I’ve dropped some hints in the past that my relationship with ScienceBlogs would be…altered.
Well, I’ve decided to leave. Mostly, it had to do with the issue of pseudonymity, although I’m very excited to hang out my own shingle once again. I don’t want to rehash the issue of pseudonymity, since others have done that quite well, but revealing the Mad Biologist’s Top Sekrit identity just wasn’t in the cards.
I want to make something clear. ScienceBlogs/NatGeo really did try to keep me. For some crazy reason, they seem to like the writing–I won’t get into the details, but that really does seem to be the case. My impression is that they are not trying to ‘hollow out’ ScienceBlogs (or, at least, they weren’t trying to ‘hollow out’ me). I understand why a corporation like National Geographic wouldn’t want to have pseudonymous writers, even though it’s not compatible with how I want to play it.
OK, so what comes next? Well, I’ve opened my new digs at http://mikethemadbiologist.com. I might be crossposting here for a bit to close out some contractual obligations, but that’s the new home of the Mad Biologist. And, of course, to find out about the latest doings, you can subscribe to my twitter feed.
Finally, I want to thank the many people who have worked at ScienceBlogs. It all started with Katherine Sharpe who recruited me. I remember my first conversation with her, and when she invited me, I asked her, “Are you sure you want me? You have read my blog, right?” Since that time, no one at ScienceBlogs ever told me what to write, or ruled anything off limits (and, at times, I’m certain it showed…). It was truly a wonderful concept: invite scientists–working scientists trained in data analysis and experimentation–to write about, well, anything and everything. Adam Bly really wasn’t far off the mark with the ‘science is culture’ motto. It was an exciting and innovative thing while it lasted.
I am very grateful for this opportunity.
Anyway, enough of the maudlin stuff. Hopefully, I’ll be seeing you around.
mikethemadbiologist
“I understand why a corporation like National Geographic wouldn’t want to have pseudonymous writers…”
I’m curious — what justifications did they offer?
Not much. They just want all writing attributed to an author and there was no wiggle room whatsoever. It’s odd since SciAm will use pseudonyms. I think they’re afraid of legal liability etc.
The RSS Posts and RSS comments over on the right do not work, at least in Chrome.
I get:
“This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”
followed by pages of HTML listing.
The feed seems to be fine in Firefox & Safari. Chrome appears to have RSS issues. I’ll look into to it & see if there’s anything I can do on this end. Thanks for letting me know.
Installing the Extension to Chrome took care of it. Thanks.
Moving already? It seems like you just got here.
Are you going to tweak the banner so it clicks through to the home page?
Congratulations! Nice that you imported everything. Look forward to reading you here. (And thanks for the flattering links above.)
i think this will suit you just fine!
Followed, now I’m out of hospital…