Following on from Eva’s thesis haikus, here’s a limerick I scribbled down during a coffee break on the second morning of a two day workshop that I attended last week:
I disguise in a secretive fog
The things that I write on my blog
There is lots of cool stuff
I can’t blog – yes it’s tough
So instead here’s my favourite dog
The workshop was wonderful in some ways, but extremely frustrating in others (hence the appearance of the dog – thanks for the tip Henry). Frustrating because the (closed) presentations and resulting discussions were a constant stream of excellent blog fodder that must, sadly, remain unblogged. Even though it was highly relevant to discussions I’ve had on Nature Network and other blogs in the last few weeks. I took a shot at describing some of the discussions in a way that would not allow you to identify the PI or even the field, but it was far too bland and boring to post.
The problem is that I’m in an academic environment, exposed to all kinds of very cool cutting edge research, but that none of it is mine to disclose. I often find myself in a room full of PIs, and party to the kind of scientific and political information that only PIs usually hear, but without really having earned the right to that information in the same way that my senior colleagues have. I’m therefore very reluctant to blog about any of it. I included my original blog on my CV when I applied for my current job (as part of my list of “scientific communication experience” in case you were wondering), so my supervisor and various other PIs do know about it. However I haven’t mentioned blogs or blogging since, so they may have forgotten. And I don’t want their first reminder to be when they see their unpublished work or controversial utterings mentioned on my site!
So, sorry, no cool cancer research news here. No interesting discussions about the changing face of scientific publication in a web 2.0 world; the funding situation in different countries; or the merits of including patient advocates in workshop discussions. I can tell you about the conversations I had with two different taxi drivers on my way to the workshop though, if you like. One was about dietary contributions to cancer, and the other was about the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Winter Olympics. Take your pick.
