This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Many years ago while I was a student at Cornell, John Cleese came to campus as one of the university's Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large and preached a sermon at Sage Chapel, our non-denominational sanctuary. He called it, “My First Sermon”.
As I mentioned in my last post, this week marked the start of “My First Reader Survey”, starring this blog and your opinions. A few weeks ago I was contacted by Paige Brown Jarreau, science blog researcher and post-doc at LSU and author of the blog “From the Lab Bench”. She explained I had been randomly chosen to be part of her current research on science blogging readership.
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Although a lot of other bloggers survey their readers, I never have. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so, and do it for science. As part of the lead-up, Paige also did a very short Q and A with me about my blog readership goals and impressions; you can see it here. If I've already sold you on taking the survey, you can do so here.
However, to sweeten the deal for you, the reader, Paige is offering guaranteed science swag (art from Paige's Photography) for completing the survey and a chance at winning a T-shirt or cold hard cash in the form of a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate. She's giving away 100 of those babies, so the odds, as they say, ain't bad -- especially since you will get additional entries for each survey you complete, and there are dozens of blogs in the survey. Reports from other bloggers indicate that the survey shouldn't take you too long either. And of course, I'm personally tremendously curious to know what you think about this blog! I write to be read, and I'd like to know what brought you here and keeps you coming back.
Finally, Paige would love your data for her science, so you'll be a citizen research subject by participating. Two other Scientific American blogs you may read and love are participating too: Symbiartic, and Roots of Unity. You can voice your opinions about them, this blog, and many other worthy science blogs for Paige at the same place: right here.