Friendly Humanist

At work, I recently came across an amazing resource: CiteULike. It’s a free website where you can build up a list of citations. I use it to manage the long list of papers and books I read and cite as a researcher. I can label citations, like I label blog entries on this site, according to common themes.

It also has social features: sharing citations between users, getting automated recommendations based on common research interests. And there are Groups.

Which gives me an idea.

There are loads of skeptical blogs out there. There are the science-based parenting folks (such as SBP themselves, Rational Moms), the science-based medicine gang (SBM, Ben Goldacre, etc), and of course the general skeptics (Bruce Hood, Massimo Pigliucci, Richard Wiseman, and loads more).

These blogs often bring up new or interesting research that bears on our lives – as parents, as users (and taxpaying supporters) of health care, and just as people trying to navigate the modern world. But finding a particular study that I remember reading about on some skeptical blog can be a real pain.

So it occurs to me – why not set up a group, or a set of groups, on CiteULike, where skeptics could post scientific articles of interest to the community? You can put notes on each article – for example, pointing to reviews on skeptical blogs. You can talk about the articles (and the body of evidence around given topics, like acupuncture or spanking) in forums. You can associate informative tags with articles. Or you can simply hang out and see what other people have dug up. The resource could be used by bloggers who like to check original research, and also by skeptical consumers of new and traditional media claims.

It’s not something I can do on my own. I don’t have the time or the expertise to dig up all the relevant papers.

So this is a call to all you skeptics out there who have a little bit of time or expertise. Are you willing to help get things started?

I’ve taken the first step: I’ve created a CiteULike group, Skeptical Parenting, to pilot this idea. I chose parenting partly because that’s where I am closest to having some substantive expertise, and partly because my second child is due to arrive any day now.

The next step is up to you. Here is what I ask of anyone who is interested:

• Join me as a member of the group, or start another group. “Paranormal Research”, “Science-Based Medicine Users” – whatever you’re most into as a skeptic. If you start another group, let us know in the comments here. (Do a search on CiteULike before starting the group to make sure someone hasn’t already started one.)
• Blog about this yourself – not many people read my blog, but some of you have very widely-read blogs. The more people read about this idea, the sooner we’ll reach a sustainable number of participants.
• Tell your friends. We don’t all have blogs, but we all have skeptical acquaintances on- and off-line that we can share cool new ideas with.
• Comment here, so I know that I’m not just talking to myself.

I think we could build this into a really valuable resource. What do you think?