Harvard chemistry grad student and prolific blogger Paul Bracher was recently tooting his horn a bit about how chemistry blogs, including his, is gaining credibility in science journalism circles. Working for a scientific publishing company whose writers and editors are moving into the blogosphere (see here (chemistry), here (neuroscience) and here (news) for a sampling of Nature blogs), I would agree.

My big concern is whether working scientists will follow suit. So I posed that question on Paul’s blog and got some interesting responses from him and other chemistry bloggers. In sum, they say it’ll take about 10 years for the “old” scientists to move out and make room for younger ones more comfortable with the online medium. There’s a bit of debate about whether we’ll need a big-name organization/society like Nature, Science or the American Chemical Society to create that online forum to give it some credibility.

But I think we’ll need more than just a brand name and younger scientists. It’ll also require a big change in culture: for science blogs and forums to take off, scientists will have to start seeing online discussion not as recreation, idle chitchat or even a distraction, but as something that’s part of being a scientists…in the same way that talking with colleagues at poster sessions and conferences is part of a scientist’s life.

In completely unrelated news: the Harvard Crimson and the Boston Globe are reporting that the Harvard presidential search committee has narrowed its list of candidates to about 30 people, including Steve Hyman, Harvard’s provost, and leaders of other top universities like Brown, Penn, Princeton and Cambridge. Expect to see the new president announced sometime early next year.