Amid the misguided rhetoric of some who suggest that the science community cease trying to share their expertise and knowledge with the public, and the all-to-common response to expertise, I came across a thoughtful piece worth commenting on here.

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake Young posts on the problem of expertise. He writes:

The problem of expertise is not that this special knowledge is undesirable. Special knowledge is both socially useful and personally satisfying. Rather the problem of expertise is a social problem, namely how those who know better should relate to those who don’t.

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Relating to my recent comments on seminars, a beginning grad student or undergrad researcher might wonder why journal club is such a good thing. Or you might not be wondering, since the benefits are more or less the same: digesting, discussing and analyzing research findings. But whether or not you realize the benefits of journal club participation, I’ve noticed that a lot of young PhD and Master’s candidates horribly under-prepared to present a paper. As a result, I thought I would enumerate some of the commonly held expectations of the person presenting the day’s journal article.
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Continuing in the same frame of mind as my last post, What Comes After Grad School, I was thinking about something that Alex said:

It reminds me of a bit of advice given to a fellow postdoc by Dr. Richard Hynes - try to attend every seminar. I would also add that in my comparatively short science career I have found that conferences are great as well. You meet people, people meet you, you learn, you communicate, and you develop this type of long distance acquaintance.

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It’s no secret that science journalism is, with a few notable exceptions, very lackluster in general. It seems to a lot of biologists whom I speak to that cell and molecular biology, genetics, and related fields, are especially underrepresented in the press. Yesterday, Alex vented a bit on this, reflecting on the capacity for wonder in the fundamental features of life, and lamenting the public’s overall ignorance of this branch of science. The conversation in the comments looks to get a bit off-track, as it usually does: will creationists quote-mine Alex on his descriptions of cellular complexity, and adaptability vis-a-vis nature vs. nurture. I think though that the original topic, attention in the media, deserves far more discussion however.

Who are the voices that carry discussions of the subcellular world forth to the public? Astronomy and the biology of organisms have long captured the public’s interest, and geophysics has gained repute in the past decade as well. We have a handful of Nobel Laureates, such as Harold Varmus, trying to popularize subcellular biology, but where are the rockstars? (moonlighting musician scientists like Greg Graffin aside). Read more »

During a research project, how do you record your data, conclusions and the samples you produce? What about ideas, insights and thought-trains? It would be very useful to have a good system to easily store all of these valuable products of your work and retrieve them when you need to look at your data or your thoughts on a particular problem weeks, months, or years later. Read more »

For every half-way decent mentor or adviser that an aspiring scientist comes across, it sometimes seems as though there is another lurking, who is simply a jerk^*. Let’s face it - scientists aren’t consistently “people-persons.” Maybe they had bad mentors, and inadvertently end up passing on the karma. Or maybe science just attracts a higher-than-average number of socially inept individuals - who knows. Read more »

Browsing around on the Nature Network blogs, I came across one interesting discussion from a couple weeks ago that few researchers actually spend much time thinking about (I think). Martin asked, “I was wondering how much, if at all, the quality of the writing of a submitted paper is considered in the peer review process?” A fair number of people agreed that the quality of the writing in the end doesn’t really influence the decision to accept or reject a paper. But good writing, especially in the first paragraph, certainly helps. Read more »

Spare a thought for your poor over-worked neurons. In the information age, they are bombarded with input from the moment they are dragged into consciousness by the radio alarm clock each morning then throughout the day by e-mail, Google searches, RSS feeds, mobile phones, newspapers, books, blogs and more. In the post genomic era, it’s even worse if you are a bioscientist. The amount of data available literally at your fingertips via BLAST searches and the like is staggering. In this environment it’s easy for your mind to become overloaded, and an overloaded mind is no good for the logical and creative thought processes that are essential for effective science. Read more »

Poster presentations are a great way to show off your hard work, especially if you are just starting out in research. They are much less stressful than oral presentations, but still provide great networking opportunities and valuable practice at talking about your work. Follow these simple tips to create an attractive poster that will draw readers in and get people talking (to you!)

1. Choose your content wisely. The information you can get across on a poster is very limited. Choose a single aspect of your research that you think you can explain fully in a small amount of text and graphics and focus on that alone. Read more »

I have been at a conference today and don’t have too much time to write this, so this will be a quick article. After watching lots of speakers of varying competence I though that it would be good to outline some tips for great presentations. Speaking is an integral part of a scientist’s job, and honing these skills will is great for both your career and your confidence. Here is my 10 cents worth - feel free to add more of your own tips in the comments field below: Read more »