Science Online 09: The Limitations Of Iconography

While I'm sitting here stranded in Houston, I thought I'd comment on something that has caught my eye regarding the Science Online 09 science blogging conference logo as well as other related icons that are being used to represent (at least to the public, media, etc) who science bloggers are and what presumably we are writing about.

For instance, the 2009 conference uses an icon of a ball-and-stick molecular model that I remember all too well from my organic chemistry days:

The 2008 and 2007 Science Blogging Conferences employed the icon of an Erlenmeyer flask holding an unidentified blue liquid:

But there were also iterations of the flask that showed green-colored contents bubbling:

In The Open Laboratory anthologies, the print compendium of the best writing on science blogs, a highly stylized (and beautiful) double helix serves as the sign that herein can be found science writing:

And finally, looking across to the UK, the 2008 Science Blogging meeting in London combined elements from the Underground route map iconography with Nature Network's ball-and-stick logo:

Of course no single logo can fully serve every aspect, discipline, and sub-discipline of science. But I have to wonder if we are doing ourselves any favor in perpetuating a stereotype of science as bubbling glassware, molecular models, or other reductionist iconography.

There's been a recent stir here and there across the science blogs of late asking, "What is science?". Both Greg and PZ have already mentioned how visitors to some science blogs are dismayed at what they consider to be a dearth of "real science" writing. As if we live in 24-7 science presentation/education mode.

But perhaps we might do ourselves a favor by stretching outside of the chemistry/molecule frame that seems to be a default comfort zone.