Category Archives: Science

Australia Tour 2014

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Stephen

It’s funny how one thing leads to another. The video of my Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution last year caught the attention of a former colleague and produced an invitation to contribute a lecture to her plans to … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Mars Attacks (the senses)

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Stephen

Last night on Twitter someone posted a ‘selfie’ taken by the Mars Curiosity rover. It’s quite a photograph, particularly since it captures a fantastic piece of human technology amidst the landscape of another planet. The detail is what makes the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Science | Tagged , | Comments Off on Mars Attacks (the senses)

Losing my virginity and the Café Scientifique Reading List

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Stephen

Last night I lost my virginity. To be precise, I lost my Café Scientifique virginity because I gave a talk about science in a café in Portsmouth at the kind invitation of local organiser Maricar Jagger. It was a really … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review, Communication, Science, Scientific Life | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Remembering Innisfree

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Stephen

I observed recently how the rise of the internet has eliminated letter writing and so caused some of the wells of correspondence that historians and biographers have relied on down through the ages to fall into disuse. But the internet is … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Impact factors declared unfit for duty

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Stephen

Regulars at this blog will be familiar with the dim view that I have of impact factors, in particular their mis-appropriation for the evaluation of individual researchers and their work. I have argued for their elimination, in part because they … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science | Tagged , , | 41 Comments

What does the Higgs boson look like? (Audio Version)

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Stephen

As a little experiment I sat down and recorded an audio version of my Occam’s Corner post on the historical account of the difficulties that scientists had in accepting the reality of atoms. You can listen here:   And here … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Around Downe

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Stephen

Around Downe, Sept 2012, a set on Flickr. I visited Downe yesterday. Darwin’s home village is quite close to where I live and we like to avail ourselves from time to time of the local environs and the local (which … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Sick of Impact Factors

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Stephen

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science | Tagged , , | 233 Comments

Access to the Finch Committee on Open Access

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Stephen

The Finch Committee, set up last year by David Willetts to examine how UK-funded research findings can be made more accessible — and mentioned by the minister in his speech on the subject earlier this week — has been meeting … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Science & Politics | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Willetts’ Speech on Open Access: Analysis

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Stephen

David Willetts, Britain’s minister for science and universities, trailed the announcements made in his speech on open access to the UK Publishers’ Association yesterday as a ‘seismic shift’. One learns to be wary of the more hyperbolic statements of government ministers … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Science & Politics | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

UK Government to lead the world to open access?

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Stephen

The open access buzz around the internet last week was all due to the announcement by senior faculty at Harvard that journal subscription prices were rising at an unsustainable rate and the call to colleagues to devote their publishing energies … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Science & Politics | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Harvard: we have a problem

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Stephen

This is astonishing. Harvard is one of the best and one of the wealthiest universities in the world but last week its Faculty Advisory Council* announced that it can no longer afford to maintain its subscriptions to academic journals. The announcement … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Access, Science, Scientific Life | Tagged , , | 50 Comments