"Those who can, publish; those who can't, blog"

Those words in the headlines were part of a published interview (open access) with Palentologist Jingmai O'Conner, and as you would expect, were met with quite a bit of negative reaction from bloggers (and twitter users). I'm not going to go into a full rebuttal - others have. Zen Faulkes gives a line-by-line set of counter arguments that are excellent.

I just going to make a quick couple of points that that I've not seen expressed elsewhere:

• I blog and don't published because I am employed in industry. I can't publish, not because my research isn't adequate, but because my employer won't let me.
• My publications are limited to patents.
• But my biggest beef is this: In the interview, Prof. O' Conner is very respectful of pre-publication reviews. Well, I am a very active reviewer for the Royal Society of Chemistry. So how come Prof. O'Conner respects my pre-publication reviews, but my post-publication reviews are without any merit? It's the same brain and fingers writing at the same keyboard in both cases. Why the respect in one case and the disrespect in the other?

Or did the idea that bloggers can also be reviewers never occur to her?

Previous Years

February 4, 2014 - Is the Word "Plastic" Destined for the Trash Heap?