An example of why hyphens are necessary

The following is an excerpt from an email sent to staff at the University of Manchester. As part of the University’s commitment to creating change in gender equality across the University we are running a half day unconscious bias training session focussed on recruitment and promotion. The following is how it should have been punctuated … read more

Dead salmon have meaningful brain activity, or how to get scientists to stop using outdated methods

We’ve all seen in our science bad approaches or terminology that get established and are difficult to kill. Chuck Doswell has his pet peeves, I’ve battled against my share: conditional symmetric instability to explain banded precipitation and moisture flux convergence as a diagnostic for severe storms forecasting. Bennett et al. were awarded the 2012 Ig … read more

Can you explain your science using the 1000 most-used words in the English language?

Give it a shot here: http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ (The title Up Goer 5 refers to xkcd’s comic of trying to explain the Saturn 5 rocket blueprint using only those 1000 words.) (From Jim Steenburgh and his student John; Image from xkcd.com.)

Book Review: Fake Science 101

OK, it’s not strictly about communicating science, but this book was so freaking funny, I had to post something about it here. Fake Science 101: A Less-Than-Factual Guide to Our Amazing World. Here are some snapshots of the type of humor this book contains. Scientific fact: In order to save money, the Ivory Tower is … read more

How to Prepare a Really Lousy Submission: Water Resources Research Editorial Team

Sent to me from colleagues at the University of Utah. [PDF]

How NOT to review a paper. The tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer

A paper by Graham Cormode (2009) [PDF], sent to me by Rene Garreaud. The abstract gives you a flavor of how this paper reads…. There are several useful guides available for how to review a paper in Computer Science. These are soberly presented, carefully reasoned and sensibly argued. As a result, they are not much … read more

Wanted: Copyeditor. Inquire with God.

(From slate.com)

Have you heard the one about PowerPoint?

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show … read more

Deep thoughts about editing

Not sure where I found this, but it’s classic!

Unintended consequences of choosing coauthors

I had been trying to track down this paper for several years. Finally, I was able to get my hands on it. Like many papers you get, they turn out to tell you something different than what you were hoping to hear. In this case, it was a pleasant surprise. The principal result is that … read more

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