Digging up the top science blogs of yesteryear

This bafflingly huge waste of my time (and yours) was prompted by two seemingly unlinked events. (Of course, no two events are truly unlinked, but let that ride.) First, there was a bafflingly stupid "article" from Mother Jones: Let’s Remember Some Blogs – Mother Jones. Why stupid?

Because as far as I am concerned, not one of the 15 things they listed was a blog as I understand the term. Maclej at Pinboard agreed: "Do these people even understand what a blog is?" he asked. To me, they are online magazines, rather like Mother Jones itself. Few of them presented anything like a timeline, which may not be the best way to present even a personal website, but is nevertheless one of the characteristics of a true blog.

The second event came as I was bringing an old post in here. Daniel Mosquin had complained gently that his blog, Botany Photo of the Day had been left off Nature's round-up of the top 50 science blogs written by scientists, as compiled by Technorati, when by Daniel's reckoning it ought to have come in at 35.

In my dull, slow approach to old posts, I check every link and try to find ones that are still alive. Nature's list is long gone, but, praise be, The Internet Archive had a copy. So, what the heck. I copied the HTML source, cleaned it up, and went looking for every one of the 50. I've taken the precaution of hiding the details in a table here:

Current status of 50 "top science blogs" in 2006

Current status of 50 popular science blogs written by scientists published by Nature in 2006

Original link	Latest post (on 2019–11–15)	Date	And …
Pharyngula	Friday Cephalopod: I succumb to peer pressure and will mention Octopolis | ScienceBlogs	2017–09
The Panda’s thumb	Libellula luctuosa	2019–11	Still going strong
RealClimate	Sensitive But Unclassified « RealClimate	2019–11	Still going strong
Cosmic Variance	Cosmic Variance - : Cosmic Variance	2013–01	But the permalinks are broken
The Scientific Activist	A More Reality-Based Poll | ScienceBlogs	2010–05
Respectful Insolence	Turning out the lights and moving on: Goodbye, old ScienceBlogs blog, hello new blog | ScienceBlogs	2017–10	Marks the end of Science Blogs, has a new domain that has left the history behind.
Aetiology	Movin‘… | ScienceBlogs	2017–10	No forwarding address
Cognitive Daily	Cognitive Daily Closes Shop after a Fantastic Five-Year Run | ScienceBlogs	2010–01	Announces closure.
Effect Measure	A note tacked to the door | ScienceBlogs	2010–05	Announces closure.
Adventures in Ethics and Science	Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. | ScienceBlogs	2010–08	New site at Scientopia tells me I am “trying to access a banned url” but Scientopia appears still to be alive.
Deltoid	Scienceblogs is shutting down | ScienceBlogs	2017–10	Very sad redirection
Uncertain Principles	Go On Till You Come to the End; Then Stop | ScienceBlogs	2017–10	New site includes archives.
Thoughts from Kansas			Flashes visible then gives an error. Blogspot’s fault? Although the URL it redirects to looks very spammy.
John Hawks Anthropology Weblog	Working toward more ethical anatomical collections at the University of Cape Town · john hawks weblog	2019–11	Still going strong.
blog.bioethics.net			Duplicate of Thoughts from Kansas (Nature’s mistake, or Technorati’s) with the same spam problem.
In the pipeline			Dead, or possibly at In the Pipeline | Derek Lowe’s commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine..
Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology A Group Blog	El Cruce de la Muerte: Fieldwork and Carework at the Crossroad of Death | anthro{dendum}	2019–11	Still going strong. Archived and maintained, and moved to anthro{dendum}.
Stranger Fruit	The time has come … | ScienceBlogs	2009–05	Announces move to stranger fruit | musings on life, science, history, and politics.. Nothing since 2017–12
The Disgruntled Chemist	The Disgruntled Chemist: Beer Blogging - Steelhead White Dog Pale Ale	2008–06
A Blog Around the Clock	New URL for this blog | ScienceBlogs	2011–07	Moved to Scientific American, last post there Quick update: UNESCO Belgrade, and NYTimes - Scientific American Blog Network. Nothing since 2013–10
Evolutionblog	Farewell to EvolutionBlog! | ScienceBlogs	2016–10	No forwarding address
Gene Expression	Remember to switch RSS feeds | ScienceBlogs	2010–04	Moved to Gene Expression - and then 2013–11 left that to own domain which appears to be dead.
Mike the Mad Biologist	Mike the Mad Biologist: I Have Been Assimilated Into the Collective	2006–06	moves to Science Blogs (haha) Program Announcement: I’m Moving | ScienceBlogs, leaves that for own domain at Mike the Mad Biologist | Helping idiots who desperately need my assistance by calling them fucking morons since 2004. Still going strong.
Mixing Memory	Marvin | ScienceBlogs	2008–08	No forwarding address
Archives of The Cheerful Oncologist Volume 2	Goodbye to ScienceBlogs | ScienceBlogs	2008–01	No forwarding address
The Questionable Authority Archive	Goodbye | ScienceBlogs	2010–05	Departs to Scientopia, a banned URL.
Biosingularity	‘Brain wi-fi’ reverses leg paralysis in primate first – BBC News – Biosingularity	2016–11	Still alive
Evolgen	This is a Good-bye Post | ScienceBlogs	2009–01	No forwarding address
bootstrap analysis	No content left, spammish. I did track it down to bootstrap analysis — chronicles and musings of an urban field ecologist	2018–12
Evolving Thoughts	My new blog | ScienceBlogs	2009–08	Moving on to Evolving Thoughts Still going strong
Terra Sigillata	Terra Sigillata announces new home at CENtral Science | ScienceBlogs	2010–08	Moving on to Terra Sigillata | CENtral Science, which is an archive that ends 2014–06
Prometheus (Roger Pielke Jnr)	Can’t connect to the server.
A Few Things Ill Considered	A Few Things Ill Considered: Illconsidered on Science Blogs	2007–09	Move to Science Blogs (haha) Satellites Observe “Traffic Jams” in Antarctic Ice Stream Caused by Tides | ScienceBlogs 2017–01 No forwarding address
75 Degrees South	Malicious site warning.
Discovering biology in a digital world	New home for Discovering Biology in a Digital World | ScienceBlogs	2017–10	Moving to The importins of close protein relationships | Digital World Biology 2019–06 Still going strong
A Concerned Scientist	Daniel Rhoads: Native Plants for Urban Gardens	2011–01	No forwarding address
Invasive Species Weblog	Invasive Species Weblog: Singing Like A Bird	2011–07	Moved to Twitter
Developing Intelligence	Site hijacked.
The Daily Transcript	My Year in a Picture | ScienceBlogs	2009–12	No forwarding address
Biopeer	Domain is for sale.
Stayin’ Alive	Stayin’ Alive: Logical fallacies	2019–11	Still going strong
On being a scientist and a woman	Site gone; asks me to login to Google????
Flags and Lollipops - Bioinformatics Blog	Redirected to somewhere unexpected.
The Quantum Pontiff	The open access wars | The Quantum Pontiff	2019–07	Still going strong
Good Math, Bad Math	Moving on | ScienceBlogs	2010–08	Created Scientopia
nodalpoint.org - A bioinformatics weblog	Nginx welcome splash screen.
Climate Science	Cannot connect to server.
The Lancelet	The Lancelet: Streamlining the site	2012–04
Afarensis	Not found at Science Blogs, but apparently now at Laetoli Museum Closer To Reality | Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution, and Science	2014–10
Three-Toed Sloth	Goes to home page of U Mich Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

Good news and bad

Of the 50, I deem 7 to be still going strong; 8 if you count BPOTD. By that, I mean there has been a post in 2019. Congratulations to all of them. I don’t suppose any receive webmentions, but maybe they have automatic ego-searches and will discover this post and maybe even update me.

Twenty-three of the top 50 were hosted at Science Blogs. I vaguely remember Science Blogs storming onto the scene and hoovering up many of the bloggers I was following. I may even have harboured a little jealousy, wondering why my own effort never got the knock on the door, despite zealously Technorati-tagging every post. I strongly suspect that one reason why so many of the top 50 were at Science Blogs was a network effect of cross-publicising all their blogs, which might have affected the rankings on Technorati.

Science Blogs is still going, after a fashion. Look at the table, though, and you’ll see that a large number of its stable bolted in the second half of 2010. They were spooked by Pepsigate. Science Blogs took Pepsi’s money for PR disguised as independent content.

I cannot blame the science blogs that have gone AWOL or are MIA; enthusiasm fades, priorities change, people get tenure. Nobody says you have to carry on. Does it matter that in many cases the content might also have gone? Not really. If it was really important – and many posts on science blogs were – it will have been preserved in one form or another. For me, going through the links prompted a great deal of nostalgia and not a little pleasure, but I realise not everyone cares about the early days of weblogs or about science communication.

Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a comprehensive, though by now a little dated, survey of the whole science blog thing, I highly recommend this post from Bora Zivkovic, once at no. 20 in the top 50.

And where is he now? I’m not sure, but I can tell you that he still has his original domain, where I remember reading his stuff all those years ago. There, he’s “wondering what to do in the next decade”. I don’t know how long he’s been wondering. Maybe since late 2013: Don’t Be a Creep: Lessons from the latest terrible, sad, fascinating scandal in the science blogging world.