-Sigma [11] and the Audacious Epigone [12].
Labels: Blog
And other traits of quant bloggers include being too lazy to clean up the weird font problems often found in quick and dirty cut and paste posts.
I hope pathobiology will soon have an online ferment like GNXP (though GNXP itself is great for disease genetics).
It’s interesting to reflect on the rigidification in biomed suggested by the editorial. It’s hard not to think of money as one factor. In Rene Dubos’ popular history of the work of Oswald Avery, I believe he remarks that biomedical research as it is now known — as opposed to autonomous research and publication conducted by physicians — is really quite young. And he also said that the budget of Avery’s efforts was a pittance.
Just to give an idea of the kind of things they were doing, this was before Avery’s group discovered genetic transformation of bacteria, and the fact that it was DNA that accomplished transformation, c. 1944. A bit before that, Dubos, as a postdoc under Avery, discovered the “cranberry bog bacillus” whose exoenzyme degraded the anti-phagocytic capsule of the pneumococcus, in glass and in mice. (They were just about to test it in humans, in the mid-30s, when the amazing success of the first general antibacterial was acclaimed).
Today, of course, the average biomed lab uses such sophisticated materials that almost anything serious has to be externally funded. It seems almost inescapable that a centralized source of funding should strengthen people’s appreciation of mainstream hypotheses, to the detriment of weirder views. By at least at little bit.
Maybe someone knows this history much better than me. I would love to know how Avery was funded — was it from undergraduate tuition perhaps?
And other traits of quant bloggers include being too lazy to clean up the weird font problems often found in quick and dirty cut and paste posts.
Or too busy.
If you’d like to work as a paid intern for GNXP, so that these font problems don’t continue offend the readership, send us an application with your SAT score (above 1550 only), five academic references, your work situation for the past 10 years, and a personal essay outlining what you hope to contribute to our free and informative website. We pay a competitive salary, so make your effort count.
agnostic: No family history so you can safely rule out Finns?
Surely, applications to GNXP should require a DNA sample. It just seems to fit, somehow.
No family history so you can safely rule out Finns?
too terrified to apply.