What is your (science) blogging writing style, Chris Patil?

I have to interrupt my 23andMe streaming cause there are more interesting things are goin’ on. Chris Patil of Ouroboros has already been a blogterviewee (Part 1, 2, 3) on Pimm. He then shared his detailed views on aging and life extension technologies, but I always wanted to ask Chris about his approach on blogging as it was obvious from the launch of Ouroboros that he has a style and angle on the aging literature that goes far beyond the usual and sometimes dead boring “this journal published this and that journal published that” science blogging subgenre. We all need to find new and experimental ways in science blogging to make it more than just simply echoing the peer review literature and a sharp focus, good arguments and neat English definitely helps, so below you can read the secrets of Chris in blue. I also encourage you to try to mimic him to the amount of one blog post as a blogging homework. (The picture was made by Bora of the Clock fame at Berkeley, California this August when there was a science blogger party one day before the SciFoo Camp. Chris is on the left. The other guy is an unidentified science blogger.)

It’s a challenging question. Like speech mannerisms or your own personal walk, style is something that emerges from a lot of little decisions that happen below the level of explicit consciousness. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering, ‘Is this in my style?’ It’s like listening to my own voice on tape. Nonetheless, I shall try:

My own history in science writing goes back to college, when I wrote a weekly Q&A column for the Stanford Daily (’The Science Bug’; I had inherited it from an earlier staffer and passed it along to someone else when I left; years later, my younger brother took up the job). The audience was mostly other students, i.e. bright and educated but not necessarily scientists, so the main challenge was providing necessary factual and conceptual background without sounding like a lecturer — the readers were getting enough lectures in their coursework, and I knew that an overly didactic style would turn them off.

Unlike a reporter, I had a great deal of freedom to explore different styles, and eventually I found one that really felt like me which is not to say I didn’t have influences. I worshipped Cecil Adams (of the famous syndicated Q&A column The Straight Dope) at times perhaps veering across the line into outright imitation. From him I learned that questions don’t really want “answers”; they want “stories“, with a beginning, middle and end. You have to take the reader somewhere, from familiar ground to unfamiliar ground (and, sometimes, safely back again).

Sand Hill Road Venture Capitalist about life extension as business

There was a very interesting comment dialog last week apropos of Aubrey de Grey’s TED talk, and the host was Baris Karadokan’s blog called From Istanbul to Sand Hill Road subtitled High-tech, venture capital, creativity and innovation. Here are some details. Link

storytelling idea source

Ouroboros’ Chris Patil, III.: What can blogs do for life extension?

This is the last part of the blogterview with Chris Patil about the growing role of blogs and the web in aging research and life extension activism. Spread, summarize, criticize, connect. Thanks Chris for the answers.

Part I. Ouroboros’ Chris Patil: answers to life extension questions I.
Part II. Blogterview with Ouroboros’ Chris Patil, II.: the technology of life extension

I think that blogs can do for life extension the same thing they can do for politics (my other favorite subject): They can spread the word about current events; they can provide summarizing analysis of a dense and exponentially growing literature; and they can connect people with similar ideals and ideas.

Blogterview with Ouroboros’ Chris Patil, II.: the technology of life extension

Here is Chris’ answer to question 4, for me it was the most important because of its critical edge. Question 2 was about moderate or maximum life extension commitment and the question below is not restricted to maximum LE and unlimited lifespan but includes modest trials too.

4. What is the most probable technological draft of human life extension, which technology or discipline has the biggest chance to reach it earliest?(regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, gene therapy, caloric restriction, bionics, hormones, antioxidants, …)

In a hundred years, we won’t be able to look back and answer that question in a clear way. People who are committed to extending their lifespans will have taken multiple strategies. One can’t point to a life and say, these ten years were from exercise but these five were from resveratrol.

I think the first really useful technological life extension will have a very familiar form, e.g., “take this pill and call me in fifty years when you’re still alive.” Drugs that activate sirtuins and related pathways are very promising (I can’t spill the beans but I saw some amazing data at Cold Spring Harbor suggesting that there are already several working drugs). Once we’re better able to get our brains around calorie restriction, I think that CR mimetics will be right behind the sirtuin-based drugs. To the extent that these sorts of drugs will help prevent acknowledged illnesses like Type II diabetes, there’s already a clinical indication for them, so they should sail through approval on that basis.