Also seen: “five hundred thousand cells”; “fifty micrograms”; “forty eight hours”.
Amazingly enough, I was able to cut the length of the Materials and Methods section by more than twenty one percent >21%.
Cath
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Bragging Rights Central
VWXYNot? Comment(s) of the week:
Nina and Grant for the following exchange: Nina: "Life should be a conference, everyone wearing nametags all the time, with their first name, last name, nickname, country of origin and country of residence. Birthdate optional."
Grant: Nina, I’m sure tech types will suggest we’ll all be bumping cell phones to exchange names in a few years. (Eurgh.)
One more: you know that thing where the person can’t quite read your name tag and leans in close over your chest to read it…
Nina: "ok, how about tattooing your name onto your forehead?"
Grant: "How about a sub-dermal name implant invisible when not active that glows when triggered by trained neural signals beaming your name to the people opposite you?
Failing that we could all wear electrode scalp caps that carry a flip up sign… (Taking as my cue the brain-computer interfaces emotiv and others are marketing.)"
[NB as a chronic tartler, I approve of all the above methods]
Alyssa for "It’s cloudy again
We see it’s cold and dreary
But – we have windows!!!"Ricardipus for "Bugger me, the grant’s
Finally done. Thank goodness.
Now back to fun stuff."Bean-mom for "I just clicked on the article on circular RNAs–I’d seen the headline earlier but hadn’t yet read it–and just as I expected, I’m all WTF?! MicroRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, now we’ve got circular RNAs. . . I feel like someone should just write a review titled, “RNA: WTF?”"
Nina again for "edit: my advisor has improved his standing desk further by standing on a wooden board that balances on a small (but sturdy) plastic tube, to make him wobble while standing, so to keep working those balancing muscles, or something like that. The tube comes from one of my experiments. I will miss that “wtf I’ll create my own standing desk – pilates work-out” attitude, I must admit."
Bob O'H for "Reminds me of my youth playing boardgames. There was one called Civilisation, which a friend described as “almost as long as the real thing”."
Chall "it surely looks like the Leafs MIGHT go to play offs for the first time in 7 years…. if I didn’t jinx it by saying it here of course. That said, I find myself wondering how bad it will be to end 5th place if Boston stays 4th. It sort of feels better to play the 3rd (Capitals right now) than Bruins but right now I’ll settle for PLAYOFFS and miracle :)"
[the Leafs making the playoffs is a miracle indeed]
KJHaxton for "Good question! I’d put:
– occasional baker of cakes for meetings
– fair to moderate tolerance for bullshit
– low tolerance for unfairness and willing to get very cross about it (folds arms and glowers at the screen)
– best selection of tea bags in desk drawer (8 kinds at last count)
– prone to wearing scarves and shirts that don’t matchAh well, I’m not sure I’d find a new job on the basis of those :)"
Ricardipus again for "Pros:
- rarely swears in public
- has few friends, so unlikely to have loud, belly-laughing conversations on phone or in person
- capable of speaking at length about (a) race cars, (b) cameras, or (c) bad scienceCons:
- occasionally swears in public
- has few friends, so likely to have poor social interactions with co-workers
- capable of speaking at length about (a) race cars, (b) cameras, or (c) bad scienceI’d also probably include “easily suckered into serving on irrelevant committees” into each category, too."
Bean-mom again for "–Friendly.
–Doesn’t bake, but if you have a potluck I’ll bring killer spring rolls (both crispy fried pork ones, and the vegetarian fresh rice-paper ones).
–Doesn’t bake, but husband bakes. Occasionally, you may be a recipient of his talent.
–Will cheerfully listen to other people’s dramas, but won’t cause any of my own. Not at work, anyway."
and Nina yet again for "As I may have mentioned before, I’m pretty sure my cv point “Love baking (chocolate) cakes” earned me my PhD position, and it definitely often raised questions in interviews (“so, how often do you bake cake? What kind of chocolate do you use?”)"
Post(s) of the Week: Beth Snow for "Modern conveniences" (how on earth did we survive, let alone study and write theses, before Skype and cloud computing?!)
Steve Caplan for "Science education: the generalist vs the specialist" (are 3 year or 4 year degrees better for students?)
Bean-mom for "Leaving scientific research... again" (science SUCKS sometimes)
Eva Amsen, writing at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars for "The two ideas to fix the gender balance that do not make me cringe" (the panel pledge and the Finkbeiner test)
Bob O'Hara for "Making reviewing boring stuff less boring" (would a stripped-down manuscript format work better for the, um, less exciting papers out there?)
Alyssa for "Just the pants, thanks" (absolutely hilarious take on the modern clothes shopping experience)
Eva Amsen again for "My self-updating address book" (how LinkedIn can be useful)
CromerCrox for "Plagues" (how's God been cursing you lately?)
Prof-like Substance for "If you don't talk to your kids about it someone else will" (anticipating school-yard talk about religion and other big issues)
and CromerCrox again for "Conferences" (the problem of sexism at conferences)
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Amazing
I do wonder why it wasn’t twenty thousand eight hundred g though.
Don’t get me started on inconsistencies in grants and manuscripts…
Technically, the person who originally wrote that sentence is correct in that you should not start a sentence with a number but should spell it out using words. When it comes to grants though, all rules go out the window!
But aren’t numbers associated with units never supposed to be spelled out? e.g. I write out the numbers 1-10 in words (unless I’m specifying a range, like i just did, or want to emphasise a comparison with larger numbers in the same sentence, e.g. “14 of the 30 test group responded, compared to 2 of the 30 controls), but I would always put 4 mM, 5 mm etc.
I have literally never seen anyone write out “five hundred microlitres” before…
That’s how I was taught – by an organic chemist no less – if you start a sentence with a number, you write it out in full.
I’m with Prof in Training and Catherine on this. Never, ever use a numeral to start a sentence.
The units I’m not sure about, although if the numbers are written out in long form, then it seems best to me that the units should be too (“microlitres”).
Also, I believe the “degree” sign before “C” is redundant, according to S.I. standards. I could be wrong though, but if I’m right, I just saved you another character.
Problem easily solved:
(where µ = micro)
“re-write to avoid controversy” is indeed my usual preference, but in this case I didn’t realise there was a controversy until it was too late – I’d already sent my edits back before posting this!
Well, you learn something new every day! Never heard that rule before. Thanks all!
I still maintain that it looks weird with units in a materials and methods section, though
you can try to rewrite it so the sentence doesn’t start with the number and you don’t have to spell it out?
As I replied above (repeating it here for the sake of completeness):
“re-write to avoid controversy” is indeed my usual preference, but in this case I didn’t realise there was a controversy until it was too late – I’d already sent my edits back before posting this!
I do a lot of science editing for spare cash. This is one of the top three most frequent issues I run across. The other two are the overuse of modifiers and strings of redundant prepositions. It boggles the mind at how much excess you can remove if you put a little thought into sentence composition.
It boggles the mind how few people seem to have read any scientific papers before attempting to write their own!
(I’m not referring to this specific manuscript, but rather to a general pattern of people just not seeming to understand the conventions of the format)
“It boggles the mind how few people seem to have read any scientific papers before attempting to write their own!”
I find that very hard to imagine. They ought to have been reading papers since senior undergraduate classes, surely. Mind you, I can imagine plenty not thinking about how to write a paper, though, bad as that is.
That’s just what I’ve inferred; I don’t see how anyone could read more than a handful of papers and then still commit some of the formatting and other atrocities I’ve seen over the last few years. But like you said, people may just have a problem generalising what they’ve read and then applying the standard format to their own papers
I’m with you now
You’d hope it’d occur to students one day they’ll be writing one of those things. Hmm. I might blog about an aspect of this
(Not tonight, soon-ish.)
So much for “not tonight” -
Teaching students to write scientific papers
http://sciblogs.co.nz/code-for-life/2012/03/21/teaching-students-to-write-scientific-papers/
Cut by more than 21%? Amazing, Cath.
Thanks! I find that the more experienced trainees become, the less detail they put in their M&M sections. This paper seemed to be closer to the “inexperienced, describe every single detail” end of the spectrum
Yea, but I don’t agree with you completely on this one. There is nothing more frustrating that trying to replicate someone else’s work and there isn’t enough detail in the methods section to do so. I’d rather err on the side of too much rather than too little info (although of course, at some point the too much can get a little ridiculous)….
Well, there’s definitely a minimum requirement. But IME, some n00bs stop just short of telling you what they had for breakfast on the day of each experiment, and what colour socks they were wearing…
a question nothing to do with SI units… What’s happened to the hockey pool? Am I missing the updates and I should’ve done them or? …. just know that i’m proboably in the bottom and my leafs are going out… and wings are moving downwarss… *insert more whining*
hey, it’s Monday!
No-one signed up for last week in the spreadsheet, so I guess Beth will have to do a double update – she signed up for this week!
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