Monthly Archives: January 2012

Hockey Pool, Week 16

Many thanks to Chall for hosting weeks 14 and 15! As I commented on Chall’s post: The new player values make it SO HARD now! Until Friday I’d had no problems at all picking all the players I wanted and … Continue reading

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BLOG # 100: Professional lecturers–good or bad?

I can’t believe this is my 100th blog! Thanks to everyone at OT for putting up with me! In today’s world of dwindling scientific funding across many parts of the globe, one issue that seems to be more frequently discussed … Continue reading

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When do you ‘make it’ ?

When I was young I had dreams of being an astronaut or a famous athlete. I figured I could go to the Moon or win Wimbledon and then I would have ‘made it’ and could spend the rest of my … Continue reading

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I will never buy a ‘Big Issue’…

… because a Big Issue seller came into the pub, and stole my wallet and phone.

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The Dangers of Disciplinary Diversity

One of the curious facts about our scientific disciplines is that they do tend to have their own flavour and culture, with things that are taken as the norm in one discipline seeming very alien to another. There are a … Continue reading

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In which I offer one little reason

A certain impending – and exciting – move has left me with no time to blog. Tomorrow is my last day, and after a week of holiday, I’ll be flying North (but only about 3 km) to start up a … Continue reading

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Help, Industry save the UK science funding [2]

(oh and yes I still blog) I was going to write about Willetts and his speech – but really I missed the boat. I was going to write about a paper I published a few years back to let folk … Continue reading

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More on Willetts’ Speech

In the days following Willetts’ big science policy speech, there had been a piece in Nature by Daniel Sarewitz and letters from disgruntled physical scientists to the EPSRC that in different ways highlighted the role of scientists in directing research funding. I was … Continue reading

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Err … ology

Publication bias is the tendency to report positive results differently from negative or inconclusive results, resulting in a bias in the overall literature (see Wikipedia article and this tutorial at the Cochrane Collaboration). Afficionados of evidence-based practice and meta-analysers of research worry … Continue reading

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Planetary

It’s amazing what you can learn sometimes. Junior #2, now in grade four, is mired in the dreaded “gears and pulleys” science unit. Dreaded, I say, because I’m still scarred from Junior #1′s project, now two years past. In that … Continue reading

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