Author Archives: Stephen

The March for Science: advocacy masterstroke or PR misfire?

Last night made my way to an upstairs room at The Castle pub near Farringdon to participate in a debate organised by Stempra on the forthcoming March for Science. The panel (Photo by Anastasia Stefanidou) The question before the panel and … Continue reading

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Grim resolve at the House of Commons on the scientific priorities for Brexit

On Tuesday morning last week MPs, MEPs, and representatives of various organisations with a stake in post-Brexit UK science gathered in the Churchill Committee room at the House of Commons for the launch of  the “Scientific priorities for Brexit” report, … Continue reading

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Science, art and Art

This past week I was fortunate once again to be invited to the award ceremony of the Wellcome Image Awards. Each time I go I tell myself I will submit an entry for the following year, but somehow I never … Continue reading

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Interview with the author

Those of you who have read all 346 posts on my Reciprocal Space blog will have no need to read this one. You probably already have a sense of what I do and what I’m like – my science, my … Continue reading

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Status Report – February 2017

I said when I started this blog in 2008 that I would not promise to post regularly, so as to avoid the endless repetition of apologies for failing to write. And I’m not about to start apologising now, even though … Continue reading

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ICYMI No.10 – New Year’s Resolution

Along with many of my academic colleagues from across the nation, I was asked by the Times Higher Education to set down at least one new year’s resolution for 2017. I drew inspiration from Richard Hamming (whom I wrote about … Continue reading

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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

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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

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ICYMI No.8: Being Professorial

I was among several people who contributed to a feature in this weeks’ Times Higher Education on being a professor. The brief I was given was (briefly): “Questions you might want to address are whether you should somehow have to … Continue reading

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President Trump – first response

This morning I was asked for a comment on the implications of the US presidential election for the scientific world. This was my immediate response: Unlike the day after the EU referendum vote, when I was bitterly upset, I just … Continue reading

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