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What Climategate means for scientists and their emails

December 18, 2009   Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri  

The so-called Climategate scandal in which hacked emails from the University of East Anglia Center for Climate Research were released to the public is a sad day for public confidence in science. (I hesitate to use the term Climategate as the similarity with Watergate is 180 degrees opposite. Whereas the burglars in Watergate were caught […]

Hot under the collar about “hot temperatures”

December 17, 2009   Filed under Blog, Potpourri, Writing  

The December 2009 issue of the journal Weather published by the Royal Meteorological Society has a letter by David Pedgley, referring to a 2005 letter by Malcolm Walker, which refers to an earlier letter by John Cook. At issue? “Hot temperatures.” Read an excerpt from Pedgley’s letter: Temperature is a measure of the heat content […]

“Redefining the peer-review literature”

December 14, 2009   Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Reviewing, Writing  

Amid all the public commentary over the stolen University of East Anglia emails, what hasn’t been as widely discussed is that ever since the internet became a tool for mass communication, scientists have been redefining what the peer-review literature is.

What Writing This Book Taught Me

November 16, 2009   Filed under Articles, Blog, Potpourri, Writing  

[DMS: This was going to be a sidebar in the last chapter of Eloquent Science, but we decided upon removing it to shorten the text. Remarkably personal, this text shows the struggles that I had to go through to deliver text I was happy with (or at least satisfied with).] 14 March 2008: Mary Golden […]

The shortest title ever written

November 12, 2009   Filed under Blog, Potpourri  

I discovered this article while browsing on the Web site of Rutgers University mathematician Doron Zeilberger.  Among his voluminous Web page (we’re talking Doswell-level voluminous), I came across this page. The article came about when Prof. Zeilberger was asked to give a talk to the Research Experience for Undergraduates program at the Rutgers Math Department.  […]

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