Science may be unique in human activities in that it produces a raw material instead of a product. Continue reading
Month: March 2016
Facts, figures, and rhetoric
What’s the real purpose of scientific figures?
There’s a common misconception that they’re to show what we did. Continue reading
The art of refereeing
Could rugby teach scientists how to approach the review process?
On the night before the England rugby team attempt to win a first Six Nations grand slam since 2003, it seemed appropriate to have a rugby-themed posting. For those who are not fans of the game with the funny-shaped ball, bear with me… Continue reading
To Shape the Future
Does the world of science offer us a view of human society in the future?
Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed a scale to rank the development of civilizations going from 1, to 2, to 3. Type 1 civilizations utilise energy from the star at the centre of their solar system; type 2 civilizations can harness the entire energy of output of that star; type 3 civilizations can tap into cosmic sources of power, probably the black holes at the centre of their host galaxy.
Everyone agrees that human civilization is currently type 0 (don’t be downhearted!), but may attain type 1 status in around 200 years if we’re still going. What might that type 1 civilization be like though? Continue reading
To have and to hold…and then to go back to work
It’s fairly well accepted that in the biological sciences roughly 50% of undergraduates are female, with a 50:50 sex ratio also continuing to postgraduate level (see HERE for US data). At postdoc there’s either parity or a slight skew towards men, and thereafter a steadily climbing rate of male occupancy as one climbs up the higher echelons of academia (LINK). (It’s even more male-biased in the physical sciences)
There has been much hand-wringing about this. Continue reading
Total Internal Reflection 