BlueSlugg is a custom search engine designed for students, and scientists, especially in Biotechnology and related fields. 

College-level search engine on the homepage:

This search engine is designed to give simple, straight-forward information for students researching a particular topic.

The goal was to create a search engine that focused on web sites appropriate for an audience with a college-level understanding of biological processes. While a typical search engine returns results from thousands of sites, most of the hits are either irrelevant, overly simplified/ inaccurate, or just way too technical. While science majors are perfectly capable of understanding journal articles in their third or fourth years, oftentimes we just want a simple, straightforward answer to our questions.

HIV is a perfect example. A student who wants to understand the biology of HIV will typically receive hits about hygiene practices, NCBI articles, and high school level explanations. BlueSlugg.com simplifies the search by focusing on information that is relevant to a college-level student of the biological sciences. This is meant to save time and energy that would have otherwise been spent wading through dozens of hits before finding one that is relevant. 

As a tool, BlueSlugg allows students to search for things like glycolysis, T4 phage, pUC9 plasmids, Organic Chemistry help, and other topics relevant to science majors without the overwhelming number of hits inherent in a typical search engine. 

Journal Search: 

Because of the popularity of the request, I have built a separate search engine designed exclusively to search the scientific literature. The purpose was to design a search engine that would make the lives of scientists easier by combining as much of the scientific literature as possible into one place. This search engine searches things like the NCBI databases, Nature, PNAS, and countless other scientific resources.

One of the interesting side-effects of this search engine turned out to be that things like Nature News was included in the search. While Nature News is not technically a journal, I thought it would be relevant for scientists, so I chose to leave it up. The search engine also includes things such as basic information on rocks and minerals from geological societies, and similar straightforward sources of information put together by the scientific community.

I am keeping this as a separate search engine for the time being, because as a college student I have far-too-often found that when I search for a scientific topic, I am flooded with journal articles that already assume that I am well educated in that particular area - hence one of the main two reasons the main search engine on the homepage was created to begin with.

On Controversy:

As the designer of the BlueSlugg search engine, I am seeking to include the websites of scientists who have a wide range of scientific opinions. Far too often the orthodox view is assumed to be true, and it is assumed to fit with the evidence. In order to move forward, however, the views of scientists with minority viewpoints must be heard.

For example, if there were a group of geologists who held that plate-tectonics was not an accurate view of our planet's geology (I do not know that any exist), and these scientists were respected for work they had done in their fields, and they were presenting reasonable evidence for their position, then regardless of whether or not I agreed with their views I would be ethically obligated to include their published online work in my search engines. (All concerns about quality and accuracy considered.)

I once read a scientist (who had worked as an editor for a small journal associated with the Smithsonian) who said that he had been taught that it was unethical to deny a scientist publication in the peer reviewed literature purely on the grounds that the editor disagreed with the conclusions. I have chosen to take that ethical approach to BlueSlugg.com

Technical limitations of BlueSlugg:

While BlueSlugg focuses on web sites that are tailored to Biology students, you do get a bad hit on rare occasion. (And to be honest, I have been very surprised at how rare this is.) I chose to include Wikipedia and YouTube in the college search engine under the assumption that science majors are smart enough to recognize a bad hit. As a result, on rare occasion there is a bad hit, usually from YouTube users who are laypeople.

Until computers can read our thoughts, all search engines will have their limits. BlueSlugg is no exception.