Blogs
We welcomed two new bloggers to the Network this week. Arvand Pillai is a biology student from Dubai, but currently studying at University of Austin, Texas. His blog Fins to Feet will range across the sciences, but will tend mostly towards issues of comparative anatomy, paleobiology, taxonomy and other aspects of ‘deep time’ natural biology. Pream Neote, meanwhile, hails from Cork, Ireland. Her blog Carpe Diem, Science will chronicle her journey from an undergraduate to a graduate to a science communicator.
More established blogger Lauren Blair wrote a critical post about the peer-review system, asking ‘is anyone fixing it’. Rather than recapitulating all the usual inherent flaws of the system, Lauren focused on the areas that should work, but fall down because of time pressure and human nature:
As you all know, growing a tough skin is all part of the process. Accepting the fact that one of your reviewers just didn’t actually read your proposal or noting that he/she refers to you by a completely different name in critiques indicating that he cut and pasted from another review is all part of the peer review process. Now that I’ve gotten five rejections on my postdoctoral fellowship I find my skin is not yet as tough as it should be.
Perhaps greater collaboration and openness about data at an earlier stage might solve some of the problems. Frank Norman highlights a new website, CoLab, that aims to ‘make it stupid easy to center a discussion around protocols, data, plots, published papers, papers in progress, simulations, code, or any other component of scientific research’.
Jeremy Bentham, the 19th Century scholar resurrected in the blogosphere, pondered the imminent construction of a major biomedical lab behind the British Library, a site once earmarked for further book and document storage.
Other good posts come from Joanna Scott on the Open Science Summit, Tom Webb finds himself in the public eye following important recent findings in his field of marine biology, and Martin Fenner interviews Jason Rollins, development manager of Endnote.
Forums
Over on the PhD students forum, one unlucky researcher laments the lack of progress on a lab rotation, where lack of funding, lack of work and lack of direction are leading to low motivation. In a helpful comments thread, several people share experiences and suggest solutions. Amit Kumar Singh, meanwhile, spices things up by asking ‘which is better, Nature or Science_?). ’_Cell’, answers one wag.
The forums are also useful for discussing scientific methodology. Over on the Population Genetics forum, one scientist asks about comparing Fst values (measures of genetic distance), and receives a good response. Another researcher has a query about cDNA microarray hybridization, and still needs a few tips.
And Finally…
Are you a poet but you don’t know it? Frank Norman highlights a new competition to find a poem on ‘improving the human’. The contest challenge comes from the ESRC’s Genomic Forum in collaboration with the Scottish Poetry Library. You have until October 7.