Science Practice
clock | August 2, 2008Bob read this and sent me some even better stuff:
Completely in verse:
Joseph F. Bunnett and Francis J. Kearley (1971). Comparative mobility of halogens in reactions of dihalobenzenes with potassium amide in ammonia (pdf). Journal of Organic Chemistry 36(1): 184 - 186; DOI: 10.1021/jo00800a036
In verse AND musical notation:
HM ShapiroFluorescent dyes for differential counts by flow cytometry: does histochemistry tell us much more than cell geometry? (pdf). J Histochem Cytochem, 1977 Aug;25(8):976-89.
Now I need to rewrite my old papers in verse...for instance:
There once was a quail flock…
clock | August 1, 2008....who likes limericks.
His article - Writing Science: The Abstract is Poetry, the Paper is Prose - makes me wish to have something to submit to FASEB just so I could submit the Abstract in the actual form of a limerick. And see what the Editor says.
I actually like it when a paper starts with a short verse. Or a good quote (that's how I started collecting interesting quotes).
But to include controls in the Abstract? That's insane! There is no way to even mention all seventeen experiments in the abstract, let alone the details of materials and methods, even less to bother with controls,…
clock | July 31, 2008There is a new study out there - Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial - that some people liked, but Peter Suber and Stephan Harnad describe why the study is flawed (read Harnad's entire post for more):
To show that the OA advantage is an artefact of self-selection bias (or any other factor), you first have to produce the OA advantage and then show that it is eliminated by eliminating self-selection bias (or any other artefact).
This is not what Davis et al did. They simply showed that they could detect no OA advantage one year after publication…
clock | July 28, 2008Martin saw this comment of mine and sprung into action: Name the new 'Carnival of Scientific Life'!
The two big questions are what to call it, and how often to host it, so I'd like your input in the comments below please. I'll be making the final decision on August 1st.
What would be a good name for the carnival? (Ideally something without "carnival" in the title.)
Should it be held monthly, or at some other frequency?
The carnival is intended to cover all aspects of life as a scientist, whether it's the lifestyle, career progress, doing a Ph.D., getting funding, climbing the slippery pole,…
clock | July 25, 2008Bjoern Brembs is on a roll! Check all of these out:
Incentivizing open scientific discussion:
Apart from the question of whether the perfect scientist is the one who only spends his time writing papers and doing experiments, what incentives can one think of to provide for blogging, commenting, sharing? I think because all of science relies on creativity, information and debate, the overall value of blogging, commenting and sharing can hardly be overestimated, so what incentives can there be for the individual scientist?
Journals - the dinosaurs of scientific communication:
Today's system of…
clock | June 20, 2008New issue of the Italian Journal of Science Communication is out with some excellent articles (some translated or abstracted from Italian, all in English):
Cultural determinants in the perception of science:
Those studying the public understanding of science and risk perception have held it clear for long: the relation between information and judgment elaboration is not a linear one at all. Among the reasons behind it, on the one hand, data never are totally "bare" and culturally neutral; on the other hand, in formulating a judgment having some value, the analytic component intertwines -…
clock | June 20, 2008Repairing research integrity:
Misconduct jeopardizes the good name of any institution. Inevitably, the way in which research misconduct is policed and corrected reflects the integrity of the whole enterprise of science. The US National Academy of Sciences has asserted that scientists share an 'obligation to act' when suspected research misconduct is observed1. But it has been unclear how well scientists are meeting that obligation. In the United States, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) evaluates all the investigation records submitted by institutions and plays an oversight role in…
clock | June 18, 2008If anyone is interested, Thompson has just released the new Impact Factors for scientific journals. Mark Patterson takes a look at IFs for PLoS journals and puts them in cool-headed perspective.
One day, hopefully very soon, this will not be news. What I mean by it is that there soon will be better metrics - ways to evaluate individual articles and individual people in way that is transparent and useful and, hopefully, helps treat the "CNS Disease". Journals will probably have their own metrics based on the value they add, but those metrics will not affect individual researchers' careers…
clock | June 2, 2008Another SCONC event:
RENCI to Show the Power of Visual Communications at Lunchtime Bistro:
The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) invites the public to a Renaissance Bistro lunchtime demonstration and lecture from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, June 26 in the Showcase Dome room at the RENCI engagement center at UNC Chapel Hill.
The Bistro is free and includes lunch on a first-come, first-served basis.
RENCI experts, Eric Knisley, 3D visualization researcher, and Josh Coyle, new media specialist, will demonstrate three-dimensional visualizations and interactive touch screen displays. Attendees…
clock | June 1, 2008More and more societies are compiling their 'classical' papers.
Here is another one.
And here I wrote, among else:
"In discussions of Open Access, we always focus on brand new papers and how to make them freely available for readers around the world as well as for people who want to mine and reanalyse the data using robots. But we almost never discuss the need to make the old stuff available. Yet we often lament that nobody reads or cites anything older than five years. Spending several years reading everything published in the field in the 20th century up until about 1995 (as well as some…
clock | May 23, 2008Jean-Claude Bradley and I first met at the First Science Blogging Conference where he led a session on Open Science. We then met at SciFoo and later joined forces on a panel at the ASIS&T meeting and finally met again at the second Science Blogging Conference back in January where Jean-Claude co-moderated a session on Making Data Public. Jean-Claude is famous for being the pioneer of the Open Notebook Science movement. He started posting his daily lab activity and results on his blog Useful Chemistry. Soon, he attracted a lot of feedback and subsequently some excellent collaborators…
clock | April 12, 2008Being out of the lab, out of science, and out of funding for a while also means that I have not been at a scientific conference for a few years now, not even my favourite meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms. I have missed the last two meetings (and I really miss them - they are a blast!).
But it is funny how, many years later, one still remembers some posters from poster sessions. What makes a poster so memorable?
I guess it has something to do with one's interests - there is just not enough time during a session to check out every single one out of hundreds (or…
clock | April 8, 2008A post from December 5, 2007:
Communication
Communication of any kind, including communication of empirical information about the world (which includes scientific information), is constrained by three factors: technology, social factors, and, as a special case of social factors - official conventions. The term "constrained" I used above has two meanings - one negative, one positive. In a negative meaning, a constraint imposes limits and makes certain directions less likely, more difficult or impossible. In its positive meaning, constraint means that some directions are easy and obvious and…
clock | April 8, 2008As many of you may be aware, yesterday was the first day of the implementation of the new NIH law which requires all articles describing research funded by NIH to be deposited into PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. Folks at SPARC have put together a list of resources one can consult when looking for answers about the implementation of the access policy.
Bloggers on Nature Network as well as here on Scienceblogs.com will write posts about the NIH bill and its implementation throughout the week (the 'OA week'), informing their readers about the implementation, the next steps to be…
clock | April 7, 2008Bee and Michael and Chad and Eva and Timo and Cameron will be there. And so will I. And many other interesting people. Where? At the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute (Waterloo, Ontario) on Sep. 8th-12th 2008. And it will be fun. This is the blurb of the meeting:
Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these…
clock | April 7, 2008The Science Communication Consortium presents:
Science and Congress: The Role of Think Tanks and Congressional Science Committees
Thursday, April 24, 2008
7:00-8:30pm
CUNY - 365 Fifth Avenue, NY NY (directions below)
Recent years have seen a rise in prominence of legislative issues that control how scientists work or that require scientific information for decision making. How do legislators receive this information, and what are the potential effects of distortion or misunderstanding of it on science in the United States? Join us for a discussion on how science-related think tanks and…
clock | April 1, 2008There have recently been several articles in the media about brain enhancers, so-called Nootropics, or "smart drugs". They have been abused by college students for many years now, but they are now seeping into other places where long periods of intense mental focus are required, including the scientific research labs. Here is a recent article in New York Times:
So far no one is demanding that asterisks be attached to Nobels, Pulitzers or Lasker awards. Government agents have not been raiding anthropology departments, riffling book bags, testing professors' urine. And if there are illicit…
clock | March 30, 2008SEA will train scientists to run for office:
SEA is holding a workshop to train scientists to run for office on May 10th at Georgetown University. If you are a scientist or engineer and have been considering running for office or working on an election campaign, then join us for a crash course on how it's done. Below is a video for the workshop featuring Congressman and former physicist Vern Ehlers.
Hat-tip.
clock | March 21, 2008The WiSE panel earlier today was fun and informative. On the content - later. Perhaps two other SciBlings who were in the audience will have better renditions anyway. The panel was recorded and once the recording and other blog posts are available, I will give you the links. For now, just pictures (under the fold):