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…
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Bias How to Spot Research Spin: The Case of the Not-So-Simple AbstractRead more
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Science Communication CRISPR, Priority, and Credit: Do We Need to Edit Science’s DNA?Read more
“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…
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Black History Month Wikipedia Activism and Diversity in ScienceRead more
There’s no getting around it. A lot of scientists are white men, and it’s always been that way. But it’s never…
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Annual open access roundup Open Access 2015: A Year Access Negotiators Edged Closer to the BrinkRead more
It’s the year many negotiators got seriously tough on double dipping – charging for both the ability to read (via subscriptions) and for…
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Health Pylori Story #4: The Microbe RevoltRead more
Could any life form survive in the stomach’s sizzling acid? Most thought there was no chance! And yet…there were occasional unexplained sightings&hellip…
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Health Pylori Story #3: Drug Wars – The Lab Strikes BackRead more
Scientists plotted in their labs, looking for a chemical target to stop the acid. The first lead was a hormone trigger for…
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Health Pylori Story #2: Journey to the Center of the StomachRead more
For hundreds of years, doctors battled dim light that burned! Lenses and gadgets that showed too little! But when the breakthrough to…
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Health Pylori Story #1: Acid AttackRead more
Digestion! Stomach grinds, fermentation sparked by vitalism… Even Pasteur believed it! But others said chemistry could do it. They found… acid. But…
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Listicles 8 PubMed Ninja SkillsRead more
A few million people use PubMed every day – many pretty much every day. And everyone’s got their own habits, shortcuts, and…
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History Science and the Rise of the Co-AuthorsRead more
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…
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History Curiosity to Scrutiny: the Early Days of Science JournalismRead more
1894: “[T]he acknowledged leaders of the great generation that is now passing away, Darwin notably, addressed themselves in many cases to…
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Science Communication Why Aren’t We All Machine-Friendly Researchers?Read more
I blame the writing and research impact advice we get. At least in part. It doesn’t prepare us as well as it could…