Quotes from Don’t Be Such a Scientist

On the recommendation of Prof. David Karoly, I bought Randy Olson’s Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style. I highly recommend this book for those who want to make their science more accessible to others (both scientists and nonscientists). Olson breaks down his observations of how best to communicate to […]

New Year’s resolutions to make for 2010

If you want to make two resolutions for 2010, here’s what I recommend. One for scientific presentations: I will not start my talks with an “Outline” slide. Instead, I will motivate my talk with something to grab the attention of the audience and get them interested in what I am about to say. Read more […]

What Writing This Book Taught Me

[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 […]

Chapter 8: Constructing Effective Paragraphs

Download a sample chapter from the book.

Why word order in titles is important: Example 1

“The Identification of Alcohol Intoxication by Police,” J. Brick and J. A. Carpenter, Alcoholism: Clinical Experimentation and Research, June 2001, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 850-5. <http://tinyurl.com/yd9rv4r> ——– From the mini-Annals of Improbable Research: October 2009, Issue number 2009-10. ISSN 1076-500X 2009-10-08 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Brick/Carpenter Confusion

Excerpt: Three Items of Essential Reading

This is an excerpt from the For Further Reading section at the end of the book.

Obligations for Reviewers

The American Geophysical Union, following the lead of the American Chemical Society, developed a list of obligations for reviewers. Inasmuch as the reviewing of manuscripts is an essential step in the publication process, every scientist has an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing. A chosen reviewer who feels inadequately qualified or lacks the […]

Excerpt: Chapter 3: Writing an Effective Title

This is an excerpt from Chapter 3: Writing an Effective Title.

« Previous Page