Monthly Archives: November 2020

Sex, Gender, Research and Fairness

It is a daily matter to look around a typical laboratory and note the imbalance of the sexes in different roles. In a lab using animals, there may be a fair number of female technicians, but the PI is more … Continue reading

Posted in cell-lines, ERC, Gendered Innovations, Londa Schiebinger, machine learning, Research, Science Funding, statistics, Women in science | Comments Off on Sex, Gender, Research and Fairness

In which winter sets in

Unexpected color Although winter has not yet formally begun, this is the time of year when the darkness stretches ahead into infinity. In the face of this, the prospect of brighter days, of snowdrops and crocuses pushing up from the … Continue reading

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Covinfamy

Are you frightened of COVID-19? Being frightened is not good enough. If you are one of those legislators who dismiss lock-downs as over-reaction; or a person anxious about the cancellation of Christmas; or one of the seeming large number of … Continue reading

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Nature’s new open access option – a few first thoughts

A news article published online in Nature this morning discusses the announcement of new open access options in the Nature family of journals. The details are in the article, but the basic story (written by Holly Else) is that authors … Continue reading

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Teaching online: how to use an iPad as a whiteboard

Last week I gave my first online tutorials where I needed to scribble on a whiteboard and to show the students their exam scripts from last term, which has been posted to my home by the university. To solve both … Continue reading

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Linnean

This picture, which I have shamelessly stolen liberated stolen liberated from the Twitter account of the Linnean Society of London, is of Charles Darwin’s study at Down House, reminds me of an anecdote that Twitter is too small to contain, … Continue reading

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Becoming a Leader

This week I took part in a panel aimed at young adults who see themselves as future leaders. An interesting, if slightly disquieting experience. My fellow panellists were two young men in their twenties, who had both already done amazing … Continue reading

Posted in Equality, leadership, Michelle Obama, Simone de Beauvoir, Women in science | Comments Off on Becoming a Leader

Expectation

I’ve been writing books since my twenties. In fact, I have been working on one book or another almost constantly since I finished my first — which was my doctorate thesis, resting unread in a dusty vault in Cambridge. Notwithstanding … Continue reading

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Heirlooms, and Other Stuff

I’ve long been fascinated by Antiques Roadshow, a long-running Televisual Emission in which members of the public bring assorted objets, often of no conceivable use whatsoever except for the accumulation of surplus value, to be assessed and valued by experts. … Continue reading

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The Doings Round My Parts

What have I been up to these past six years? Well, some of it can be found in the archived posts below. For those disinclined to delve, I shall attempt a succinct summary. But how does one even start to … Continue reading

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