This is a joint post by Scott Ramsay and Steve.  The topic was Scott’s idea, and Scott (mostly) wrote the part about scare quotes.  The boring stuff at the beginning is (mostly) Steve’s. Photo: scare quotes by Scazon via flickr.com, CC BY 2.0. Quotation marks seem, on the face of it, the simplest of the […]

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Image: Blackpoll warbler (one of the declining species), © Simon Barrette CC BY-SA 3.0 via wikimedia.org You saw the headline (and maybe you read the study): three billion lost birds.  Three billion fewer birds in North America than there were in 1970.  It’s eye-catching, isn’t it?  There are (as is usually true) some reasons to […]

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Image: Polishing the chimney of a Burrell Traction Engine.  © Oast House Archives, CC BY-SA 2.0.  What? You think this is only tenuously connected to the post?  My friend, tenuous connections are my thing. One of the most exciting parts of being a mid-to-late-career researcher is seeing the scientific writing produced by the early-career researchers […]

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This is a guest post by Bastien Castagneyrol.  This is an issue I’ve thought about (as have others), and like Bastien, I don’t quite know what action to take.  I like Bastien’s climbing metaphor.  In a related one, the journey from subscriber-pays paywall to author-pays-open-access crosses a very rugged landscape, with crevasses both obvious and […]

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I’ve mentioned this before: I’m terrible at titles.  That’s why there’s been a long series of title changes for my forthcoming book.  (Look for it in March 2020, from Yale University Press.  Believe it or not, you can actually pre-order it now, but don’t worry, I’ll remind you as the publication date approaches.)  The book […]

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Image: Experiment, © Nick Youngson via picpedia.org, CC BY-SA 3.0 I’m often puzzled by the reluctance of scientists to think scientifically and do science.  “Wait”, you say, “that’s a bizarre claim – we do science all the time, that’s why we’re called scientists”.  Well, yes, and no. We love doing science on nature – the […]

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Image: You know what you’re walking into. © Gary J. Wood via flicrk.com, CC BY-SA 2.0 This is a joint post (argument and rejoinder) from Steve Heard and Simon Leather.  You can find it on either of their blogs. Should a paper title tell you what the paper is about?  Yes, but not the way […]

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Image: Puzzle pieces CC0 via pxhere.com Well, not just me, of course.  I co-organized* a conference (this one).  Still. So, quick post this week – as I write, I’m procrastinating some last-minute tasks; and when this posts, I’ll be on the conference centre floor putting out (hopefully metaphorical) fires. Here’s what I learned organizing a […]

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Image: Proofreading marks, by volkspider via flickr.com, CC BY 2.0 Like many of us, I suspect, I have a love-hate relationship with writing.  I love having written.  And I enjoy certain kinds of writing and certain parts of the writing process (oddly, I really like shortening things; even more oddly, I just added this parenthetical […]

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Image © Sasquatch I via flickr.com, CC BY 2.0 This is a guest post by Katie Grogan.  Her Twitter thread on this topic got lots of traction, but Twitter threads are a bit ephemeral, so I invited her to share her experience and advice here. Disclaimer: These opinions are my [Katie’s] own, garnered from research […]

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