One of the things I loooooooooove about science writing is all the free stuff. Scientists aren’t like those crummy jerks at the Associated Press, scientists want you to talk about what they’re doing. They want us bloggers to quote them, link to them, post their photos. Scientists give away tons and tons of intellectual property every single day, which gives people like me tons and tons of stuff to cover. I never hurt for content or media to fill this blog all because I cover science.
If I covered movies, music, television, or radio, I would be wasting more time than its worth trying to rationalize fair use, translating the word-count of my cited quotes to the pennies in my budget, and shelling out the moolah for photos and video clips to illustrate my content–and even then I’d probably get sued.
You know what? #$%@ it. It’s not worth it covering those media fantasy lands anyways. Science is reality, 99% of modern media is crap.
The following quote from G.M. Trevelyan, although speaking to history, applies to science as well as any other academic pursuit. Just replace the word “historians” with “scientists”:
And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves.
If a scientist makes a discovery, and fails to share it with anyone, then is it science? Absolutely not. They are irrelevant. Lucky for Science Bloggers, scientists are all about the pursuit of knowledge for everyone’s benefit, and not about hoarding it to make a little money.