Education and entertainment are the goals of the newly launched online publication Duke Research, which presents a collection of blogs highlighting scientific research at the University.
"We're trying to get people in the Duke community talking about science research, and what's interesting to them," said featured blogger Tom Burroughs, a freelance science writer who posted his first entry last Monday.
He writes each of his blog entries on a different piece of research happening at Duke.
The Duke Research Web site links to Burroughs' blog as well as other science blogs from around Duke. Karl Bates, the editor of Duke Research and manager of research communications for the Office of News and Communications, said the publication is looking to add more blogs from the Duke research community as they are created.
Currently most of the content is written by graduate students, and there are only a handful of links to blogs outside the site.
One leads to a group of graduate students in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences writing about their summer research internships, and another leads to a Duke staff member covering genomics-related news items. But Bates said he hopes more faculty will begin to blog.
"Somebody who loves to teach ought to love blogging because it's the same thing," he said.
The advantage of reading a blog written by a researcher instead of a journalist is "authenticity," Bates said.
"The blog allows you to hear the researchers speak in their own voice," he said. "You get a much better sense of connecting and feeling like you've met them."
Bates added that he hopes the site will increase public support for scientific research.
"It's a constant battle-research has always relied on taxpayer money, so we have to be in front of the people explaining why it's important," he said.
A class of graduate students from the Nicholas Schoo has experienced blogging first-hand during the past two weeks.
The course Marine Conservation Biology was taught entirely in the field in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands at the largest marine conservation site in the world. The students blogged daily about their fieldwork.
"The fundamental purpose was to make the students' experiences available to a wide variety of readers," said Andrew Read, Rachel Carson associate professor of marine conservation biology and the course's instructor.
The entries and photos in the blog were intended to make readers think about marine conservation, he said.
Read added that comments and questions posted by readers allowed for real-time dialogue about what was happening.
"People's reactions affected us and inspired us to think what more we might be able to do," he said.
In addition, Read said he had been contacted by an outside group interested in increasing awareness about marine plastic debris after one of the students posted an entry on the subject.
Burroughs said, though, that the goal of his writing is not the promotion of research to the public. For now, at least, he wants to find out what the Duke community enjoys hearing about.
"The hope is that interest in science will increase, but right now the ambitions are not lofty-we want to see what gets people excited," he said. "We are exploring the possibilities."
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