It is a tremendous irony that my present profession is closer to how I pictured an academic career than academia itself turned out to be.
Continue readingAll I ever wanted
academia
MedComms is not SciComm
When scientists assess career options outside academia, there’s a prevailing misconception that MedComms is a variant of SciComm.
The trap, after all, is right there in the name. SciComm = science communication, MedComms = medical communications, so MedComms must basically be the same activity but dealing with medicine instead of scientific research, right?
Wrong. Here’s why.
Continue reading2025: Total Internal Reflection’s year in review
Credit where credit’s due (a short guide to authorships in scientific papers)
Did you know that there are actually guidelines for determining authorship on scientific papers?
Continue readingThe unit of selection
Group leaders nowadays bear a huge individual responsibility for raising money. But what if it was departments, and not group leaders, that were the unit of selection?
Continue readingDeprogramming academia
The magic of MedComms: an EMBL Careers Webinar
Medical Communications (MedComms) might just be the best industry career option out there for scientists who most enjoy the writing/communicating/organising parts of the job, and on 22nd November 2024 the EMBL Fellows’ Careers Service hosted a webinar about it. The panel members were:
- Lucija Fleisinger, Medical Writer, Oxford PharmaGenesis, UK
- Laura McMahon, Senior Scientific Director and Team Lead, Envision Pharma Group, Scotland
- Brooke Morriswood, Manager, Scientific Services, Ashfield MedComms GmbH, Germany
2024: Total Internal Reflection’s year in review
The lifetime of a field
It’s not just scientists that get old. Scientific fields have their own lifetimes, just like people.
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