Oxytocin taking off

Since I posted my two entries on the oxytocin/ethnocentrism link last week - part 1, part 2 - they have really taken off and gotten more attention than my very modest blog is used to. The first one has been linked on economist Tyler Cowen's blog Marginal Revolution, which generated a surge of over 3000 visitors over the following few days, on BigThink.com - "Hormones Are Not Deterministic" and it's even been translated into Spanish by Eduardo of the blog La revolución naturalista - "Oxitocina, etnocentrismo y determinismo hormonal", with an interesting discussion following in the comments. Both posts were also recently linked by Daniel Lende of the blog Neuroanthropology with the words "It’s always great to discover an exciting new blog!" Right back at you! His post linking me is also currently featured on the front page of PLoS Blogs.

The two entries have also been tweeted a few times, notably by Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ) of A Blog Around The Clock, @CulturalNeuro and Maria Popova (@brainpicker) of BrainPickings.org.

I've also gotten a bunch of new Twitter followers in the process, and I'm averaging 200 visitors a day on the blog, which is about 10 times more (I told you it was modest) than before the oxytocin posts. I also seem to notice an increase in the amount of comments on other blog posts as well.

Finally I also wanted to mention a few blog posts that also comment on the oxytocin/ethnocentrism findings that I neglected to mention in my original entries. Ed Yong has a post on Not Exactly Rocket Science that veers a little bit towards the "hormonal determinism" side. He also writes that this finding "makes a degree of evolutionary sense", which I would argue against. On The Frontal Cortex Jonah Lehrer thankfully focuses on oxytocin effects and the complexity of the neurobiological substrates. Both posts are less critical of the original findings by De Dreu and co-workers, which balances my two posts nicely.

I won! Thanks S3.0

I won the Science 3.0 evolution-themed blog contest! Naturally, I'm pretty chuffed. I blog mostly to practice my writing, because I like to write, and while it's nice when people read my entries, I don't expect any significant amount of traffic or attention, so this is very encouraging. I really enjoyed the entry "Evolution: A Game of Chance?" and thought it would win. Thanks once again to Science 3.0, and to organizers steelgraham and malicia who judged the contest.

I've really enjoyed the fact that I got to promote evolution and fish to a bit wider audience and I promised myself that if I won, I was going to finally finish an essay about fish that I have lying around and post it to Science 3.0, so stay tuned for that.

I'm featured at ResearchBlogging.org

Looks like more people than me think mucus-feeding discus fish are interesting. My post "Is there anything fish don't do!? Mucus-feeding and prolactin" has been picked as an Editor's Selection at ResearchBlogging.org. Like I wrote yesterday, it's also competing for an evolution blogging award at Science 3.0. Perusing through the Research Blogging blog I noticed that my post "Babies, balls and creationists" had been picked as an Editor's Selection last month as well, which I hadn't noticed until now.

If you haven't heard of Research Blogging yet, you really need to add it to your favourites/bookmarks. It's my go-to site for fresh and critical reviews of scientific articles, written by engaged and enthusiastic scientists in many different fields. I often read the blog posts I find on Research Blogging before I read the papers themselves. It's pretty much the future of science communication through the web.

Thanks a bunch to the editors of ResearchBlogging.org. You guys really do a great job. There are many excellent posts posted to Research Blogging every day, so I really appreciate the attention and the encouragement.

I'm featured at Science 3.0

Pretty cool news... My last post was nominated in an evolution blogging contest at Science 3.0. The contest goes on until the end of November so please go visit my entry page at Science 3.0 and show your appreciation to help my chances with the editorial committee. The post is partly being judged on reader appreciation. If you won't do it for me, do it for the discus fish. Check out the other entries in the contest while you're at it, there's some interesting stuff there. I've never been nominated for anything, much less won, and my blog gets only a small (but steady) amount of traffic, so it feels pretty nice to be acknowledged. Thanks to Daniel Mietchen for nominating me.

Science 3.0 is a newly started online community of science bloggers and commenters trying to use a social media format to promote science. It looks like it's in a very early stage, but they seem well-connected and have a pretty nice thing going so far. I like their focus on Open Access and Creative Commons publishing, which I'm also very strongly in favor of. Thanks to Creative Commons my post could be published there and shared with a lot of people before I was even aware I was nominated.