Now THAT'S what I call professionalism...

Not really. I thought I would share some more comments from the freelance science writers from the NASW mailing list.

"Plus this twit dissed me, the little rodent."

"One problem is that these bottom feeders are skewing the market..."

"Do any of you actually write for 40 hours a week?!?! I find that at about 20 hours (of real, intense, pay-attention type writing) my brain just shuts down."

"No, like you I can't handle 40 hours a week of hard-core writing.Especially if I want to have anything left for my personal writing,which I do for myself alone and does not pay the rent."

Although I could leave it at that, having painted an interesting portrait of professionalism and work ethic among that crowd, I do feel a desire to provide something resembling a balanced report.

There were voices of reason, too.

"It's not clear to me what the 'prob' is. I'd like to see it fleshed out with evidence or logical argument before getting bent out of shape."

and

"Not ravings, IMO; a different approach to a different market: synopsizing information published elsewhere in a quick, easy-to-read format. No interviews; virtually no interaction with the editor; just down-and-dirty excerpting and combining copy from one or more source and emailing it to the editor. The blogger, Carson, suggests someone who can type 100 words a minute can turn out several articles an hour and make a decent living at well under what we consider a professional rate for a medical or science writer. Not my bag, but I bet I could do it if I had to...Are we justifiably defensive or elitist?"

I will leave it to each individual to answer that question. I think you know my position.

Oh, and in case you are wondering about the excerpts I provided and would like to read more, you can start here. There is some subsequent chit-chat on later days, but the bulk of it was on the 10th.