Brown Bag Lecture: “Trolling for Comments: How Authors, Bloggers, and Trolls Wrangle with the Chemical Literature”
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Date:
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February 28, 2012
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Time:
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12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
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Location:
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CHF
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106 |
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Open to the Public |
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Fee:
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Free
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A talk by Michelle Francl
In October 2010 Royce Murray, the editor-in-chief of the journal Analytical Chemistry, set off a virtual firestorm in the science blogosphere with an editorial suggesting that science blogging threatens the integrity of scientific communication. While many of Murray’s concerns about science blogging appear misplaced, the questions his editorial raises about where science is being reported and discussed are critical ones. Are peer-reviewed journal articles the only source that research chemists should consult, or is there a role for contemporaneous and less formally vetted, even vitriolic, commentary?
Francl will discuss some of the rhetorical strategies employed in the exchanges in chemistry journals from the late 19th century, such as Sir William Crookes’s Chemical News, and in 21st-century blogs, such as In the Pipeline. Do these exchanges fold back into the primary research literature, now and in the 19th century, or are they dead ends? Are trolls—deliberately provocative commenters—missing from print conversational threads, or do they play a key role in the secondary chemical literature?
Michelle M. Francl is professor of chemistry and codirector of the Emily Balch Seminar program at Bryn Mawr College. She is a quantum chemist who has published in areas ranging from the development of methods for computational chemistry to the structures of topologically intriguing molecules. She is also a writer whose essays on science, culture, and policy have appeared in Nature Chemistry and in several collections. Her blog can be found at cultureofchemistry.fieldofscience.com. She was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2009.
About Brown Bag Lectures
Brown Bag Lectures (BBLs) are a series of weekly, informal talks on the history of chemistry or related subjects, including the history and social studies of science, technology, and medicine. Based on original research (sometimes still in progress), these talks are given by local scholars for an audience of CHF staff and fellows and interested members of the public.
For more information, please call 215.873.8289, or e-mail bbl@chemheritage.org.
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