This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.
Join Nature Networkers and other scientists on 7 November (2008) for a Nature Network Berlin dinner with Arianne Heinrichs, Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. Students are particularly welcome. Arianne will be in Berlin to give a lecture about scientific writing to students of the FMP (Leibnitz-Institut for Molekulare Pharmakologie in Forschungsverbund Berlin). See the Nature Network Berlin group for more details.
Two other upcoming events are on 18 November (2008) at the R&D society in London. Scott Keir highlights a seminar ‘Facilitating Creativity and Innovation’, which will cover how to optimize the relationship between R&D (research and development) and marketing – essential for successful commercialization of technology. Later in the day, Dr Allyson Reed, Director of Strategy and Communications of the UK Technology Strategy Board will speak on ‘Connect and Catalyse’ – how the Technology Strategy Board accelerates innovation. This will be followed by a discussion dinner with Allyson. (More details at Scott’s post.) And here is an early ‘heads-up’ for the next Talk Science evening at the British Library in London, on 10 December (2008). The subject is ‘Infectious disease: what can evolution do for us?’ Please join the Nature Network group and make your own suggestions for topics to discuss in December.
‘Inspired’ by the hundreds of articles published weekly, particularly in large journals such as Journal of Biological Chemistry and PLOS One, Richard Grant asks whether anyone actually reads journals for research articles any more. Do people take each new issue of a journal (online or print) and read through the table of contents? Do people read tables of contents via email alerts or RSS feeds? Plenty of answers follow about how people read, and organize the articles they bookmark or accumulate.
Craig Rowell has an unusual take on search. “I believe that a key to improving literature searches is to know what question (not merely the hypothesis) the researcher thinks their work has answered. Knowing that an article feels it answers more of a “what” question rather than a “how” question could be of tremendous help when looking for relevant literature.” He asks readers for feedback on his proposal of ‘question inclusion’ as a search field.
In a conversation about the recently awarded Nobel prize in chemistry, Heather Etchevers responds to the suggestion that as the gender distribution among active scientists becomes more even, a (slowly) growing number of women will be awarded future Nobels. She points out that a pertinent question in this regard is that of gender equity among the nominators. Anna Kushnir checked out the numbers: the committee on physiology has no women, chemistry has two of a total of seven, physics two of a total of eight, and economics one of a total of eight.
Stephen Curry was surprised to hear on the radio an interview with a scientist who claims to have “converted the electrical signal from a nerve cell into an audible sound and claimed that this revealed a kind of cellular intelligence. As far as I can tell, this ‘finding’ is not based on any kind of peer-reviewed research. It seemed to be pure supposition”. The reliability of science as reported by the media is dissected in the comments that follow the post.
There is a fresh wind of hope for young italian scientists amidst the recent government restrictions to temporary employments, writes Poltronieri Palmiro at the Nature Network Italy forum. “It comes from a regional Institution, Regione Piemonte, an example to be followed by other counties in order to provide adequately to the innovation needs of industry and public research bodies. Recently, in a meeting with authorities of Puglia Region, I suggested that in addition to the salary, the regional authority should provide in the grants also a budget to cover research costs in autonomy from the bureacracy of the hosting Institute”. Read on at the Italy forum.
Finally, if you ever wondered how your salary compares with a football coach, check out Mike Fowler’s post When comics stop being funny. The subseqent discussion is perhaps aptly summed up by science writer Brian Clegg’s comment: “If it’s any consolation, the bar for an average author’s income probably wouldn’t even be visible on the scale of that chart. AND they have even more insecure jobs than football coaches.”