What are your favorite science blogs?

August 12, 2010 6:07 PM

What are some of the best Science (or more specifically Bioscience/natural resources) Blogs?

I am shortly starting a new gig at a science library at a major research university. I will be wearing a number of hats, one of them being Updater of Website. A section that I will be expected to build is a page that covers some of the best science blogs, both general, more popular science type blogs and more nerdy, subject specific ones. Target audience encompasses undergrads, graduate students and professors, though it will probably be accessed mostly by new grad students and possibly undergrads. The more focused blogs should concentrate somewhere within Biology and/or Environmental Science and Policy.

I want to look over your shoulder at your RSS feeds.

What are some of your favorites? Which ones do you read because they help you keep up with the literature? Which ones do you read because they are fun? Which ones really make you think and come up with new ideas? If a blog is dead but has fantastic archives, that is worth looking at too.

Thanks!

posted by rockindata to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

http://www.physorg.com/ is an good aggregater of science news and blogs.
posted by nogero at 6:14 PM on August 12, 2010

Derek Lowe is a researcher working on drug development. He's also a fascinating writer, and has been blogging for a long time. (I think I started reading him in 2002.)

Corante hosts other science blogs, too.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:05 PM on August 12, 2010

I like Sandwalk a lot.
posted by halogen at 7:16 PM on August 12, 2010

scientopia is the replacement for the major people who split from scienceblogs.

Mindhacks is always good. If you check out the people I follow on twitter (I'm @maiasz), a good number of them are amazing science bloggers, mainly neuroscience. I know I should separate them out in a list, but well, I haven't.
posted by Maias at 7:34 PM on August 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Drugmonkey is, according to his surveys, read mostly by assistant professors in the biosciences.
posted by u2604ab at 8:48 PM on August 12, 2010

Best answer: A quick parse through my feeds gives these that I find useful and interesting. Many slant towards genomics/bioinformatics, since that's what I study. I also have a few dozen journals subscriptions, but I figure those aren't what you're looking for - let me know if that's an incorrect assumption and I'll throw those into the mix too.

Alice Bell - http://doctoralicebell.blogspot.com/
Daily Life in an Ivory Basement - http://ivory.idyll.org/blog
Bad Astronomy - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy
business|bytes|genes|molecules - http://mndoci.com
Chris Lowis - http://blog.chrislowis.co.uk/
DrugMonkey - http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/
Genetic Future - http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/
Genomes Unzipped - http://www.genomesunzipped.org
it is NOT junk - http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog
MassGenomics - http://www.massgenomics.org
My Biotech Life - http://my.biotechlife.net
Not Exactly Rocket Science - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience
Pharyngula - http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
PHD Comics - http://www.phdcomics.com
PolITiGenomics - http://www.politigenomics.com
Saaien Tist - http://saaientist.blogspot.com/
Science Careers Blog - http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/
Genomicron - http://www.genomicron.evolverzone.com
The Loom - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom
The Tree of Life - http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/
What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate - http://nsaunders.wordpress.com
News from The Scientist - http://www.the-scientist.com
Omics! Omics! - http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/
bioinformatics Questions - Stack Overflow - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/?tagnames=bioinformatics&sort=active
Mike the Mad Biologist - http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/
posted by chrisamiller at 10:07 PM on August 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Some more ecology/environmental sciencey things:
Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist - http://aspiringecologist.blogspot.com/
EcoGeoFemme - http://thehappyscientistblog.blogspot.com/
Prof-Like Substance - http://scientopia.org/blogs/proflikesubstance/
Highly Allochthonous - http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/
Southern Fried Science - http://www.southernfriedscience.com/
posted by hydropsyche at 4:36 AM on August 13, 2010 [3 favorites]

The Discover main feed is handy if you want to aggregate some of the cool blogs in hydropsyche's reply. (Not Exactly Rocket Science, etc)
posted by bleary at 6:29 AM on August 13, 2010

nthing In The Pipeline (Derek Lowe) - a really good pharma blog.

Female Science Professor
posted by lalochezia at 7:34 AM on August 13, 2010