Monthly Archives: November 2018

We Need to Work at Breaking the Barriers

Leaders in science are generally those who are excellent at their science, but no one may have checked their leadership credentials. Someone like Lord Rutherford may have got away with barking instructions at his underlings (for which loud voiced behaviour … Continue reading

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In which I evolve (or possibly, devolve) as a scientist

Tangled up in blue Last Thursday was a normal day. After a few hours at my desk working on a grant application and a paper revision, I ran to the tube station, threw myself into a train down to the … Continue reading

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Graveyard of old habits and opera house of emotions

I’m a big fan of the “Tomorrow’s Professor” blog from Stanford University. Their motto is “Online faculty development 100 times per year” and during term time, 10 minutes of reading a handy tip about how to be better at my … Continue reading

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Worrying about Deserts of Nothingness

Recently a website calling itself UKRI Observatory published two blogposts analysing information obtained by them under FoI regarding assessments of EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training. The point the blogpost was making was that it appeared at first sight that many … Continue reading

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Ten papers for ten years

Scientific paper clip-art Blogging Beyond is about ten years old now.  To celebrate, here are ten papers I like, in chronological order by publication date. Each is accompanied by a short justification for its inclusion in this list. 

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The Lure of Procrastination

Why do you procrastinate? Since most people are guilty of this failing at least some of the time, few readers are likely to say ‘what me, I never do!’ I believe the reasons are many and various but I must … Continue reading

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Scientific archives workshop 2018

I attended the Second Workshop on Scientific Archives held at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, D.C. on the 13 & 14 August 2018. The first Workshop on Scientific Archives was held at EMBL in 2016, and was organised entirely by Anne-Flore … Continue reading

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To Be or Not to Be a Role Model

When you grow up what do you want to be? That is a familiar enough question but I’ve never heard of anyone who expected the answer to be ‘a role model’. Yet there are those who have an expectation that … Continue reading

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