Unruled Notebook

I read at The Blog Around the Clock about Rob HelpyChalk’s charts depicting the flow of science communication. The idea presented below is modified from the original chart and its derivative. I have compacted the structure with some thought and added some more things to reduce the clutter and improve the clarity of the idea. I think the picture below aptly depicts the way science information flows traditionally and the role of Science Blogs.

Here is Science Communication Chart 2.0, incorporating all of the useful suggestions given in the comments section (removed). The chart still doesn’t consider “quality” or “correctness” of content, and assumes the World is a good place.

Some explanation for the above picture, to show how it is different from the others published earlier in the links given above:

• Scientists, Science and Mainstream Journalists, Informed and Ordinary Citizens are all primarily Citizens, as shown by the big black box that confines all of them.
• Of course, a Science Journalist and a Scientist are essentially Informed Citizens as well (light orange box contains all of them); but they are different from the ordinary citizens and mainstream journalists.
• Scientist communicate among themselves, their research, immediately and regularly in ways shown in the top right orange box, which are not-available to the rest of the Informed Citizens (to communicate with the scientists).
• Scientist then “publish” in the “green channel” their research, which are available to the Informed Citizen, either directly (blue arrowed line) or through the Science Journalist (dotted green lines). Of course, the Science Journalist has an additional access to the Scientists through telephone interviews and while making say, TV programs etc.
• In this traditional set-up of science communication and dissemination, we can clearly see the role of the Science Blogs. They can serve as a three way communication channel (shown as three pronged arrow headed blue box), between the two subgroups and the rest of the Informed Citizen box, thus shortening the “distances” of the works of the Scientists to the Informed Citizens.

Case Rested.