I thought I was done blogging, I honestly did.
I had a good six year run of it in the Guardian, back when the science blog network was still a thing. It was shut down in 2018, sadly, for reasons that are still less than clear.
For what it’s worth, I’d still say there’s about a 13% chance it was because of me and my refusal to let Johan Hari’s dangerous nonsense slide. He seems very ‘in’ the upper echelons of my former employer.
Anyway, while it was sad to see the science blog network go, I was ultimately OK because at this point, my debut book The Idiot Brain was an international bestseller, to the surprise of absolutely everyone involved.
Especially me! It’s a very weird sensation, to have to review your current situation and say, in all seriousness, “So… guess I’m an author now?”
I promise that was absolutely not part of my long term plans, or expectations. I had fully anticipated a completely unremarkable science career, occupying some little-used corner of a lab in a lower-tier university, conducting research that was read by and made a difference to absolutely nobody. And I was content with that! From where I started, that would have been a win.
Obviously, fate had other plans for me, and it was blogging that was the main catalyst for me ending up as what many (myself not included) would consider to be a ‘public intellectual’, with a not-insignificant media profile.
[Although having said that, at the time of writing, my most notable presence on Wikipedia is a mention on Johann Hari’s page. Which, again, I’m fine with].
But anyway, despite its importance in my life, I figured I was done with science blogging. After all, I could write books now. Actual, legitimate books! Who needs blogs when you can produce actual tomes?
As well as that, it seemed like blogging itself was becoming a thing of the past. A very ‘2010s’ thing, you know? We’d all moved on now, to Twitter threads or Insta/TikTok videos as the default way of explaining things in real time. And as someone who is as suited to being on camera as a Gyles Brandreth is to competing in MMA battles, I considered myself lucky that I’d managed to ‘jump ship’ (however inadvertently) to books when I did.
However… I now believe I was wrong.
Truth be told, I never really lost my ‘blogger’ instincts. That’s what I’ve always been at heart; a blogger. My most successful books are essentially collections of standalone essays with an overarching theme. And what is an essay if not a blog someone’s bothered to print?
My online output on places like Twitter or BlueSky or Mastodon always end up being multi-post threads about a specific thing or subject, almost as if the succinct ‘short post’ format doesn’t sit well with me.
And even after six (SIX!) goes at the process, I still have the mindset that if a book is not a big success within 24 hours of publication, it hasn’t worked. That’s not how books work! That is how blogs work, a lot of the time.
Ultimately, a blogger I began, and a blogger I seem to remain, at heart.
But not only that… is it just me, but has the quality of science reporting in the mainstream really gone downhill recently? Maybe it’s because I’ve ventured into the arena of smartphones and kids recently, but more and more I’m seeing science reporting which really isn’t worthy of the label.
Misinformation. Clinical terms used freely when they’re not needed. Evidence-free opinions presented as accepted facts. All this, and more, seems to be more common than ever. And the supposed ‘reliable sources’ just seem to accept it, and regurgitate the unscientific ‘consensus’ as if it’s a stone cold truth.
I’m not saying there isn’t reliable science reporting out there, because there is. I’m part of several networks that support it, and involved with many platforms dedicated to it. But it seems like they’re becoming ever more siloed, or specialist. As in, if you want to learn the actual science of something, you have to actively go and find it.
Meanwhile, the ‘mainstream’ news, the stuff that ends up being shared and appearing on the feeds and in the papers encountered by the average person, it seems ever more unscientific and misleading.
I’m not sure why, or what the thinking is behind this.
Maybe it’s a reaction to the pandemic, which led to countless people subconsciously associated the most difficult period of their life with wall-to-wall science news.
Maybe the increasingly-desperate need for attention/clicks for revenue has led platforms to depend on more evocative, simple stories that tell people what they want to hear, rather than the actual facts, which can be both complex and uncomfortable, particularly when they challenge accepted beliefs.
Maybe it’s AI. Maybe AI is controlling the algorithms to ensure that humans increasingly lack information and understanding, which will make us easier to eliminate when the machines feel the time is right.
I don’t genuinely believe that last one is at all likely, but it is exactly the sort of thing you can see being shared far and wide in the current climate. It was ever thus.
Anyway, where was I?
Ah, yes. So, in the face of all that, I’ve decided to push back. I’m bringing back my science blog, under my own steam now. Because if you want something done…
So, this I’m doing this again. Rebutting bogus, misleading, disingenuous, or just plain wrong science stories in the news, because people seemed to like when I do that. And it’s a lot easier to do it in one easily-accessed (and shared) place. So, here we are.
But not just that, because life shouldn’t be all finger-wagging and analysis. First and foremost, my passion has always been sharing all the weird and wonderful things the brain does with the wider world. And I’m told that was the thing people loved about my first book; reading it, and going “Oh, so that’s why I do that!” Or words to that effect.
Because so much of modern life and human behaviour seems baffling, but actually starts to make more sense when you know how our brains work.
And that’s what I hope to do here, with this blog; share brain-based explanations for the foibles of modern life, and push back against the misleading and misinformative when it comes to neuro stuff in the mainstream. All 100% evidence-based, and in my own bafflingly popular, accessible style.
I’ll help my own writing as much as anything.
So here we are. The neuroscience of everyday life. My new blogging effort. Hope you like!
TL:DR - Starting a new blog, to share fun brain stuff, and push back against wrong brain stuff.
Subscriptions, exclusive content etc. will be sorted out in due course, but for now, if you’d like to support my efforts, please consider buying one of my many books. I promise they’re all great. And all distinctly different.
Hey Dean, welcome to Substack! Very happy to see someone pushing against the misinformation out there. Looking forward to reading more