PLoS picks USF anthropology prof to write for open-access science blog

Posted Sep 1, 2010 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Sep 1, 2010 at 04:32 PM

A University of South Florida professor has been chosen to help launch a new blog for the Public Library of Science, a traditional sounding organization dedicated to a revolutionary idea:

The world’s scientific and medical research are a public resource that should be distributed for free.

Daniel Lende, an associate professor in the USF Department of Anthropology, is one of 13 scientists and journalists chosen to write for PLoS Blogs. Here are a few of the others:

• Greg Downey, an anthropology lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who writes about capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian art form), no-holds-barred fighting, coaching, dance and music;

• David Kroll, a cancer pharmacologist who investigates natural anticancer drugs and blogs as “Abel Pharmboy;”

• Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer prize-winning science writer and journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose book, “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” came out earlier this year.

Lende has his own blog, Neuroanthropology, which he started with Downey.

PLoS has been around for about seven years and publishes several free online journals.

PLoS Blogs started on Tuesday, featuring an interview with Oliver Sacks, physician, author and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.

PLoS has transformed traditional scholarship with its commitment to open access, Lende said in a USF news release.
“We want PLoS blogs, and Neuroanthropology in particular, to be a place where readers can reliably turn to find a broad engagement with new research at the intersection of brain and culture.”