In my early days of grad school, I was going to look at the mechanism of reactions with silicon and gemanium triple bonds. Of course, it eventually became clear that my chemistry talents lay in spectroscopy, computational, data analysis and actually writing the paper and not at all in the actual synthesis. But in the […]
There is a tendency to interpret the phrase “hotly debate” in academic matters as a rather sedate sort of thing. Which is absurd, since scientists are, contrary to popular belief, still people. And that makes them just as prone to absurd drama as knitting enthusiasts and science fiction fans. Though maybe not quite as much […]
Welcome to the new Saturday posting schedule! In honour of that, today we’re talking about… spite! Spite is an amazing thing. It’s actually the reason that Diane Duane started writing for Star Trek, which is simply fantastic. It’s also one of many ways to pick a name for a species. You’re not supposed to pick […]
I was going to try to be topical and do a post about odd things that have won the Nobel Prize. But then I read back through the list and was reminded that the Nobel Committee is in fact dreadfully serious. Needs more Andre Geim, apparently. That’s why we have the Ig Nobels. Then I came […]
Impact factors are an increasingly controversial measure in the scientific literature. The general principle is simple enough. The impact factor of a journal is the number of times papers in that journal from the past two years are cited divided by the number of citable papers published over that time. A general idea of how […]
Today, we are talking about the most beautiful footnote I have ever read. Or at least the best footnote I have ever read in a scientific paper, as the rest of us cannot hope to aspire to the footnote talents of Sir Terry Pratchett. Whether they will admit it or not, every scientist has at […]