Blogs

Erika Cule approaches her ‘upgrade exam’ – a process by which she’ll be raised from Masters to PhD status after reporting to a panel of assessors. Erika writes about her preparations and reservations on the impending milestone:

Another point was to be sure of the basics. This is something I am going to have to specifically prepare for. I have a tendency to over-complicate simple, background questions and get myself flustered – something that happens more when I feel under pressure. I struggled to write (and re-write, and re-write) the introduction to my report. As I complained to my lab-mate, how am I supposed to write the introduction when my assessor wrote the book on the topic?

Long dead philosopher Jeremy Bentham provides his own unique take on the UK’s recent spending review and its implications for research:

Particle physicist shall be pitched against poststructuralist; haematologist against Hebraist; palaeontologist against palaeographer. I am sure there are some among those reading these words who would favour the withdrawal of all public funds from the so-called ‘arts’ in favour of the sciences; and others again who would happily see the attrition of support for all disciplines, provided that their own arcane specialism remain untouched. There may even be some who would question the value of funding from public monies the study and elucidation of the writings of a two-hundred-year-deceased philosopher.

Kausik Datta also considers funding issues, this time in the US, and raises concerns about the possible direction the new leadership in the House of Representatives might pursue for climate research.

Bob O’Hara puts together a cracking analysis of the rates of paper retraction, bringing his statistical prowess to bear on the question of which nations have the highest retraction rates due to fraud and error. Bob also writes this week on recent cases of the libel laws interfering with science.

In other highlights, Jennifer Rohn discusses the quagmire of gaining copyright permissions for her new novel, Farooq Khan discusses what humans can learn from ants and bees, Tom Webb is more antenatal than ant, Mike Fowler considers fluctuations in population dynamics, and David De Roure talks datascopes and intellectual access ramps.

Also, we welcome back Jean-Etienne Poirrier, who uses his first post for three years to highlight an inspirational TED talk by Jamie Oliver.

In other news…

Bloggers may be interested in a competition taking place over on Science 3.0, which awards prizes to the best blog post in a given category each month. For November, the theme is evolution, and you still have a couple of days to enter.

Jargon busting: Colin Schultz is interested in removing jargon terms, or at least concepts that non-scientific readers might not be familiar with, from popular reporting. He’s issued a challenge to bloggers to rewrite a piece of science news with all the terms explained:

So here I propose an experiment to any science journalists, science communicators, or scientists who want to have a go at it. Pick a piece of science news, a story that is crafted specifically for a general audience. Then, go through the story word-by-word, and expand or explain every single idea that you think might be a road block to an interested reader’s understanding. It’s up to you how far down that hole you want to go, but just be honest about whether or not that acronym or quirky name would make any sense if you didn’t have the experience you have.

We’d love to support the idea on Nature Network if any bloggers are up to the challenge.

And finally…

Fancy a T-shirt bearing this geeky design?

The ever-talented Viktor Poór’s the man to speak to.