BlogScholar has an interesting post about Web 2.0 opportunities and academia. Since I’ve posted before about blogging out in the open in a clinical setting and academic health center, I thought this would be a good follow-up link:
Commitment to Living
Family psychologist learns and teaches about suicide risk and prevention
They same idea from another direction:
A non-academic who would like to inquire some academic field doesn’t have to go back to school, or read popular-science.
He can read on-line, raise questions and reasonably expect to get answers.
That is another interesting angle. This gets to dissemination. Academics often only talk to each other. Through blogs and other Web 2.0 venues the discussion is open to others–which is so important for enriching everyone’s perspective.
Of course, many academics would also worry that this could lead to mayhem. That the general public would be unprotected by things like peer review. In a sense this is true–if I am off base I can mislead people more through my blog than I can through a journal article. So the concern is valid.
However, there are probably two answers to this objection. First is Wikipedia, including the studies that have shown it to be as accurate (or more so in some topic areas) than standard expert-generated reference material. The second is that the objection underestimates web readers’ ability to understand the medium. For example, I think most people reading my blog understand that it is not authoritative in the way a journal article is. People account for the subjective and informal nature of the blogesphere and are appropriately skeptical about things they read.
I can see both sides of this, but (obviously) lean toward thinking that the benefits of these tools outweigh their risks.