Monthly Archives: October 2016

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.

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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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Ageism “as bad as racism”

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Ageism in the workplace is as bad as racism and over-50s applying for jobs are five times more likely to get interviews if they do not disclose their age, reports David Payne.

Andy Briggs, the UK government’s new adviser on older workers, told The Times this week that 27% of men of UK men aged 65 to 70 are in paid employment, compared to 15% in 2006. The figure for women is 18% and rising, and one in ten people aged over 70 are still working. And employers have an unconscious age bias.

Employers have an unconscious age bias

“Just as there are resources invested in younger workers in coaching and career development, and similarly when women return from career breaks, companies should invest in their older staff and give them midlife career counselling. It’s in business’s interest to do this,” he said. Continue reading →

Finding a place to hang my lab coat

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Australia might be the land of surf, swim and sun, but something’s making all the scientists flee, says Naturejobs journalism competition winner Catherine Carnovale.

When now ex-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot abolished the role of science minister in September 2013, members of Australia’s scientific community fastened our seat belts. This telling sign signalled the first of many cuts to science and innovation before the new government delivered their knock-out punch to the industry in the form of the 2014-15 budget.

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Away from home: Where animals and reagents abound

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We’re bringing you the best stories in lab mobility from Nature India

Every Wednesday, our ‘Away from home’ blog series features one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab recounting his/her experience of working there, the triumphs and challenges, the culture factor, tips for Indian postdocs headed abroad and what he/she misses most about India.

This week’s blog features Mainpal Rana, a PhD from the Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and currently a postdoctoral associate at the Magee-Womens Research Institute Pittsburgh affiliated to University of Pittsburgh, USA. He tells us the joys of not having to wait for reagents for experiments and the woes of not having Indian utensils in an American kitchen.

Mainpal Rana (far left) with his group members from the Magee-Womens Research Institute Pittsburgh.

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Five ways science communication can help you

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Naturejobs journalism competition winner Rachel Harris explains how engaging others in science has benefitted her in the lab

For the past four years I’ve been working in science communication (SciComm), and academia. I’m now mid-way through my PhD — I’m studying on Alzheimer’s disease and I know I would be finding research a lot tougher if I were not involved with science communication.

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Rachel Harris doing some SciComm at Bristol Neuroscience Festival this year

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The Alan Turing law

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In 2012, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Nature marked wartime code-breaker Alan Turing’s wider legacy.

The collection of features and opinion articles, along with an accompanying podcast, acknowledged that in his tragically short life, Turing — whilst working on a machine that would crack Nazi codes and become the modern day computer — shaped many of the hottest fields in science today, including artificial intelligence, biological pattern formation, and computation in physics.

Turing’s suicide came in 1954, two years after his prosecution for gross indecency related to his homosexuality, which was then illegal in England. Turing had divulged to police investigating a burglary at his home that he was in a same sex relationship, and after pleading guilty was given a 12-month course of diethylstilbestrol injections, a synthetic oestrogen which rendered him impotent and caused gynaecomastia. The alternative, prison, would have meant he could no longer work on his ground-breaking mathematical theories. He was posthumously pardoned in 2013.

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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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What are the benefits of reproducibility in science?

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There has always been an element of risk in science, which is why data must be reproducible, explains Ellen Phiddian.

On June 6, 2012, I skipped class to watch the transit of Venus. I was studying in Adelaide, Australia, where the transit lasted from early morning until mid-afternoon and we had a wonderfully sunny day to view it. If I had known a bit more about the history of the transit, I may have been more thankful for that.

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A view of Venus from over the Indian subcontinent. This photograph was taken by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui from the International Space Station on December 5th, 2015

In the 1760s, astronomers made long and convoluted journeys across the globe just to observe Venus crossing the Sun. Scientists at the time wanted the transit recorded from as many continents as possible, so they could use the data to calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It took years of effort and huge sums of money to orchestrate such a viewing. Continue reading →

Away from home: An eye for funds

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We’re bringing you the best stories in lab mobility from Nature India

Every Tuesday, our ‘Away from home’ blog series features one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab recounting his/her experience of working there, the triumphs and challenges, the culture factor, tips for Indian postdocs headed abroad and what he/she misses most about India.

This week we have Moumita Chaki, a PhD from Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB-CSIR), Kolkata, currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School, USA. She talks, among other things, about the problems of funding for independent postdoctoral research that visa-holders like her might face in the US.

Moumita Chaki (inset) with her lab

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