Blogs
This week saw the one year anniversary of the report on English Libel Law, Free Speech is Not For Sale and bloggers including NN’s Bob O’Hara and Stephen Curry marked the occasion with posts on Wednesday.
Stephen tells the tale of a British cardiologist, Dr Peter Wilmshurst, who is currently falling foul of the laws:
But Wilmshurst is not being sued in America, where the right to freedom of expression is robustly enshrined in the constitution. Instead he is being taken to court in England, where the libel laws allow foreign individuals and corporations much freer rein.
And it is to this country’s discredit and the detriment of free discussion of science that the laws are so lax.
Meanwhile Bob tackles the laws head-on with an expose of Nature Network’s alleged love of oysters and directs readers to the petition for libel reform.
Elsewhere, Julia Zichello reflects on how teaching 6th graders provides a timely reminder of the relevance of science, David De Roure explains why in a world of big data, the context is just as important to capture as the raw numbers and we welcome another editor to the Fourth Paradigm blog: Harvard Professor of Astronomy and Smithsonian Research Associate Alyssa Goodman. Richard Williams shares his thoughts on his progress one month into his PhD and Ayusman Sen follows up on Kausik Datta’s earlier post on a potential US funding crisis by wondering whether there’s a link between research funding scarcity and creative output
Last but not least, Frank Norman takes the Nature special feature on schizophrenia to pay tribute to a friend who maintained an active scientific career while suffering from schizophrenia and who eventually became an advocate on mental health issues.
Strengthening the Nature Network Team
This week saw the arrival of a new Head of Online Communities for nature.com, Jo Stichbury. Jo’s come from Symbian Foundation, where she built a technical communications community for open source developers. She is an ex-chemist who was lured into software development by Psion, and has built up a spectacular collection of now-defunct gadgets throughout her career.
In addition to Jo, the team now consists of Lou Woodley who is the Product Manager for Nature Network and nature.com blogs and Marta Rolak who is the Product Manager for Workbench and Connotea. Additional team members are Matt Brown (London hub and blogs) and Joanna Scott (San Francisco proto-hub and groups+forums) who are part-time community managers for Nature Network. We’re also currently recruiting for an Editorial Assistant to work with Lou: more details to come soon.
And finally…
Barbara Ferreira warns us to enjoy it while we can: is chocolate about to become an endangered species?
