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It’s hard to be modest when people keep telling you how good you are

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIO CAST

I have a confession. Deep down I’m shallow. So when something I am part of is acknowledged as one of the best, I delight in it (my fellow bloggers Katie and Esteban also delight in it, I am just more shameless about letting everyone know.)

And that is just what happened with this blog, The Stem Cellar. We have been named as one of the “22 best biology and stem cell blogs of 2022”. And not just by anyone. We were honored by Dr. Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell scientist, avid blogger and all-round renaissance man (full disclosure, Paul is a recipient of CIRM funding but that has nothing to do with this award. Obviously.)

We are particularly honored to be on the list because Paul includes some heavy hitters including The Signals Blog, a site that he describes this way:

“This one from our friends in Canada is fantastic. They literally have dozens of authors, which is probably the most of any stem cell-related website, and their articles include many interesting angles. They post really often too. I might rank Signal and The Stem Cellar as tied for best stem cell blog in 2021.”

Now I’m really blushing.

Other highly regarded blogs are EuroStemCell, the Mayo Clinic Regenerative Medicine Blog and Stem Cell Battles (by Don Reed, a good friend of CIRM’s)

Another one of the 22 is David Jensen’s California Stem Cell report which is dedicated to covering the work of, you guessed it, CIRM. So, not only are we great bloggers, we are apparently great to blog about. 

As a further demonstration of my modesty I wanted to point out that Paul regularly produces ‘best of’ lists, including his recent “50 influencers on stem cells on Twitter to follow” which we were also on.

Making the list of people to follow

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIO CAST

If you are walking down the street on a dark night, being followed is not necessarily something you want. But if you are online, having someone follow you is almost always a positive thing. And when that person is Dr. Paul Knoepfler it’s most definitely a plus.

Paul is a stem cell scientist at UC Davis (full disclosure, we have funded some of his work). He’s also one of the longest-running and most active bloggers about regenerative medicine and an ever-present presence on Twitter. His blog is always a great read and, for those of us without a science background, easy to follow and understand.

Dr. Paul Knoepfler, UC Davis: Photo courtesy UC Davis

That’s why it’s quite an honor that Paul has listed the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s as one of the 50 Influencers on stem cells to follow on Twitter.

Paul says this does not necessarily mean the most influential in the field of research because many researchers – such as Nobel Prize winner Dr. Shinya Yamanaka – don’t use Twitter. He says in making the list he looked for a few key elements.

“I particularly appreciate those accounts that include a mix of info, news, and opinion with original content or opinions of their own too.

“I emphasized inclusion of those accounts who regularly tweet. Also, I aimed for a good mixture of accounts across the globe, not just in the U.S. I also included stem cell policy researchers and bioethicists.”

“I picked this list of 50… for 2022 based simply on my impressions of their influence or because they do interesting tweets and/or have a fresh perspective on things, not strictly based on metrics.”

Whatever the reason, we’re delighted, and honored to be on Paul’s list.

And if you would like to see why we made the ’50 to Follow list’, then follow us on Twitter

ISSCR 2014: Talking Twitter and Stem Cells

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One of the fascinating things about the ISSCR (International Society for Stem Cell Research) annual conference is that you learn so much about so many things, ranging from the latest in Parkinson’s research (more on that later this week) to the impact of social media on people’s knowledge about stem cells.

At a poster presentation Wednesday, Julie Robillard, Ph.D., a post doc researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, talked about the way that people use Twitter to talk about stem cells.

Julie, a neuroscientist by training, became fascinated by the use of social media and has done a number of studies looking at the use of social media for topics like information about aging, gene therapy and now stem cells.

She says social media is reshaping how conversations take place between people who are interested in stem cells: anyone from a scientist to a patient to a provider of sham therapies. She says there is a lot of information out there about stem cells but the quality is not always great and in some cases it’s downright questionable.

For her poster presentation, entitled Stem Cells in Social Media: Implications for Public Policy, Julie focused on Twitter and searched for key words such as “stem cell” and “spinal cord injury.”

She said the thing that surprised her most was the sheer diversity of people that were using Twitter to communicate about stem cells: people from 41 different countries with the US, Canada, the UK and Australia the top four. She says this is clear evidence there is worldwide interest in stem cell research. The problem, however, is that the quality of many of the tweets was also widely varied. Some came from researchers and were thoughtful and trying to raise awareness about new research or important questions, but others—many others—were more interested in promoting stem cells as cures for everything from sagging skin or acne to severed spinal cords.

Julie says 15 percent of tweets came from companies involved in stem cell research. In some cases they may be companies who have results about research they are doing, but in others it was to promote a product or treatment that wasn’t necessarily approved or proven. Julie says they’re quite clever about how they do it, using hashtags (i.e. #stemcells) that suggest it came from someone’s personal account rather than a business address, but they then link back to the company site.

News reports, stories in newspapers, on the radio and TV or online are the single biggest drivers of traffic on Twitter and are a reminder of the importance of good journalism when covering these issues. A poorly written or researched story that makes inflated claims about a treatment, or fails to mention that the research was done in mice not people, can get huge play on social media and mislead many people. This is a little worrying when fewer and fewer mainstream media outlets have a dedicated science journalist on staff.

Julie cautions that when you read a tweet and don’t know the person who sent it, it’s a case of buyer-beware, don’t just accept it at face value.

She also says it’s a reminder to those of us trying to inform the public about all the progress being made with stem cell research that we need to be more engaged and more active, so that our voices can help drown out those with bad information or shoddy products to sell.

Kevin McCormack