Quotes from the science blogosphere: Tip for grad students and postdocs

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(...) This brings me to the observation that it is not just the case that we evil PIs only train PhD level scientists for technical work. It is also the case that some many trainees show little evidence that they themselves understand that bench work IS just technical work. If you don't have a conceptual grasp of what you are trying to understand, big picture, you are soooo not ready to be a PI. A scientist, yes indeed, but not a scientist ready to head up an independent research program. You don't get there only by reading papers. You get there by writing. Writing academic text. Whether that be for a dissertation that will only moulder in the library or for a manuscript ready for publication.

-DrugMonkey, on a post entitled "The Care and Feeding of Your PI: A tip for grad students and postdocs"

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

I read the paper (Wolfe-Simon et al., 2010) and I can assure you that nothing in that paper is going into my biochemistry textbook. I predict that a year from now we'll have forgotten about this discovery. I'm not even sure it's going to be confirmed but, if it is, the result is pretty trivial. 

Larry Moran on the recent media hype about the paper "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus".

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

Kary Mullis

"(....) Of course this record only applies to scientists who became quacks after getting the Nobel Prize. That lets Kary Mullis off the hook"

Larry Moran on his post entitled "Nobel Laureates Become Pseudoscientists"

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

The editing process requires interaction and patience, which may explain why some PIs choose to take over the draft of a developing student rather than teach them how to write it themselves. But, if we want to raise the level of writing in journals, books, and grants, this process can't be rushed. We should all to learn to edit just as well as, or even better than, we write.

-Dr O, on her post Editor's choice

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

In this day and age, anyone who equates junk DNA with non-coding DNA isn't worth reading.

Larry Moran, discussing an article by Steve Talbott published in The New Atlantis.

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Quotes from the science blogosphere: Misusing the impact factor

"Even a cursory look at the basic statistics should tell any half-competent scientist with an ounce of quantitative analysis in their bones that the Impact Factor of journals in which a given researcher publishes tells you nothing whatsoever about the quality of their work"

(...)

Metrics are unlikely to go away – after all, if we didn’t have them we might have to judge people’s work by actually reading it – but as professional measurers and analysts of the world we should be embarrassed to use JIFs to measure people and papers

On a blog post by Cameron Neylon entitled "Warning: Misusing the journal impact factor can damage your science!". Interesting reading, check it out.

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"In terms of grammar, English is possibly one of the least logical and most puzzling languages there is. This is the result of its hybrid origins. Modern English is basically a mixture of a Teutonic language (Old English) and a Romance language (Norman French). These come from entirely different sub-groups of Indo-European. To be sure, this fusion even happened almost a thousand years ago, but we’ve never gotten over it."

Henry Gee (Senior editor at Nature), as a reply to a question at the "Ask the Nature Editor" forum.

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"(...) is that the rule of peer-review is not to just vote something up or down, but rather provide constructive, sometimes qualitative advice or suggestions, to help improve the science"

- Deepak Singh on his recent post entitled "Peer-review has a place".

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"As Nature's experiment in open peer review showed, and as can be seen from the lack of commenting on papers in Nature and other journals that encourage it, researchers see little to be gained from open discourse before or after publication. Not only are they busy, as the above quotes attest, but there's no credit to be gained, and some risk if one makes an erroneous or critical statement in public"

From a recent editorial at Nature (again, not exactly from the blogosphere)

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"By setting up strict reference limits, the journals instead tend to devalue the reference system by leading one to believe that referencing a paper is nothing but a mere courtesy, as opposed to an obligation"

-Editorial at Lab Times (not exactly a quote from the blogosphere, but still).

I agree. Limiting reference number and failing to rightfully acknowledge the correct and original source of a claim, idea or result, due to "space constrains", is frankly, irresponsible.

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"PC at work, Mac at home- it's like a computer mullet- business in the front, party in the back..."

-Alan Marnett (BenchFly founder, who twitted this at me)

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

(...) but it struck me that if this candidate were to have a piano land on his head tomorrow, there would still be plenty of people pursuing the types of questions that he plans to pursue.

Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde in a post arguing that candidates to fill a position at their Department, have not "carved out a scientific niche for him or herself that seems distinct from the territory occupied by other people in the field".

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

If your results sound amazing, take a deep breath & think of several tests that could debunk them. Then do those ten tests. If they survive, go to bed & think of another batch of tests.

Keith Robison at his blog Omics! Omics!, heavily criticizing an article published in BMC Genomics. A cool fact: the editors of BMC Genomics invited Keith to formalize his post (and his comment at the article's website) into an article that was recently published!

Another quote, from the comments section of that same post:

(...) one of my great frustrations with peer review is spending a non-trivial amount of time constructively criticizing a manuscript, only to see it resurface in all its flawed glory at some other journal. Gah!

-ChrisC

Check more quotes from the science blogosphere here.

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

(...) I need to start acting like a politician when I particpate in the question and answer session of a talk- i.e. if I don't like the question, I should talk about a question that I want to answer instead of the one that was asked.

[...]

I think many of us, even though we are no longer students, are used to being tested and grilled and answering questions like students. But in fact, we are under NO obligation to entertain retarded questions during talks. Fuck that shit. We are in charge of our own show, and we call the shots..

Candid Engineer in Academia, on a post on her blog entitled "Conference Questions and Getting Angry"

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"We've all been there- in the lab, working hard on an experiment, trying to achieve the goals of a larger project. That's what we do, right? Day in and day out. But there seems to be a small problem:

The shit is not working.

Now, I will be upfront about the fact that my shit almost never works at first. As such, I am generally nonplussed but such failure. Minor annoyances in the grand scheme of things- I often tell my coworkers that I will attempt a new assay or method 5-7 times before I give up. Inevitably, the problem will sort itself out when I change my seeding density or the timing alleged by the assay "instructions" or the color of the shirt I wear when I run the experiment".

(my emphasis)

-Candid Engineer in a post on her blog on how to proceed when you are against experiments that just won't work.

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

"I have, on at least one occasion been unfortunate enough to receive several barely readable manuscripts (in which I strongly suggested someone look over the manuscript for proper English, in addition to offering my own grammatical and typographical corrections) from a particular journal. When they came calling again, I told them to forget it, they had filled their quota of reviews with me for the year and they needed to find some other poor sucker willing to read some horribly written manuscripts".

(my emphasis)

This was written by Thomas Joseph, as a comment on a fascinating blog entry at DrugMonkey's blog about rejecting manuscripts solely based on it being poorly written (bad use of English). Check it out. C'mon, go there now... I give you permission to leave my blog (for a minute or two) :-)

An example of horrid English use....

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

This one goes beyond the blogosphere world and into my Friendfeed account:

"(...) remember that reviewers comments, even editors, don't have to make sense"

-Mr Gunn


(To get a sense of what "Quotes from the science blogosphere" is all about, check this post)

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Quotes from the science blogosphere 2

Williamson's hypothesis that caterpillars arose from an accidental mating between butterflies and velvet worms "is the most stupid thing that has ever been proposed"

-Gonzalo Giribet (in a interview for Nature)

The alluded article is a controversial one published in PNAS, a few months ago. This article raised a lot of questions regarding the soon-to-be defunct Track I submission route in this journal (See Good bye track I papers: PNAS)

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Quotes from the science blogosphere

I read a lot of blogs and I love it. Most (all) of them are of a scientific nature, although their orientation varies: some discuss primary research literature and science in general and a few others are funny rants about life as a scientist. They are all part of the fantastic science blogosphere experience I've been living since last January, and I value them deeply. During lab downtime , I can just sit down and browse through my Google Reader to see what's new on my favorite blogs.

Every so often, I come across with a funny quote that I usually then share through my Facebook status or my Gmail nickname. Last night, while preparing my "Picks of the Week", I read a comment on one of the posts that made me crack up, and immediately shared it through the channels mentioned. It then occur to me that I could also share them through my blog for others to enjoy.

So here I am, sharing just two of the most recent ones, but I will be sharing more as I find them:

(...) cell signalling is the most boring subject in cell biology. There are of course exceptions, but if you've spent your entire PhD studying ONE residue of a X-kinase-kinase-kinase doing in-vitro auto-phosphorylation assays and cloned 92 different point mutations, I feel bad for you.

-Anonymous Coward, as a comment on this post at Bayblab.

It is my solid faith that the intelligent designer took a few hits of LSD on the 7th day, and created the protists. True story.

-Psi Wavefunction, as a comment on this post at Lab Rat.


I then remembered that a few weeks ago, I actually shared a quote from a fellow blogger here at my blog [Rant by fellow blogger: manuscript reviewing]

(...) I must admit it was difficult not to laugh while trying to find a diplomatic way of saying that the manuscript was the scientific equivalent of vomit and that it appeared to have been conceived, executed and written by a turnip.

-Professor in Training (blog post, here).


I promise to keep them coming. I will label these posts under "blog quotes".

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