@Pharyngula: I'm In the Future Too! #itsnotsobad

I'm a little late in getting this out. But for any readers conducting high level research, albeit in academia, industry, or government, I can't recommend this post from Pharyngula enough. In fact, I not only recommend reading it, but I would also persuade you to absorb it via osmosis, respiration, hypodermic injection...whatever your preferred method of information delivery.

Here's the tale that Dr. Myers relates: a professor conducting research on genetics (this is a disturbingly gross simplification, but I'm going to leave it at that) published a paper in a high impact journal PLoS One. Rather than following standard operating procedure and sending out a traditional press release through the university, the professor posted a somewhat informal presentation of the paper on his blog.

This is an important event for a number of reasons, which Dr. Myers does a great job of discussing. But I would like to emphasize the point that the use of online media to reach a target audience is here to stay, and is only going to become more prevalent. As for myself, I recently published a paper in the journal Analytical Chemistry, and I was very proud of this achievement. When it was published, I linked to my paper and its selection as a featured article by the American Chemical Society on Facebook. I didn't do this because I thought it would be some kind of game-changing decision; I did it to brag about my success to my friends. But after reading the Pharyngula post, I can't help thinking that I could've taken the whole process farther. A lot farther.

Instead of directing my Facebook friends to the journal article, I could have posted an informal discussion of the article on this blog, linking to the journal article within the post. Then I could've directed my Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections to the blog post by updating my status or tweeting or whatever with a link to my blog. In this way, I would've reached many more people with a very easy and free way of utilizing the online networks of which I am already a part.

I should point out that I am not special in thinking this is a good idea. Others are already utilizing new media to reach out to their peers and share information more quickly and easily than ever before. Dr. Myers concludes his blog post by saying this:

Are any of your grad students and post-docs blogging? You might want to think about getting them trained in this brave new world now, before it's too late. And you might want to consider getting started yourself, if you aren't already.

I agree, Fearless Leader. I agree.