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The Outrage Factor – Then and Now
There’s a lot of outrage about outrage storming around women in science and science journalism at the moment. And fear of causing it, too. It’s easy to cast outrage as inimical to thinking and...
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The Angelina Effect and the Mixed Blessing of Celebrities and Risk Awareness
“I hope that other women can benefit from my experience”, wrote Angelina Jolie of her double mastectomy. She showed great courage and generosity, sharing data and emotions with clarity. It’s been...
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The Value of 3 Degrees of Separation on Twitter
The more interconnected our Twitter networks get, the more the distance between us and total strangers shrinks [PDF]. That’s not always a good thing. Twitter is fabulous. There’s fun, camaraderie,...
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5 Key Things to Know About Data on Adverse Effects
The potential harms of interventions are tricky to get a handle on. Our feelings about them are, too. It wouldn’t be easy – even if we didn’t have to deal with people trying to beat up, or minimize,...
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Why Aren’t We All Machine-Friendly Researchers?
I blame the writing and research impact advice we get. At least in part. It doesn’t prepare us as well as it could for our relationship with machines. When we’re told to think of “the reader”, what...
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Curiosity to Scrutiny: the Early Days of Science Journalism
1894: “[T]he acknowledged leaders of the great generation that is now passing away, Darwin notably, addressed themselves in many cases to the general reader, rather than to their colleagues. But...
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Science and the Rise of the Co-Authors
Physicists set a new record this year for number of co-authors: a 9-page report needed an extra 24 pages to list its 5,154 authors. That’s a mighty long way from science’s lone wolf origins! Leonhart...
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Wikipedia Activism and Diversity in Science
There’s no getting around it. A lot of scientists are white men, and it’s always been that way. But it’s never been the whole picture. Getting a better picture of scientists whose work or lives are...
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CRISPR, Priority, and Credit: Do We Need to Edit Science’s DNA?
“She’s like the poster child for collaboration”. Jon Miller was talking last weekend at the AAAS session about scientists’ virtues. The “she” was Jennifer Doudna, who had given a talk the evening...
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How to Spot Research Spin: The Case of the Not-So-Simple Abstract
Spin doctoring is deliberate manipulation. I don’t think everyday research spin is intended to deceive, though. Mostly it’s because researchers want to get attention for their work and so many others...
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The Skills We All Need to Move Past “Anti-Science” and “Us”
If you didn’t believe a prevailing scientific position, you used to be part of a small fringe. To get information on your side, you would hunt around a certain type of bookshop, and subscribe to...
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5 Tips For Avoiding P-Value Potholes
The hunt for p-values less than 0.05 has left many of science’s roadways riddled with potholes. More than 50% of them in the biomedical literature are wrong, according to one reckoning, maybe 30% or...
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Breaking Down Pros and Cons of Preprints in Biomedicine
There’s a lot of hype in scientific publications – and about them, too. Hype doesn’t help if we want to make informed decisions about where we submit our work, and where we invest our peer reviewing...
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A Reader’s Guide to Conflicts of Interest in Biomedicine
The academic clinician in this cartoon needs 15 slides to list all the drug and device manufacturers he’s received money from recently. By the time he gets to the end of all that, will you think...
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Unsnarling the Complexity of Naming and Shaming
Shame isn’t always powerful. It can cause just a pinprick of discomfort that’s not even blush-worthy. But it can be so excruciating, that a person will end their life to escape it. It’s used against...
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Flying Flak and Avoiding “ad hominem” Response
It was easy to work out where I stood in a fairly recent outburst of name-calling from one of the pillars of science. I’m totally a data/research parasite! It wasn’t quite so easy to work out where...
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Between Science’s Secretive, Elitist Past and Open, Accessible Future
Editor’s note: Read Hilda’s October 26, 2016 @redditscience conversation on Open Access in Action here plos.io/OAweek16AMA An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an...
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Post-Truth Antidote: Our Roles in Virtuous Spirals of Trust in Science
It’s a classic vicious cycle. Post-internet, misinformation and ideas previously doomed to be only fringe-worthy spread far and fast. The faster misinformation travels, the less scrutiny it’s...
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Silence: Everyday Betrayals of Research Participants
Headline, The Times, London, September 1990. Many of them were watching the evening TV news on the BBC, with no idea of the blow that was about to hit. They were cancer patients at a center in...
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When Science Polarizes: A Personal Activist Story with Evidence
There was another one of those “we’re living in echo chambers” papers recently. It’s from the same data on science and conspiracy theory social media that triggered a wave of “Facebook is making us...
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