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Every scholar is part wizard, part muggle.
As wizards, scholars are lone geniuses in search of original insight. They question everything. They ignore conventional wisdom and tradition. They experiment.
As muggles, scholars are subject to the normal rules of power and influence. They are limited by common sense and group think. They are ambitious. They promote and market their ideas. They have the perfect elevator pitch ready for every potential… Read more
Whether it’s in the daily stream of students through McQuinn Atrium, the chance conversations between scientists in its hallways or the postdoctoral researchers in the Catalyst Café, the Bond LSC has created a physical environment in which it’s difficult for occupants not to interact.
“This place is intended to be a coordinated organism, not a hotel for good scientists,” says Jack Schultz, director of the Bond LSC since 2007. “It’s… Read more
Medical experts reacted with alarm Monday as two top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination appeared to question whether child vaccinations should be mandatory — injecting politics into an emotional issue that has taken on new resonance with a recent outbreak of measles in the United States.
First, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, while visiting a vaccine laboratory here, called for “some measure of choice” on whether shots guarding against… Read more
In early September of 2014, nSCI recruited and organized over 100 thought-leaders from around the world into a three month long online conversation—named the Open Science Initiative (OSI) working group—to begin looking into viable ways to reform the scholarly publishing system. The outcome of this conversation will be a working paper (the most recent version is linked here) which summarizes the many important facts and perspectives that were discussed on… Read more
The Web dwells in a never-ending present. It is—elementally—ethereal, ephemeral, unstable, and unreliable. Sometimes when you try to visit a Web page what you see is an error message: “Page Not Found.” This is known as “link rot,” and it’s a drag, but it’s better than the alternative. More often, you see an updated Web page; most likely the original has been overwritten. (To overwrite, in computing, means to destroy… Read more
How do we recognize a good scientist? There is an entire industry — bibliometrics — that would have us believe that it is easy: count journal articles, sort them according to the impact factors of the journals, and count all the citations.
Science managers and politicians seem especially fond of such ways to assess ‘scientific quality’. But many scientists also accept them, and use them in hiring and funding decisions. They are… Read more
The undergraduate years are a turning point in producing scientifically literate citizens and future scientists and engineers. Evidence from research about how students learn science and engineering shows that teaching strategies that motivate and engage students will improve their learning. So how do students best learn science and engineering? Are there ways of thinking that hinder or help their learning process? Which teaching strategies are most effective in developing their… Read more
Have we left the Holocene era behind and entered an Anthropocene era—a post-Holocene geological age of our own making marked by man-made environmental toxins like plastics and carbon isotopes from nuclear detonations? Some scientists think so. “Taking full ownership of the Anthropocene won’t be easy,” writes Andrew Revkin. “The necessary feeling is a queasy mix of excitement and unease. I’ve compared it to waking up in the first car on the… Read more
The recent elections returned Republicans to control of the Senate, which means all the committees within the chamber will see their leadership change. This really shouldn’t be a scientific issue. And yet, in the current environment, where science is often a political football, it really will be one.
To understand why, you just have to look at what’s happened with the House Science Committee, where Republicans have been in power… Read more
We’ve never been more dependent on science. At the same time, however, we’ve never been more certain about its ability to help us understand and transform the world. But there are many out there who still distrust science and wish to discredit it at every turn, whether it be anti-vaxxers and climate change denialists, or simply those who wish to preserve their religious or paranormal beliefs. Trouble is, many of… Read more
It’s easy when working with data to treat it as reality rather than data collected about reality. Here are some examples:
It’s not crime, it’s reported crime.
It’s not the number of meteor strikes, it’s the number of recorded meteor strikes.
It’s not the outer diameter of a mechanical part, it’s the measured outer diameter.
It’s not how the public feels about a controversial topic, it’s how survey respondents are… Read more
The popular preprint server arXiv.org, where physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists routinely upload manuscripts to publicly share their findings before peer review, now holds more than 1 million research articles.
The repository, launched as an ‘electronic bulletin board’ in August 1991, just before the dawn of the World Wide Web, took 17 years to accumulate half a million manuscripts, but has taken just 6 more to double its holdings.
Click here to… Read more
Slavia Epstein | Northeastern University
A handful of dirt from a field has yielded what may be the first of a new family of antibiotics. Early tests suggest this one has the potential to be especially powerful, providing a new weapon against the growing threat of drug-resistant superbugs.
Scientists at Northeastern University in Boston and a small company called NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals used a new method to find the compound, which… Read more
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