Even the University President gets rejected

From the weekly update by University of Manchester President and Vice Chancellor Dame Nancy J. Rothwell, DBE, FRS: I had some bad news on the research publication front, my research group had a great paper rejected by completely unreasonable referees – they were obviously biased – or at least we think so. More work to […]

Collaborative research

Matt Bunkers forwarded me this article from the New York Times about collaborative research in science and how social networking and other collaborations are resulting in new scientific progress at a faster rate. I had seen the Michael Nielsen quoted in the article speak at the University of Manchester back in September. It was an […]

Best Practices for Numerical Weather Prediction Studies

The late Tom Warner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research just published an article entitled “Quality Assurance in Atmospheric Modeling”. You may not get it from the title, but this is a powerful paper that lays out 14 steps for improving modeling practices. All students and users of models need to read this paper […]

Plain English Campaign gets it wrong

In almost all cases, I support the Plain English Campaign, who aim to improve the readability of government documents, corporate letters, web sites, and other forms of communication. In their 2011 Golden Bull Awards, however, the Plain English Campaign got it dead wrong. The UK Met Office won an award for ‘empowering people to make […]