Get To Know A Scienceblogger

Dirk Hanson - Addiction Inbox

Today we have another post in our Get To Know A Scienceblogger Series.

Dirk Hanson is a freelance science writer and business journalist with more than 30 years of professional experience. He has written for numerous magazines and trade publications, and is the author of three books including The Chemical Carousel which received an Independent Publisher Book Award in the Health/Medicine/Nutrition Category. His current area of coverage is the neuroscience of drug addiction. Dirk currently maintains a popular blog on drugs and the science of substance abuse called Addiction Inbox, serves as senior contributing editor for the new health web site The Fix, and has contributed phenomenal articles at BrainBlogger. You can learn more about Dirk and his books at www.dirkhanson.org.

What is the topic of your blog?

Addiction Inbox covers articles and health studies about drugs, addiction, and alcoholism, with an emphasis on the most recent scientific and medical findings. And anything else I find interesting related to drugs and the brain.

What was your primary reason for starting a blog?

I kind of jumped and got pushed simultaneously. I was finishing a book about scientific research on drug and alcohol addiction. Print outlets were in disarray, authors and editors were clueless, and I wanted an online platform from which to continue the conversation and to serve as a point of contact for the book. But the blog grew slowly and steadily and took on a life of its own. I’ve been an online journalist ever since.

How often do you post, and roughly how much time goes into each post?

I’ve gone slightly against the grain on this one. My posts are longer and less frequent that many bloggers—although this is a tendency throughout the science blogging community. I sometimes put up 1,200 word posts or longer. I try to put up something new every 3-4 days—which, from the old-school blogging perspective, is an eternity, not to mention a slow and painful death. Happily, I found out that a sort of bastard hybrid—call it long-form blogging—works for me, and allows for more in-depth posts, which I like. How long does it take to write a good blog post? From about 20 minutes to maybe three days.

How do you fit in time for social networking?

I think at least some of it comes out of time that was previously eaten up by the telephone and television. And in my case, since I earn part of my living online, I just make sure to make time for it. I admit I never expected to be drawn into the world of Facebook and Twitter through my blogging activities, but that is, in fact, what has happened. As a journalist doing the bulk of my nonfiction writing on the net these days, I’m pretty deeply involved with those two media at the professional level on a daily basis.

Have there been any benefits to blogging, either personally or professionally? More >

Dr Patrice Brassard of Le Physiologiste

Do you ever wonder how people get into online science communication? I certainly hope so, because over the coming weeks Peter and I will be introducing a new series interviewing science communicators about their experiences promoting science using social media. These individuals cover a broad range of academic disciplines, and we hope that they will be a useful source of info and motivation for others who are considering moving into social media, or for those who are already online but simply looking for some new ideas. If you would like to share your own experiences communicating science through social media feel free to do so in the comments, or to introduce yourself to us via Twitter or email (saunders [dot] travis [at] gmail [dot] com).

Our first interview comes from Dr Patrice Brassard, an assistant professor of Kinesiology at Université Laval in Quebec city, Canada. His main research interests are the integration of cardiopulmonary and cerebrovascular physiology in patients with diabetes at rest and during exercise, and the impact of mental work on the cardiovascular system in healthy subjects. His blog is titled Le Physiologiste and for the past two weeks he has also been guest-posting at the blog network Scientopia.

1. What is the general subject of your blog?

Initially, the general subject of Le Physiologiste was supposed to be…physiology :-). However, I started by sharing my experiences as a junior faculty member. It is important to mention that when I began to read science blogs, I was very interested in these kinds of posts from bloggers sharing similar research and teaching issues than mine. The other collaborators at Le Physiologiste are graduate students and are sharing their experiences as well (in English and French). A couple of weeks ago, we finally decided to include posts where we are actually discussing physiology, mostly in French.

I would like this blog to become a place for graduate students, researchers and professors in physiology to debate about hot physiology topics.

2. What was your primary reason for starting a blog?

The primary reason for starting my blog was that, to my knowledge, there are no valuable French blogs/websites discussing published literature in integrative/exercise physiology…however, I soon noticed that it would be easier to start blogging in English, because I was already exchanging with bloggers in that language.

I still have that goal of discussing and debating physiology research in French…Our blog remains a work in progress for the moment!

3. How often do you post, and roughly how much time goes into each post?

More >