Inadvertent Support
Everyday, thousands of colleagues use social media to express surprise, dislike, or even outrage for the impact factor, for articles …
Category Archives: Essays
Magnanimity pays off
Francis Crick exceeded the brilliance of his famous double helix model by this magnanimous act:
Chalk talks are awesome!
Interviews for tenure track positions are not to be feared but to be anticipated and enjoined. If your experience is anything like mine, you will meet many thoughtful colleagues and perhaps even start new collaborations. Enjoy the adventure!
The dark age of 20th century science
Dogma held reason back for half a century. It happened in the age of “modern science” and the atomic bomb. It happened because of sloppy reasoning and twisting arguments in favour of the preferred conclusion, the dogma of the time. What could be more antithetical to science ? What is the antidote ?
Can mere hype succeed in the long-term ?
Michael I. Jordan, one of the most prominent statisticians of our time, warns that “The overeager adoption of big data …
Honor or Disrespect
Before presenting, a scientist is introduced to a group of expert scientists with a list of prizes, awards, grants, titles …
Respect for the limits of quantification
Maybe in our efforts to be quantitative and objective, we have focused on what can be easily quantified (quantity) and pretended that it reflects what really counts (quality). A measure of humility and realignment is in order if we are to preserve and further the research enterprise.
Tell me about the science, not the prizes!
One might introduce Egas Moniz as the great Nobel laureate and Dmitri Mendeleev as a chemist with few great awards. Much more informatively, however, one should introduce Egas Moniz as an influential protagonist of lobotomy and Dmitri Mendeleev as the co-inventor of the periodic table of elements.
Discoveries lie hidden behind the façade of popular assumptions
One can come up with very many reasonable trade-offs that theoretically could account for aerobic glycolysis. Such hypotheses make sense and appear plausible but are diametrically opposing each other.
A Wonderful Christmas with Mysterious Oscillations
Doing the sampling was time-consuming and demanding in the extreme, but I was so eager to know what was happening that I spent Christmas Day of 2010 collecting samples, the ones that ultimate were used for our article. It is still the longest, the happiest and the most exciting Christmas Day I have had in my life.
