Lately, it’s all been getting a bit intense. Not tetchy, as at the Scholarly Kitchen in recent days, but still pretty focused.
Four of the last five posts here have all been about the arguments surrounding the Elsevier boycott and the future of academic publishing. I noticed that a similar flurry of activity on Mike Taylor’s blog, which Continue reading
One of the things that people tends to think about scientists is that we are all machine-like robots who are technically advanced, but without an ounce (or gram) of creativeness.
I’m planning in this brief blog to dispel this criticism with a few choice counterpoints, followed by “the mother-of-all-examples” from my own work. Yes, Continue reading
Being another Excerpt in the Ongoing Spectacle that is The Beowulf Effect: Fossils, Evolution and the Human Condition, a book currently being written for the University of Chicago Press and is now more than a month overdue. But I am near the end, now, so while you’re waiting here’s a little something on the intelligence of crows.
The cl Continue reading
Soon after Nature Network launched in 2007 it was being touted as the “Facebook for scientists”. Other sites that had been around longer, such as FriendFeed and LabSpaces, occasionally got that moniker too (and indeed Facebook bought out FriendFeed later on). I view any use of the phrase “Facebook for scientists” with great Continue reading
I have somehow managed to retain some semblance of a utopian view of science.
I don’t mean to say that I’m blind to its flaws or that I’m not at all cynical about it. But I think I’m less cynical (or maybe just blinder) than the average scientist: I still believe in the scientific method as the best means we have to understand our universe, and in Continue reading
(This is a repost from the GranularIT Blog.)
I couldn’t stand it no more.
After my latest timelapse experiment (a frame every minute for three days; over 3 GB of photos), not to mention mucking around with stop-motion, I decided to bite the bullet and get myself a non-laptop based storage system. Continue reading
There has been a fair amount of self-disclosure on OT blogs in the last couple of weeks. Most recently fellow blogger Cromercrox described his painful battle with depression; over the past couple of weeks on my own blog many people have held their hands up to agree that they suffer from impostor syndrome . Both these aspects of humanity are nothin Continue reading
As a principal investigator, or PI, one of the tasks that I am consistently faced with is “interpretation.” How so? Well obviously, my job revolves around interpreting data and trying to understand if experiments done by my students and co-workers really do support or rule out hypotheses that we have proposed.
However, the role of a PI Continue reading
Since the beginning of the argument with Elsevier over their support of the Research Works Act (RWA) in the US and the announcement of the boycott of the publisher, I have been keen to stimulate dialogue. Elsevier seems to be interested in the same thing and their response to the research community, hesitant at first, is now being relayed by open l Continue reading
Having committed to sit on an EPSRC panel for the first time in many years, I had my sights set on a post about the Shared Services Centre of the Research Councils. Clearly this is a popular topic for academics to target since I was pipped to the post; just a few days ago Telescoper vented his bile on them for their inefficiencies over his P60 form Continue reading
