As my teaching winds down for the academic year, I’ve just given my last undergraduate science writing workshop – a sort of gun-for-hire side hustle that, via word-of-mouth, has gradually spread ...

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But I’ve been wondering recently what it takes to raise an independent ...

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But I’ve been wondering recently what it takes to raise an independent scientist. Specifically, I’m thinking of the ‘valley of death’ between a postdoc ...

Just before Christmas I was asked to talk to our molecular biologists about multivariate analyses. I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon, when I saw that I had to talk to them on Friday. “Ah, ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

On Tuesday evening I was asked by Research Professional News for my views on a new report from think tank UKDayOne, which is calling for the abolition of the Research Excellence Framework, unlovingly ...

When you are a scientist, your daily concerns revolve around mundane issues, so mundane that most normal people would struggle to recognise them as urgent: primarily funding woes, like I wrote about ...

The anticipation of Christmas under commercial pressure has also made it harder to sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness. We as a staff team at St Mary’s Hornsey Rise try to sustain our ...

My annual selection of favourites from the photographs I took in the past year is now available on Flickr. Do people still use Flickr? I have broken my usual rule of not including family photos ...

The preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same I cannot point to a moment when I knew I was called to serve God like this. The image is more like a watercolour, built up in layers, or a ...