Dr. Stephen J. Wigmore is not your ordinary transplantation surgeon. Though he is a professor, a medical doctor, and has published 153 scholarly articles he remains extremely active in another function — one not so common among his colleagues. He blogs and tweets.
This isn’t in accordance to any particular trend among research scientists. In a post made by The Scholarly Kitchen (TKS) this month (“Antisocial in a social world”), the author suggests, “When it comes to a researcher’s daily activity, we are looking at an antisocial world. And to be honest, many scientists like it that way. They continue to see social media as time-wasters, not work-enhancers.”
Here at JoVE we obviously disagree with that mindset, and we salute those who are pursuing new ways of communicating scientific information.
For Wigmore, a professor at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland and surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, when it comes to social media the ends do justify the means. “Paradoxically although I started my blog as a kind of disruptive technology trying to fill an educational and learning need through an unconventional approach, I have now been approached to write a book on postgraduate medical education,” he says.
In addition to writing about his surgical “tips and tricks” and providing other educational information on his blog, Wigmore uses Twitter (@ProfW_edinsurg) to comment on topics that he finds himself strongly opinionated in. “Most of my followers are connected to medicine or science, but I am also followed by politicians, grant-funding agencies and other not-for-profit and non-governmental organizations,” he says, “It is difficult to be considered a thought-leader in your field if you don’t let people know what you are thinking.”
Wigmore’s internet presence provides a persuasive argument for scientists to get involved in social media in order to better share their knowledge and influence in the field. Doing so provides incredible reach. “One of the interesting things [about blogs are] the statistics that they provide,” says Wigmore, “I was gobsmacked to find for example that in the first year my blog was viewed more than 15,000 times by people from 126 countries around the world.”