Monthly Archives: December 2016

2016 in pictures

Rather than attempting to sum up the tumultuous year just past in words, let me simply share with you some of the photographs that I took in 2016. The image below is an embedded album from my Flickr account. I’m … Continue reading

Posted in Fun, Science & Art | Comments Off on 2016 in pictures

ICYMI No. 9: Preprints and Embargoes

I’m rather late getting round to this but, for the record, here is a piece I wrote for Research Fortnight in late November on the challenges that preprints pose to embargoed press releases of research reports. The tl;dr version (though the piece … Continue reading

Posted in science | Comments Off on ICYMI No. 9: Preprints and Embargoes

The History of Keeping the Damned Women Out

It is easy to forget that what is your daily life today is tomorrow’s history: history is not just about the great white men long dead and buried. A talk I attended a few weeks ago vividly brought this to … Continue reading

Posted in Churchill College, coeducation, education, Equality, Nancy Malkiel, Princeton, Women in science | Comments Off on The History of Keeping the Damned Women Out

In which an era ends

She was decent and hard-working. She seldom complained, even when she got herself into a jam. She witnessed my awakening as a writer, from tentative, cliché-prone beginner to confident, stripped-down wordsmith capable of earning money and book deals.

Posted in Lablit, Nostalgia, Work/life balance, Writing | Comments Off on In which an era ends

The Autopsy, and what next?

I began this blog on Nov. 13, less than a week after the elections. It was too painful for me to continue. Not that there are many bright spots on the horizon that have appeared over the last 6 weeks, … Continue reading

Posted in Democrat, environment, Hilary, polls, Republican, science, transition team, Trump, US election | Comments Off on The Autopsy, and what next?

The Cost of Education

There are many myths about the University of Cambridge (and indeed Oxford), based on historical misinformation, literature and a general feeling that it is ‘different’ from the rest of the world. Novels like Brideshead Revisited – admittedly referring to Oxford … Continue reading

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Professional Bodies in the Diversity Frame

All male invited speakers at conferences or a senior leadership team that contains not a single woman are common across the employment landscape. In the physical sciences and engineering the problem is particularly acute because the numbers of women who … Continue reading

Posted in Royal Academy of Engineering, Science Council, Science Culture, Women in science | Comments Off on Professional Bodies in the Diversity Frame

Weird things from publishers part 94

Many of the things that publishers do are perplexing, frustrating or reek of exploitation (it’s arguable that even the act of selling us subscriptions falls into the latter category) . I wrote earlier this year about a perplexing and frustrating … Continue reading

Posted in Journal publishing, Open Access | Comments Off on Weird things from publishers part 94

Beyond the Silo Mentality

I have been fretting about the challenges of appropriately evaluating interdisciplinary work for many years. My specific beef has been about grant assessment in the Research Councils at the interface between physics and biology, because that is where my research … Continue reading

Posted in HEFCE, interdisciplinarity, Interdisciplinary Science, REF21, Research | Comments Off on Beyond the Silo Mentality

Evasive Tactics?

If my last post discussed an important point that doesn’t typically receive much notice – although I’m glad to say the post, and its accompanying repost on the THE website both did – this current one is meant simply as … Continue reading

Posted in Brussles, ERC, Science Culture | Comments Off on Evasive Tactics?