"It does seem as if a few people have, ahem, kind of missed the
point of Northrup's ironic rant."
If his point is that the blogosphere is hardly an original source
of scientific enlightenment, then I fail to see that what he has to
say is of any real value. Bloggers may not be doughty researchers
on the cutting edge of scientific enquiry, but they do on occasion
serve as useful disseminators of information that may be old hat to
the scientifically informed, but is hardly well known by the public
at large.
If one wishes to deny that the role blogs can play in dispelling
pseudoscience and countering fear-mongers is of any real worth, one
might as well cast aspersions on the efforts of popularizers like
Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan while one is at it. Otherwise, it
serves no useful purpose to make statements like Andrew Northrup's,
unless one's true intention is to sneer self-indulgently at all
those other bloggers who have ideas above their station. Far many
more people are likely to read a comment by someone like Glenn
Reynolds than will ever stumble upon the "Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences."
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