Well still trying to get an understanding of how the blog works in research, for me it is just a story board where you post a story of an event or something in your life, and others comment on it. I find it interesting as where I work there is a lot of research going on but I am asked to maintain silence on what is going on. There are a few reasons for this, what I have been told is that research is very competitive for projects and for dollars, for example an associate has had research ideas he was working on which he shared with others who then ran with it, this happened to him twice. Now he is adamant that if you have an idea you do not share it. Another reason is the shift in where research dollars are going, there is a look as to how and who will benefit from the research and the emphasis is now shifting to how it will impact the many and not just a few. More and more research dollars are going away from universities and going to colleges where the donors feel more will benefit from the studies at hand. An example is the university had submitted three research projects to the state and all were declined, the major teaching and research hospital submitted six hundred research projects and only got three approved, so you can see that there is very tight controls as to how the funding is decided.

Another point is that if you set up a blog to post your research there is no way to verify the credentials of the people posting to it. There are people who are I guess professional bloggers who look for blogs in which to just post, or have their voice heard. You have really no way of knowing if the person responding has the knowledge base or if they are just repeating something they read or heard. I think if you are going to blog about your research then you should implement a system of checks and balances to verify the contributions that are posted and maybe verify the credentials of the people who are posting.

I'm still not convinced this is a method to employ for research, once it is out there it is forever out there, you can't change anything once it is out there and you need to extremely cautious of the comments and feedback that you receive, which may increase your workload if you need to verify a comment but are chasing dead ends.