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
research
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 readingCatching the zeitgeist
Mark Ronson’s “Night people” memoir is an engaging and engrossing account of his formative years as a DJ in the New York club scene of the 90s. It also illustrates one tantalising facet shared by the arts and sciences: catching the zeitgeist.
Continue readingCredit 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 readingTake back control: an encounter with eLife’s publish, review, curate model
In January 2023, the journal eLife – long at the vanguard of the progressive movement in scientific publishing – took the radical step of adopting a “publish, review. curate” model. Here, with some background framing, is what it feels like to use it.
Continue reading2024: 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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