Category Archives: Report

Report

Reshaping the research landscape

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A 12 April report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine offers ideas for reshaping the landscape of life-science research across all career levels in the US biomedical research pipeline.

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The proposal from the advisory body in Washington DC calls for more career counselling at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, better data on career outcomes at those levels, three-year caps on postdocs under principal investigators and new non-tenure track academic research positions, among other changes. To implement all the proposals would require a US$2 billion increase to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s budget, as well as subsequent budget raises to prevent future funding bottlenecks.

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Fewer women lead top universities

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Female leadership at the world’s top 200 universities in an international ranking fell this year to 17%, according to a report – a reminder that gender equity in science remains a distant goal.

The University of Oxford has had a female vice chancellor, Louise Richardson, who took up the post in January 2016.

The University of Oxford has a female vice chancellor, Louise Richardson, who took up the post in January 2016. {credit}Getty{/credit}

Just 34 of leading universities named in this year’s annual Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings have female presidents, down 1% from the 36 that were led by women in 2017. Continue reading →

Growing the next generation of scientists

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Scientists have a duty to inspire the next generation of students. To do this, we need greater interaction with young people and the local community.

Naturejobs journalism competition winner Jessica Gorrill

The future of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in the UK is on shaky ground. The numbers of entries at A-level for Biology, Physics and Chemistry dropped by 1%, 2.6% and 1.6% respectively in 2016, according to statistics collected by the Joint Council for Qualifications. This ends the steady increase seen since 2009. Whilst this drop may be attributed to the first year of new government reforms, it could be the beginning of a worrying trend of students neglecting careers in science.

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Broken dreams

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By Paul Smaglik

US postdocs are less satisfied with their lives than are the general public and people in some developing countries, according to a recent survey. Of the survey’s 190 participants, 30% said that they would not recommend postdoctoral training for their peers, and 20% said that they changed their career goals during their postdoc.

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{credit}Keron Greene{/credit}

The survey, published this month in F1000Research, an open-publishing platform, reflects a deep disenchantment with the US postdoctoral programme, perhaps because so many postdocs initially hope that their training will result in tenure-track positions that don’t materialise. While the number of postdoc positions has tripled since 1979, the number of available tenure-track positions has not increased to accommodate them. In the United States, 65% of all PhD holders pursue postdocs, but only 15-20% of those attain a tenure-track position (Nature, 2015; 528 (7580): 22–25). Continue reading →

How to wake up early

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Here’s another infographic — this time helping you to wake up early (and why that’s important)

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Making headlines: Choosing the best title for your paper

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It may feel like an afterthought, but taking the time to write an effective title for your paper could be an easy way of promoting your research, says Helen Robertson.

Writing up a manuscript for publication is a multi-faceted process. You’ve finished the literature review, detailed your methods, discussed your findings and formatted your figures. Now, the only thing left is to come up with the title.

Easy, right?

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Is is that easy to come up with a title? {credit} Alias la Patata by Pierpaolo Voci. CC-SA-3.0 {/credit}

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Science communication: A solution to the upcoming Brexit funding gap?

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Effective science communication could be key to making science part of the identity of the UK, says Naturejobs journalism competition winner Helen Robertson.

Post-Brexit furor is hard to avoid in the UK media at the moment. Endless speculation surrounds what looks to be a socioeconomic experiment on a national scale, and it goes without saying that the implications will be far-reaching across all UK industries.

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Leaving the EU has been projected to cost British science one billion rapidly-falling pounds a year

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Why should we work so hard to make our work reproducible?

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Most scientific work isn’t reproducible. Andy Tay explains why that’s a problem.

The call for reproducibility has never been stronger in the history of science. Since two major pharmaceutical companies, Amgen and Bayer, reported in 2011/12 that their scientists were unable to replicate 80-90% of the findings in landmark papers, scientific news outlets have caught up on the issue. Their reports have catalyzed conversations among stakeholders (policy makers, funding agencies and scientists) to improve reproducibility in science.

Copyright: LEGO

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There are a lot of reasons why reproducibility is so important, and why Amgen and Bayer’s results caused such controversy. I’ll start at the individual level. Continue reading →

Scientific writing: A very short cheat sheet

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Meenakshi Prabhune has a golden rule for effective science writing—keep it simple.

The life of a researcher is incomplete without undergoing the trauma of writing scientific documents: papers, grants, protocols, theses, and so on and on. Most researchers find this stressful, time-consuming, and difficult; and, despite the enormous time and effort invested in writing, I for one often come across close-to-incomprehensible papers while digging through the literature. Why is that the case, and how do we fix it?

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Why don’t scientists always share their data?

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Reproducibility is the cornerstone of science, and it can be compromised by insufficient data in peer-reviewed publications. Should scientists reveal everything?

Publishing Better Science through Better Data writing competition winner Emma Vander Ende.

One of the foundations of science is its reproducibility. Without it, results are not verifiable and are therefore not believable. But even if a published result is true, there is a chance it might not be reproducible, which introduces a plethora of problems for science.

Irreproducible experiments severely limit the ability of the scientific community to build on results and advance the field. This can happen when scientists don’t share enough data, or details of their experiments in papers, and it happens quite frequently.

So why might a scientist not share their data?

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{credit}Comstock/Thinkstock{/credit}

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