Book Review: Navigating Graduate School and Beyond
I just finished reading a great new book on career guidance for graduate students by Prof. Sundar Christopher: Navigating Graduate School and Beyond: A Career Guide for Graduate Students and a Must Read for Every Advisor. Written by the Chair of the Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, this book […]
Avoid hyperbole in scientific writing.
Hyperbole can take many different forms. Nearly all should be avoided in scientific writing. Avoid calling previous work “pioneering”, “novel”, or “foundational”, unless it truly is. Don’t call a study “comprehensive.” They rarely are. Don’t say that you’ve conducted “detailed work.” You’re a scientist. You’re supposed to do detailed work. Avoid absolutes like “never”, “always”, […]
Oh, snap! A dig at a badly written introduction
An unfortunate order of words
A quote from Sports Minister Hugh Robertson, from this article. “The British themselves are pretty stoic; there is a long tradition of watching sport in rain macs or listening to Cliff Richard or whatever.” Come on. Cliff Richard isn’t that bad.
Deep thoughts about editing
Not sure where I found this, but it’s classic!
An abstract that says nothing
This abstract comes from a recently published in an atmospheric science journal: Previous studies have shown that numerical diffusion plays a crucial role in the ability of mesoscale models to reproduce features similar to sub-meso motions found in observations, particularly in terms of spectral energy distribution. In this study, the impacts of surface heterogeneity and […]
Code of Conduct for Scientists Who Engage in Advocacy
The AAAS hosted a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation to address the issue of scientists expressing their opinions to influence an action, such as a political process. The results of this workshop can be downloaded from this web page. The bottom line is the Code of Conduct for Advocacy in Science by Nicholas […]
How much time do the academics spend reading the literature?
JISC Collections funded a study to examine the values of libraries to UK academics. The result “UK Scholarly Reading and the Value of Library Resources: Summary Results of the Study Conducted Spring 2011” has been published. Here is a link to the PDF. From p. 8, “Of the 448 hours per year spent on scholarly […]
“Cold” equivalent potential temperature?
As scientists, we need to be precise in our writing. Evgeni Fedorovich at the University of Oklahoma has tried to keep me honest about writing about “cold temperatures”. Know that the air can be “cold” or “warm”, but temperatures are “high” or “low.” I want to take this argument one step further. It makes no […]
Past or Present Tense?
Which is correct? A. Wetzel et al. (2004) show a negative correlation between snow density and air temperature that explains 52% of the variance. B. Wetzel et al. (2004) showed a negative correlation between snow density and air temperature that explains 52% of the variance. The difference is that A uses the present tense “show”, […]
