Comments for first half of October 2015

Dynamic Ecology rediscovers Up-goer Five. Been there, done that. It’s fun, but don’t confuse it with a path to clarity, as Carl Zimmer notes.

Prof-Like Substance talks about what he’s seeing in National Science Foundation grant proposals.

Comments for second half of September 2015

DrugMonkey asks how much it costs to generate a publication in something like Science or Nature or Cell. This was probably prompted by Steve Ramirez’s estimate that it took $3 million to generate one of his papers.

Comments for first half of September 2015

Dynamic Ecology looks at the current scientific publishing field.

Comments for second half of August 2015

Prof-Like Substance asks for hiring committees to treat their applicants, like, you know, people who deserve to know the status of their application. Madness!

Stephen Heard at Scientist Sees Squirrel doesn’t see many big problems arising from kiloauthored papers.

Comments for first half of August 2015

Adam Calhoun has a post looking at how often neurons spike in the cortex, and what that means for encoding information in brains.

Comments for second half of July 2015

Dr. Becca talks about how to get yourself noticed as a scientist, in a good way.

Richard Poynder has a piece looking at one scientific publisher’s policies on embargoes, which concludes with a sour analysis of the effect of the open access movement: pretty much none, he reckons.

Small Pond Science looks at that “Facebook for scientists” site, ResearchGate. Funny how showing that people read your papers makes you pay attention.

Comments for first half of July, 2015

Katie looks at the thorny issue of data ownership.

Nice post from Duffy Ma about the grand challenges in biology.

Comments for first half of June 2015

Discussion on Drugmonkey’s blog about that awful “Just put up with the staring” advice.

Proflike Substance talks about making NSF grants more sustainable for labs. But why is it always federal funding agencies who have to fix training schemes?

At The Leap, Kirk Englehardt wonders if critics of Tim Hunt’s sexist comments may have done more harm than good. (Um, I’m going to say, “No.”) Meanwhile, Athene Donald defends Hunt (though not too well, in my view), but I do agree with her that it’s good to try to move the conversation forward.

Comments for first half of May 2015

The issue of how science funding should be distributed (To the few, the proud? Or share the wealth?) is brought up at Scientists Sees Squirrel.

Comments for second half of April 2015

Dead Sea News has a nice new paper on science outreach. Love that. But confused as to why it’as in a computational biology journal.

DrugMonkey asks why people are scientists.

Comments for first half of April 2015

Awesome discussion over at Small Pond Science about the disparities in the National Science Foundations graduate research fellowship program (GRFP). It looks like institutional prestige is a great big trump card in competitions, again.

The discussion about GRFPs continues at Savage Minds.

Neuroskeptic wonders what you need to make a perfect brain scanner.

At Mistress of the Animals blog, Potnia Theron looks at why we do what science we do. (Spoiler alert: money can have a bloody awful lot to do with it.)

Pondering Blather examines a forthcoming article on papers that don’t get many citations.

Mark worries about “self-funded” doctoral degrees. Is this exploitation? Maybe, but I’m curious about where the line is drawn. Should we be drawing lines in the sand over “self-funded” master’s degrees, particularly with thesis? Undergraduate degrees that are research intensive?

Comments for second half of March 2015

Lenny Teytelman has been blogging about his crowdfunding experience.

Comments for first half of March 2015

Scientist on Fire has a two-body problem. Anyone else have advice?

Comments for second half of February 2015

The Molecular Ecologist has a some nifty survey results about how scientists pick which journal to publish in. Surprise! That intangible perfume of “prestige” and Impact Factor are two of the three biggest factors.

Bethany Brookshire introduces the lovely word parthenogenesis.

DrugMonkey asks readers in graduate programs about their entry requirements.

I make a cameo in an important post on scientists paying expenses out of pocket.

Comments for second half of January 2015

Small Pond Science has a look at science crowdfunding, which was partly informed by the PLOS ONE paper I contributed to on the subject.

The PLOS ONE paper also makes an appearance in a substantive article on science crowdfunding that appeared in several Australian newspapers, including The Age:

When crowdfunding sites first appeared about 2009, many scientists pooh-poohed the notion of raising research money through them, theorising that only those projects with gimmicky mass-market appeal – which they called “panda science” – would attract attention.

But that idea has been debunked.

In the first major study on crowdfunding in the sciences, which was published in December in PLoS One, the study's authors found that the online audience was willing to fund a wide variety of projects, even those in areas such as statistics or little-known invertebrates - which typically aren’t considered sexy.

What seemed to factor more in the success of a project was whether a researcher was able to develop a sufficient fan base. Being able to connect with a large audience through outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube appeared to correlate with increased levels of funding.

Comments for second half of December, 2014

Terry McGlynn makes the case that professors shouldn’t be sharing student gaffes.

Comments for first half of December 2014

The Guardian is collecting doctoral dissertation dedications. I contributed mine.

Small Pond Science looks at reference managers. Indispensable for any academic, in my opinion.

Jacquelyn Gill has become one of the latest in the online science community to have a crack at crowdfunding. She had one of the bigger successes I’ve seen, successfully raising over $10,000. She summarizes her experience here.

I make a cameo in Kelly Weinersmith's thesis. Shucks. You rock, Kelly.

Comments for second half of November, 2014

Worth talking about on the web...

I make a cameo in SV-POW on the future of music and academic publishing. I show up in the comments, too.

Jon Tennant reviews a recent open access conference.

Comments for first half of November 2014

The Vaquero controversy and what this means for UTRGV women’s teams. (They won’t be “Lady Vaqueros.”)

Jon Tennant, Mike Taylor, and Jacquelyn Gill all look at conference tweeting.

Comments for second half of October 2014

Mathbionerd has a look at different funding sources.