Introduction Each week, historians of science and medicine enter the Twittersphere. They write blogs and explore new media. They crowd-source research questions and mine tweets as primary sources. They live-tweet our conferences, more every year. Is this move toward social media a sign of the decline of traditional scholarship, or the cutting edge of a new approach to research, collaboration and the dissemination of scholarly knowledge?
Both, of course, and threshing the grain from this rock-strewn field is challenging and sometimes disheartening. But is an axiom of scholarship that discussion and reflection help us avoid the traps and reap the rewards of any complex phenomenon. And so, with jaundiced eye and callused thumbs, I tweeted a 140-character call for abstracts on the pleasures and dangers of social media for historians of science and medicine. Fortified by the sponsorship of the Committee on Research and the Profession, we presented a lunchtime roundtable at the 2013 History of Science Society meeting, in Boston. The resulting panel beautifully captured the balanced tone, mixed emotions and wide range of themes I envisioned.
Afterward, the editors at Medical History graciously offered to translate our presentations into traditional media. Edited versions will appear over the next four issues. We made one substitution: one participant withdrew his paper because he is an editor here; in his place Clarissa Lee, an especially thoughtful audience member from the session, will offer her reflections. Thanks go to the editors, the participants and to John Lynch, whose commentary on the papers will conclude this print mini-symposium.
