Are young scientists being encouraged to emulate Michael Bay? Continue reading
Author: Brooke Morriswood
Mining the blue sky
Science may be unique in human activities in that it produces a raw material instead of a product. Continue reading
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
How’s your legacy?
Like it or not, most of us are doomed to be rapidly forgotten.
There’s a great moment in Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire”, in which the brooding protagonist has been scouring the Earth for the oldest of the immortals. He finds his man in Paris, but is stunned to discover that the world’s oldest vampire is a relative juvenile of just a few hundred years’ age. Armand, the vampire in question, breaks it to him gently – although vampires can theoretically live forever, in practice they tend to fade away after a couple of centuries.
It’s an uncomfortable parable for any scientist, given that an oft-cited lure of the job is that tantalising chance of immortality. Continue reading
Wholly Trinity
An obsession with publishing in three high-prestige journals is ruining careers and undermining good science.
Cell. Nature. Science. Three short words – but like another worshipped trio, their influence belies the simplicity of their names. These three journals exert a pathological and mesmeric hold on the entire biomedical research body, and it is high time that that spell was broken.
First off, and let’s get this in the clear so that there are no misunderstandings, it should be stressed that Nature and Science are terrible, terrible organs for the publication of scientific research. Continue reading
Bringing up baby
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The old lie
I remember reading an anecdote about a meeting between Francis Crick and an eminent biochemist (I’m pretty sure it was Erwin Chargaff). Chargaff came away highly unimpressed by Crick, which seems bizarre nowadays when Crick is revered as a kind of demigod. The reason for Chargaff’s disdain? Crick, he said, seemed to exemplify the worst aspects of the British system, namely “all talk and no action”.
It’s a neat reminder of what we now refer to as “the American work ethic” swept away. High-minded gentlemen scientists sitting around in armchairs in club rooms doing thought experiments, and occasionally deigning to publish their insights. Theorising, theorising, theorising. Very little actual “doing”.
That’s what the work ethic replaced. Why do the thought experiment when you could do the actual experiment? And the powerhouse performance of American academia in the 20th century is all the validation that’s needed of that more practical approach.
But there’s a sense now that the pendulum may have swung too far the other way. Continue reading
Total Internal Reflection 