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About me
I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and start a blog. I have no idea what will be in it, and no idea who (if anyone) will ever read it, but there has been a lot of discussion in the blogoshpere...
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Groupthink, bean-counting and the REF
When I was a medical student we were encouraged to conduct vaginal examinations on anaesthetized gynaecological patients, so that we could learn how to examine the reproductive system in a relaxed...
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Assessing scientists – a crowdsourcing approach?
As the REF draws closer, there are ongoing debates about how we assess scientists and their merits. Such assessments are critical for hiring and promotion and we are all in agreement that the current...
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Letter to Editor
Dear Journal Editor, Thank you for the invitation to review a paper for your publication. I would be happy to do this. I have just one condition. I love reviewing, I really do. I love the feeling of...
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Why scientists should tweet
Yesterday I attended a Twitter tutorial organised by Jenny Rohn and Uta Frith for the UCL Women group. It reminded me afresh how much I value Twitter, and also how much persuasion I had needed to join...
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The h-index – what does it really measure?
OK I’ll admit it, I look at people’s h-indices. It’s a secret, shameful habit. I do it, even though I know I shouldn’t I do it even when I’m trying not to. I sometimes do it to myself, and then get...
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Is boycotting “luxury journals” really the answer?
Recently, the newly crowned Nobel laureate Randy Schekman caused a controversy by advising scientists to boycott what he called the “luxury journals” Science, Nature and Cell, which he claims create...
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Redefining “professor” won’t fix the leaky pipeline
The leaky pipeline is a well-described phenomenon in which women selectively fail to progress in their careers. In scientific academia, the outcome is that while women make up >50% undergraduates...
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How to make high-res figures for a paper
So you’ve written your paper and made beautiful PowerPoint graphs of your data, and some explanatory schematic diagrams, and it’s all good to go. You log onto the submission website, upload your...
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No more jokes in my lectures
The other day I pulled the curtains back, peered out of the window and said to my husband “lovely day”. Since it was actually lashing down with rain this might have seemed an odd remark, necessitating...
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How to write a winning grant proposal
I have been done a fair bit of grant-reviewing lately, as well as having won a few grants of my own in the past, and have been slowly building up a template of what a winning grant looks like. Here are...
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How to structure a presentation
Once you have done some research and have some results, it is time to present these to the outside world. This might be as an abstract, a poster, a data-blitz talk, a full talk, a journal article, a...
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Research science is a very varied discipline, and almost any personal deficit can be compensated for by working with the right team. I for example am clumsy and fairly useless in the lab, but my team...
View ArticleWhy I’m marching today for a People’s Vote
I’m joining the march in central London today to demand a second referendum on the exit of the UK from the EU. Here are the reasons why, listed in something of a chronological order, and any one of...
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Clarity on our COVID goal
(tl;dr The government should stop confusing everyone and focus on the R0) We are on the rising phase of England’s second COVID wave and the government has just announced that to turn things around the...
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The Monty Hall problem – a frequentist explanation
Every now and then I come across the Monty Hall problem (most recently here) and I go through a cycle: I start with a confident, but wrong, intuition, I work through the explanation for the right...
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