This site represents, in many ways, the realization of a dream. The endeavor to create a community of like-minded intellectuals has resulted several failed attempts, exceeding even our worst expectations. There were other websites, aimed at a more local audience on our universities campus, which failed to gain any real following or generate any discussion. Similarly, a philosophy society had, at its peak, a mere five members. More desperate attempts included numerous Facebook groups, a forum and the odd letter in a campus paper. It seemed as if any such project was doomed from the start by the paucity of rational people.
The only partial success that was achieved was in the ‘blogosphere’. With little organization, and no minimum membership requirement, it was possible to voice our opinions. Indeed, as is often pointed out, ‘Web 2.0′ gave skeptics the means to overcome the difficulties imposed by their rarity. Specialists in various fields are now sharing information and engaging in discussion with the public directly, bypassing the media and thereby highlighting the dire straits of mainstream science reporting.
It is this movement in which we now wish to participate more formally – by establishing a network of blogs whose authors share a special interest and expertise in neuroscience, defined in the broadest possible sense. To an extent we wish to partially emulate networks like Scienceblogs or The Guardian’s Science Blogs, albeit with a much narrower scope of size and capabilities. There are several excellent neuroscience blogs on those networks, and in addition, many successful independent sites – blogs like Neurophilosophy, Neurologica and Neuroskeptic. We hope to maintain the high standards they have set.
A realization of a dream it might well be, but in another sense, it is only the first step. As we recruit more bloggers, the network platform will provide an ideal forum for facilitating discussion between basic neurobiology and cognitive psychology, between neurology and psychiatry, between philosophy and computational neuroscience, to name but a few. As we delve deeper into the mind, and come closer to recreating it artificially, there is a tendency for the fields to lose touch with one another, at best, or compete in a seemingly zero-sum struggle to be the field to address a given problem. Through open discussion, peer review and public scrutiny we hope to combat this trend.
On a practical level, there will usually be three featured articles accessible through the home page, and the latest ‘neuroscience’ and ‘philosophy’ articles can be accessed through the navigation tabs above. Clicking on one of these articles will take you to the author’s blog. The blogs can also be accessed through the links at the top of the page. In addition, there will be a growing list of essays kept on this site that will deal with some of the core issues likely to come up in all of the blogs – things like the scientific method, religion and logic. Of course, these might well be discussed on the blogs themselves as well. Whilst most of the posts on this site will relate to the brain in some way, you’ll soon find some interesting topics unrelated to neuroscience – evolutionary biology, music, football, ethics and perhaps even the meaning of life.
Please do join the discussion, and be sure to have a look a the recommended sites section for links to some of the websites that inspired this project. If you want to join us as a blogger, drop us an email: ‘admin’ at neuroblogs.com.
The Neuroblogs Team