Latest posts

Seven sins of science writing

Posted on 2 February 2011 by Frank Norman

I was never trained as an editor, but a few years ago I found myself as joint editor of our Institute’s annual volume of essays on science, aimed at a lay(-ish) audience. For the first few years I worked on them with a couple of more experienced scientist-editors, observing how one of them in particular could, with a few strokes of his pen, t Continue reading →

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Interesting Times

Posted on 1 February 2011 by Stephen

“May you live in interesting times”, goes the Chinese curse. Chinese scientists are certainly living in interesting times (as reported today in Nature) but they are unlikely to see it as a curse. The budget of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) has increased sevenfold since 1998 and is set — as part of bold plans — to rise 70% in the Continue reading →

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Ethical retrieval

Posted on 1 February 2011 by Frank Norman

It may surprise you to know that librarians have codes of professional ethics. The main  UK membership organisation for librarians,  CILIP, requires its members to follow its ethical code; the American Library Association have something similar.  Subject classification and indexing is one of the more interesting areas where ethical concerns can ari Continue reading →

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Wind Power for City People

Posted on 1 February 2011 by KristiV

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a goal of 80% clean energy sources in the US by 2035, a mandate that would include a 700% increase in the generation of non-hydro renewable energy.  While solar panels and geothermal heat pumps are promising technologies (more about these in future posts), the renewable source that gr Continue reading →

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Octogenarian

Posted on 28 January 2011 by Erika Cule

People your age, they often find old people…boring

My great-aunt made this assertion, when I described the volunteer befriending role mentioned in my previous post. I am not absolutely sure that “boring” is the reason many young people avoid spending time with the elderly. I have the impression that the young are a little bit afra Continue reading →

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Open tabs

Posted on 28 January 2011 by Heather

Welcome, briefly captive audience before the next click that takes you far, far away to a server in Bangalore or Vladivostok.

I am going to do a tab-and-link dump here (a.k.a. Continue reading →

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Peering at review

Posted on 28 January 2011 by Frank Norman

The House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology have announced that they will conduct an inquiry into peer review. They list eight points starting with:

the strengths and weaknesses of peer review as a quality control mechanism for scientists, publishers and the public

and ending with:

the impact of IT and greater use of online re Continue reading →

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Peer-review – I am beatin’ that horse until it dies!

Posted on 27 January 2011 by Sylvia McLain

I just published another post on peer review in response to Cameron Neylon’s post about peer-review here . Specifically I didn’t like his example in the post as I don’t think its a good allegory for peer-review.

But to spare Occam’s Typewriter from my Irregulars beating of that dead horse, I have published it on my blog &# Continue reading →

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Peer review – a bad example

Posted on 27 January 2011 by Sylvia McLain

Cameron Neylon has published one of 2 posts defending his opinion of peer-review –
standing by the quote ‘it makes more sense in fact to publish everything and filter after the fact’ though he admits this is somewhat of an over simplification.

What Neylon doesn’t suggest is what the alternative actually is yet – hopef Continue reading →

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More peer review. Zzzzzz.

Posted on 26 January 2011 by Austin

In which, late as ever, I remember to say something about peer review.

There has been a bit of a flurry of commenting about peer review around OT just recently, with both RPG and Girl, Interrupting weighing in. The general consensus with them, and other bloggers, here, and most commenters on their posts, would be something like:

“Peer review: imper Continue reading →

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