Stephen Curry

Lately, it’s all been getting a bit intense. Not tetchy, as at the Scholarly Kitchen in recent days, but still pretty focused. Four of the last five posts here have all been about the arguments surrounding the Elsevier boycott and the future of academic publishing.

Elsevier Break Dance

My train of thought is still running. Last week, taken aback by the revelation of Elsevier’s deep support for the Research Works Act, an anti open-access piece of US legislation, I declined to review a manuscript for the publisher and wrote about my reasons for doing so. My blogpost received an unusual amount of traffic. It seemed to have caught a wave – started elsewhere – that is sweeping through the scientific blogosphere.

How to access Open Access?

This week I got to visit a part of London that is for me a hallowed place – the offices of

 The Guardian

newspaper. I was participating in a workshop for the people who had been short-listed for the Wellcome Science Writing Prize, which is sponsored by the

 Guardian

, and so made my way to its large glass headquarters behind Kings Cross.

The past, The future and The Guardian

What is the best seminar that you have ever attended? And what made it so good? I pondered this question after my name appeared on the list of speakers for our internal divisional seminar series this term. I thought that, rather than give another run-of-the-mill progress report, I might have a little fun with the format. And perhaps make a useful point at the same time.

The Best Seminar?

I was back at the Diamond Light Source today — the synchrotron that we use to blast protein crystals with X-rays to figure out the structures of protein molecules. The beamlines at the synchrotron where we do our experiments have some very fancy kit and, in explaining the apparatus to one of my students, I was reminded of how much things have changed in the past twenty years.

The Speed of X-rays

The last king of England to lead an army on the battlefield was George II, at the Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria in 1743 during the War of the Austrian Succession.

You should have seen the look on her face

We came. We chanted. We lobbied. We petitioned. And in the end, thanks to the Science is Vital Campaign and the persuasive efforts of CaSE and the learned societies and captains of high-tech industry, the UK science budget was protected from deep cuts in the Governments Comprehensive Spending Review last autumn.

Don&#8217;t submit. Submit.

Writing about science. It’s important. And not just because you could win some dosh from the Wellcome Trust. I tried to explain why (and a little bit about how) in a guest post on Grrlscientist’s blog today.

Writing Science

It just doesn’t add up: why do so many people, including scientists, get stuck on the maths problem? The subject is on my mind because it was raised at a departmental meeting last week where I tried to argue that A level mathematics (the qualification obtained at age 18 in the UK) should be an entry requirement for our degree programmes in biochemistry and biology.

Numb or Numbered?

It cannot have escaped your attention this past weekend that the Earth was treated to a supermoon. The correct terminology for this felicitous event is a perigee syzygy, but the reasons for the interesting nomenclature need not detain us.  The point is that Saturday night was clear in London and gave those of us who live there a magnificent view:    Which, just like a lunar orbit, brings me to a place I’ve been before.

Moon Boon

I have Jim Franks of Newton TV to thank for the opportunity to sit around a table with some of the current scientists at the world-famous MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology to talk about the legacy of its founder, Max Perutz. The discussion was part of a video that you can see at

 The Guardian

web-site and is intercut with previously unseen interview footage of Pertuz himself looking back on his scientific life.

The Perutz Effect

As Father Ted might have explained it to Dougal, this one is very small:

 Atom



but that one is

 far away

.

 Mars (NASA)

And yet it is the distant planet and not the nearby atom that seems to excite the greatest interest in the public mind. I blame Carl Sagan. And bloody Brian Cox.

Small and Very Far Away

For the longest time I thought he was French. It’s the name — Joule; it

 sounds

French and in my physics class at school no-one thought to explain otherwise. In fact, Joule was not even introduced as a name — the word was simply handed to us as the SI unit of energy, a replacement for Calorie who, for all I knew, might also have been from France.

Joule&#8217;s Jewel

I’m not proud of myself but I have to confess to a lascivious addiction. I know. It’s disgusting. But I can’t help it.  The problem started in 1999. I remember all too clearly my first glimpse of the well-proportioned curves and smooth, smooth skin. After that I was hooked. Oh. God. I couldn’t resist. The Apple G3 PowerBook, my first ever laptop, was gorgeous.

Touch, Feel

Having delighted in Jacob Bronowski’s

 The Ascent of Man

earlier this year, I sat down to watch Carl Sagan’s

 Cosmos

, which several commenters had recommended to me. You can read what I thought of it in my guest post at Grrlscientist’s Punctuated Equilibrium blog over at

 The Guardian

. As you will see, it is wrapped up with the recent apparition of shiny sculptures by Anish Kapoor in Kensington Gardens.

Cosmos and Kapoor

The British cardiologist

 Dr Peter Wilmshurst

was reported in 2007 to have made remarks critical of a clinical trial involving a medical device made by NMT Medical. He is now being sued for libel. The case is complex and I have not mastered the detail.

Libel Reform: Not There Yet

After the amazing success of the Science is Vital Rally on Saturday (see here for video and Jenny’s report and here for another first-hand account by Prateek Buch), it was off to the House of Commons today. Not quite in my brand new shoes, but they had at least been cleaned following extensive glue coverage in Friday night’s marathon placard-making session.

Science is Vital &#8211; Lobby of Parliament

I was only able to attend the second day of Science Online London 2010 but was glad to be able to hear Dr Evan Harris’s keynote talk on “Turning online science into real world policy change” and the follow-up break-out session on “The Sci Vote Movement”. Any gathering of the

 blognoscenti

runs the risk of descending into navel-gazing, so it was good to be reminded that the point of much of our online activity as bloggers or scientists

Traditional Medicine: Inhibition of the Clinician Ambition

Walter Clement Noel was famous in the wrong circles for the wrong reasons. He died in Grenada in 1916 aged just 32.

Over fifty years later, in the first decade of my life,

 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

was far and away my favourite film. I must have seen it six or seven times, a huge tally in the days before VCRs and DVDs. The magical tale of endangered children rescued with the help of a flying car captivated my boyish mind.

A molecule of life and death

I came across this today and found it quite remarkable. I’m not going to say anything more right now but, if you have a minute, test yourself with this short video.  No questions just yet – just take a look.    If you’d like to learn a bit more, then listen in to this week’s excellent Guardian Science Weekly Podcast.  Please don’t give anything away in the comments – at least for a day.

Attention: remarkable

Some of you may not have heard of last week’s launch of a new science blogging site by the Guardian newspaper. They have a core group of regular bloggers — Jon Butterworth, Dr Evan Harris, Martin Robbins and NN’s own Grrlscientist — who between them will be covering good science, bad science and science policy. It’s yet another bright addition to the rapidly changing firmament that is today’s blogosphere.

Guardian of Science

It is the day after the day after the fortnight before. I had hoped to write sooner about the relentless work and tremendous fun I had participating in I’m a Scientist, Get me Out of Here over the past two weeks. But such was the nervous energy expended in the last week that it has taken me till now to recover my bearings.

I&#8217;m a scientist, and there are fantastic kids out there

This is, to my mind, a quite astonishing report about Nature Publishing Group (NPG) hiking its proposed 2011 journal subscription charges to the University of California (UC) by 400%. (NPG is the company that runs the

 Nature Network

blogging platform). That’s right: 400%. I know nothing about the ins and outs of this deal.

Inflation

This is a quick one. The internet’s not working terribly reliably at home so, in case you missed it on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, here is a short film about what myself and some of my group got up to last Saturday. Hit it Van…  Thanks to GrrlScientist for already promoting it on her blog.

A MAD day

Confused by the title? I’m not surprised. I’m a little confused myself. Though this is a common experience in science and nothing to be ashamed of. I was thinking about the Boomtown Rats since I was using their celebrated second album,

 A Tonic for the Troops

, to keep me running around Hyde Park in the warm sunshine last Monday afternoon. More often than not I use music these days to help drive myself along.

I&#8217;m a scientist and the Boomtown Rats are here

Load. Aim. Fire!!!!! Grant application submitted. Who knows what will happen? If you feel moved to comment, please do so randomly. I’m all out of evidence and logic.

Ceci n&#8217;est pas un blogpost

I wanted to write something in time for World Homeopathy Awareness Week since homeopathy is such an amazing phenomenon. But though the promotional week is now over, I’m sure you can remember it. You will have memories of some of the things that were written and said. Memories are so important for human beings. They enrich the present and allow us to navigate from the past into the future.

Homeopathy and the Structure of Memory

I am pleased to be able to announce that, having taken up jogging at the turn of the year, I can now run faster than a rocket. Well, strictly speaking, I can now run faster that

 the

Rocket–or rather a very fine replica thereof–which I overtook yesterday lunchtime in Kensington Gardens. This was the view as I whizzed past:

 Stephen passes Stephenson

. Anyone wishing to take a ride in the train has until the 18th April.

Faster than a Rocket

It’s hard to believe, but Bob Dylan is at Imperial. Stranger than an eleven-dollar bill. But it’s true.  Not in person you understand, that would be ridiculous. But his words are there, as the sub-text to an exhibition of photographs by Mark Edward illustrating humankind’s disconnection from the planet that we inhabit. The pictures are displayed on temporary boarding along one side of the Queen’s Lawn in the centre of the campus.

Bob Dylan at Imperial

Mark this day! Mark this day. Hang out the bunting And launch a clatter of fireworks from the grassy earth For its like may not be seen again. Today I ran for a full twenty-eight minutes Without stopping. I lapped the gleaming Serpentine And came to rest in Albert’s gilded gaze Beside the sun-turned crocuses. Mark this day Because life is short And we must take our pleasures where we can.

Mark this Day

Returning home from Lablit this evening at about 11 pm I scanned the clear sky in the south-east and noticed a small bright speck to the left of and slightly higher than the glowing moon. A quick perusal of Starmap on the iPhone told me that this was likely to be Saturn. At last! I dashed into the house, had a quick comfort-break (at the Americans so delicately put it), grabbed my telescope and set up shop on our front pathway.

Not at all saturnine about Saturn

Yesterday morning I made my way to the Royal Courts of Justice in London’s Strand to attend the Court of Appeal hearing in the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) against Simon Singh.

Science in Court

I have little to say this evening apart from reporting that I came home tonight and caught the new moon before it dipped behind the trees. Thought some of you might want to have a look.

 Moon over Kent

And my daughter and I espied the Orion Nebula; unfortunately my photographic equipment is not up to recording that. 	But this astronomy lark is

 the business

.

New Moon

Thought that some of you might like to know that the latest (Feb 2010) issue of

 The Biochemist

is running a special series of articles on Science and the Media; science communication if you will.

Puff The Biochemist

This morning I attended a my first ever publicity stunt. The 10

 23

overdose event, initiated by the Merseyside Skeptics, was held in cities around the UK and the rest of the world. Our particular group assembled in the lightly frosted but thoroughly freezing Red Lion Square in Holborn, London. I was more than happy to hand over £5 for the 10

 23

t-shirt—glad of the extra layer of clothing!

Homeopathy: That&#8217;s Numberwang!

After a slight delay, I had an idea for a blog post and I’m going to run with it. Hope you can keep up.  I have started to run. I have known for a long time that I needed to do this but it took a build-up of pressure to get me moving. It is for my own good. I am feeling the pain but also, still somewhat to my surprise, the benefit. So far I am managing to go running about three times a week.

Still Running

On Friday evening the structural biologists of Imperial College and the friends of the structural biologists of Imperial College gathered together for a screening of the film, Naturally Obsessed. Filmed over three years, this hour-long documentary tracks the lives of graduate students Rob, Kil and Gabe, as they battle the recondite mysteries of protein crystallography in their quest to become scientists.

Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell

I’m beginning to recognise the signs. Have you seen them too? The mercury is holding steady but there’s a sudden and unexpected stiffening of the breeze. And a darkening tint to the clouded sky. Yes — there can be no doubt — there’s a storm coming. A Twitter-storm. We’ve not had much of this kind of thing in the past but these squalls seem to be becoming more frequent. They are a very interesting phenomenon;

A change in the weather?

I once read in a physics textbook that if an atom were to be magnified to the size of London’s Wembley Stadium, the nucleus at the centre would be about as big as a hazelnut. Well screw that, because I can think of

 much

better uses for Wembley Stadium. Besides the obvious — football — it is of course an ideal venue for rock concerts and last Friday night U2 showed exactly how it should be done.

Music in a nutshell

I’m guessing that pretty much everyone has mixed feelings about the micro-blogging service, Twitter. The ability to rapidly post ‘tweets’ of no more than 140 characters can easily be seen as both a blessing and a curse. I was certainly in the skeptical camp for a long time and easily resisted the temptation to sign up. Blogging in 140 characters, I scoffed, what a pitiful waste of time!

Confessions of a Twitter Fritterer: slightly hipper but a little bitter

I have been struggling recently to find ways to rehash my post on scientific authority without causing NPG any further distress. This evening, on the train journey home, I think I finally found a way because I read one of the most remarkable scientific papers I have ever come across. The paper, by Keating

 et al.

, brings us directly back to the ongoing saga of the British Chiropractic Association’s libel suit against Simon Singh.

Freedom of Error

I have just come home from a gathering of Skeptics in the Pub in the Penderels Oak in Holborn and I am excited and dismayed.

 Simon Singh – bloodied but unbowed

This was a special meeting to discuss developments in the court case being brought by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) against the popular science author, Simon Singh.

In my opinion the British Chiropractic Association is being unscientific

Working at home last Thursday, trying to get some quiet time to focus on a review article, I caught the lunchtime news and heard of the untimely death of the actress Wendy Richard. She was best known as Pauline Fowler from long-running BBC soap Eastenders.

Are you being served?

There was a very nice piece in yesterday’s

 Nature

by Ananyo Bhattacharya (a former PhD student of mine who now works for the journal). Ananyo discusses the current structural ‘wish list’ with some of the world’s most ambitious protein crystallographers. Perhaps I’m a little biased but I think it’s beautifully written.

Desirous of structures?

I should have done this a long time ago but I was too proud. I think I need to review. In 2002 Dan Carter published a paper in BBRC describing the crystal structure of the protein, human serum albumin, complexed with hemin.

I&#8217;m reviewing the situation

If this paper is the future of open access publishing, then we are in for an interesting ride. And it’s a journey that will reveal a great deal more about the process of science than most outsiders will have seen hitherto.

Eye-opening access

Sparked by a remark made by Kristi Vogel on blogging with images, here is one that’s been hovering at the back of my photo collection.

 Does God play dice?

Apparently, despite Einstein’s objections, the deity

 is

a bit of a gambler. What is disturbing is that this picture was taken in Palermo, Sicily last summer so it seems He may have been gambling with the mafia.

God plays dice

Quick! Look! This is a coucil flat in Southark but it’s cool and blue and rather beautiful. There was a brief report about it last night on Channel 4 News, which you can watch here. They explain how the artist Roger Hiorns created the work by flooding a derelict, sealed flat with hot, saturated copper sulphate solution.

 Seizure

by Roger Hiorns. The whole of the interior is coated in deep blue crystals.

Bluetiful!

The Guardian runs an interesting ‘”Writer’s Rooms” feature in its Review section every Saturday in which a writer (or sometimes an artist) discusses a photograph of their office or workroom, pointing out significant objects. The idea (as in Desert Island Discs) is to gain an oblique insight into the subject’s mindset. Well, it’s hardly an original idea but wouldn’t be interesting to take the same approach with scientists?

Scientific Spaces and Places

On Tuesday, following a tip-off from Maxine,  Richard noted the passing of the Daresbury Synchrotron in Cheshire, which shut down finally in August. This gave me pause for quiet reflection since I had been a Daresbury user since 1991, cutting my teeth as a crystallographer by spending long nights in the darkroom developing the film packs that we used to record the X-rays scattered by our crystals.

&#8220;Donuts &#8211; is there anything they can&#8217;t do?&#8221;

I couldn’t not do a quick post about this – today’s Futures story in Nature which provides an interesting medical twist on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a tale that resonated with me a couple of weeks back.

I couldn’t

 not

do a quick post about this – today’s

 Futures

story in Nature which provides an interesting medical twist on Oscar Wilde’s

 The Picture of Dorian Gray

, a tale that resonated with me a couple of weeks back. It’s beautifully done – go read!

A reciprocal space in Nature

On Tuesday evening I was asked by Research Professional News for my views on a new report from think tank UKDayOne, which is calling for the abolition of the Research Excellence Framework, unlovingly known as the REF. The report is provocative and interesting. It has won loud support from one Dominic Cummings.

Abandon the REF?

A combination of life’s distractions, ill discipline and slow reading mean that I have only managed to finish 11 books this year. I am almost embarrassed to admit to such a paltry tally. There are people who can rip through that many titles in less than a month. I envy them their capacity. But it is what it is. Eleven. As is now my habit, there is a tweet thread of brief reviews of each book – summarised in the image below.

Books of 2023

I took over 2800 photos in 2023. Actually, I took a lot more because we went on safari in the summer and I have worked hard to cull as many shots that I could from that trip. Even so, that left me with nearly 1000 pictures of wildlife that I want to keep. Building and body beautiful (Bologna)  My selected favourites bear witness to the fact that this has very much been a year of travel – mostly to cities and mostly for work.

Photos of 2023

Who is that stranger in my father’s bed? Those sunken eyes The concave cheeks Salted with stubble The thinned grey hair Plastered to a narrow skull. I have lost the man I loved. In truth it had been a long journey To this resting place. A slow stepping backwards As memory stuttered and stalled And confusion dampened The flares of anger That made strangers of us both.

The separation of life and death

Thanks to the paucity of my education and cultural life I have come late to Isaiah Berlin, the noted philosopher and historian of ideas whose thinking provided such a guiding light to the 20th Century. But I’m definitely a fan now. I’d heard the name, of course, but would have been hard-pressed to tell you why he was well-known.

Intelligent life: Isaiah Berlin

“The Queen is dead; long live the King!” is such a cliché of stories and films that it was surprising to hear it for real. Not that we did

 actually

hear it for real. The secrecy surrounding the Queen’s final hours means we cannot be sure what was said at the moment of her passing or even if the new King had arrived in time.

Passing the Baton

Things have come to a pretty pass when the UK can turn out Prime Ministers more frequently that I post to my blog. It might be taken as a sign of the times if the times weren’t so damned confusing. Black and white shot of people reflecting off the gleaming surfaces inside Barcelona airport  Whatever. The itch to keep writing is still there, even if it remains distracted by the demands of work.

Part-time talking &#8211; open science, research assessment and gender equality

For the longest time I have been meaning to get back to—ugh!—blogging. Regular readers, should any remain, will see that this is the first post of 2022. I haven’t broken any promises with the hiatus and have no excuses to make. I’ve been busy. I know – who

 hasn’t

been busy in UK academia? Nevertheless, the first half of this year was intense, with several major deadlines that left little mental spare capacity.

Message for my reader

One final look back before I turn to face 2022. Following a practice started last year, I have maintained a thread of tweet-sized reviews of the books that I read in 2021 – all of them. The Twitter thread of the books I read in 2021. Click on the image to see the high-res version. There are only eighteen in total, a singularly unimpressive tally – fewer even than I managed in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Books of the Year

Recognition and Redistribution for Imperial College’s Community This is a guest post by my former colleague, Dr Rahma (Red) Elmahdi, in which she lays our her reaction to the Imperial College History Report, and in particular the recommendation to rename the Huxley … Continue reading →

Recognition and Redistribution for Imperial College’s Community
 


 This is a guest post by my former colleague,
 
 Dr Rahma (Red) Elmahdi
 
 , in which she lays our her reaction to the Imperial College History Report, and in particular the recommendation to rename the Huxley Building. I am grateful to Red for allowing me to share her perspective.

A Reckoning with Huxley’s Legacy

A news article published online in Nature this morning discusses the announcement of new open access options in the Nature family of journals. The details are in the article, but the basic story (written by Holly Else) is that authors wanting to make their work OA can pay an APC of €9,500 or choose a ‘guided’ route, which is about 50% cheaper but splits the price between reviewing and publishing.

Nature&#8217;s new open access option &#8211; a few first thoughts

(Please note that this post was updated on 12th Dec 2020 – see below)

This week DeepMind has announced that, using artificial intelligence (AI), it has solved the 50-year old problem of ‘protein folding’. The announcement was made as the results were released from the 14

 th

and latest competition on the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP14). The competition pits teams of computational

No, DeepMind has not solved protein folding

Last week I gave my first online tutorials in which I needed to scribble on a whiteboard and show the students their exam scripts from last term, which had been posted to my home. To solve both of these problems, I spent a bit of time figuring out how to share my iPad and iPhone screens within Microsoft Teams running on my Apple MacBook. For anyone wanting to do the same, I thought I’d share what have I found.

Teaching online: how to use an iPad as a whiteboard

At 6:18 on the afternoon of Tuesday 4

 th

August a huge store of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port of Beirut. The blast, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands more, and left over a quarter of a million homeless. In the immediate vicinity, the blast wave overturned cars and tore the cladding from buildings;

Our Beirut Brexit

The latest in a long line of R&amp;D strategy documents from the UK government reveals some promising evolution in its strategic thinking.

UK R&amp;D Roadmap 2020: big picture poses big questions

My new best buds…  When I started out on this blog back in ’08 I made a passing observation about my age, having noticed I was increasingly lifting my glasses to read the date on my watch. Not long afterwards I upgraded to varifocals. Now I have another upgrade to report: I have acquired hearing aids. It was not an easy transition. On the face of it, why wouldn’t getting a pair of hearing aids be just like getting glasses?

Augmented reality: me and my hearing aids

Just three weeks ago, on eve of the weekend, my wife and I met an old friend for dinner at a restaurant in Southwark. Even then, the most normal things in the world were beginning to feel risky. Our friend works for Public Health England, but even if he hadn’t, the conversation would still probably have locked onto the coronavirus pandemic.

Three weeks

It is 31

 st

January 2020 and as of 11 pm tonight the UK will no longer be a member of the European Union. We have arrived at Brexit day. But this is not my Brexit. I did not want it. I did not vote for it. I argued against it with as much reason and reasonableness as I could muster.

This is not my Brexit day

The new and improved Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings 2020 were published this week with as much online fanfare as THE could muster. Unfortunately, they are not improved enough. Sydney University’s Duncan Ivison makes case for impact rankings. And then you notice the advert.

The still unsustainable goal of university ranking

What was your carbon footprint for 2019? Mine was more of a bootprint, almost entirely because of flying. International travel has long been considered one of the perks of academic life, something that lifted the job out of the ordinary and cemented our membership of a trans-national community of scientists and scholars.

My carbon bootprint

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in the 14th Berlin Debate on Science and Science Policy, which is hosted by the Robert Bosch Foundation. This year the invited participants discussed “Who owns science?

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in the 14
 
 th
 
 Berlin Debate on Science and Science Policy, which is hosted by the Robert Bosch Foundation. This year the invited participants discussed “Who owns science?

Berlin Debate &#8211; Who owns science?

My feet have hardly touched the ground since I got back from the DORA-HHMI meeting on “Driving Institutional Change for Research Assessment Reform” in Washington DC last week, but I wanted to log a few first impressions. I can’t hope to do it justice but please be reassured that the videos of the plenary session will soon be available, and there will no doubt soon be wiser and more considered ruminations on the conference.

First impressions: the DORA-HHMI meeting on research assessment reform

Everyone we knew who had been on safari told us they’d had such an amazing experience that I was worried our expectations for our trip to Kenya were being set too high. Elephants trekking across Amboseli National Park  I needn’t have been concerned. For six days we bounced and rattled in a Toyota Landcruiser driven by our knowledgeable and sharp-eyed guide, Senei, and each game drive seemed to be better than the last.

Kenya: Where the Wild Things Are

I have been trying to put my finger on why I have found Succession — HBO’s must-see series about fictional US media mogul Logan Roy and his dysfunctional family — to be at once utterly compelling and annoyingly dissatisfying.

Tom and Roman – trapped by farce? I have been trying to put my finger on why I have found

 Succession

— HBO’s must-see series about fictional US media mogul Logan Roy and his dysfunctional family — to be at once utterly compelling and annoyingly dissatisfying. The show has an excellent pedigree.

Why Succession failed me &#8211; just

You’d think assessing bicycles would be a lot easier than assessing researchers, but I’m not so sure. Though I spend quite a bit of time as chair of the DORA steering committee pondering how best to evaluate research and researchers, this weekend I’m mainly preoccupied with rethinking my commuting options. When in 2004 we moved to our current house, a 25 min walk from the station, I used to cycle for that leg of my journey to and from work.

A Declaration on Bicycle Assessment

What is it about living through a pandemic that has quelled the motivation to write? I suspect it may have something to do with the unstructuring of time, or rather its reduction through confinement to rhythms dulled by repetition. Whatever the reason, a quick glance through the log of posts here over the past year reveals a loss of activity – or is it a loss of discipline?

In the garden

My computer tells me that I took over 2,400 photographs in 2020. Here are my favourites. I’m afraid I have failed to whittle them down to fewer than seventy-five. Click on the first image, taken on a winter walk on the first of January, to go to the album on flickr.    2020 was the year of lockdown, but we still managed to get out and about on occasion.

Photographs of 2020

Black masked, weighed down by grey grief, We carried you into the church To be wrung out of our sodden farewells. But you had already gone. It was a slow journey to that sombre altar. In the last years the traces that bound us Stretched and frayed As Nature’s cruelty took hold. We had already said the longest of goodbyes While your mind darkened and your hands stilled.

For my mother

My computer tells me I took over 3,700 photographs in 2019. Yikes!    However, I have winnowed them down to just 31, should you care to take a look. I have been fortunate this year to travel far and wide – or should I say reckless? Either way, if you click on the image above, it will take you to the album on flickr.

2019 in 31 photographs

The letter below started out as a ‘closed’ communication sent to DSIT on 11th October but in the absence of any response, despite two reminders, and the revelation in the meantime that the Secretary of State herself sometimes has  occasion to write open letters, I have decided to publish it.  Although my letter precedes the furore ignited by Michelle Donelan’s missive to UKRI raising her concerns about tweets by members of Research

An open letter on EDI matters to the Secretary of State for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)

With emails running alongside, barking for attention, we beat a retreat from London. The clamour of work was soon swamped by the heat and light and sights and sounds and smells of Barcelona, and by the newness and oldness of it all. In the evening as we wandered the narrow streets in a desultory Google search for a restaurant, the continental warmth seeped into our bodies like a muscle relaxant.

To the sea

Writing in The Observer a couple of weeks ago, Kenan Malik cast a sceptical eye over a report published by the history group at Imperial College that had been asked to reflect on “the current understanding and reception of the College’s legacy and heritage in the context of its present-day mission.” Linking the report’s controversial recommendation that that the Huxley Building be renamed because of Thomas Henry Huxley’s views on race to the

The Huxley Question

Last Tuesday I attended the 2019 LIS-Bibliometrics meeting which focused on open metrics and measuring openness.

Thinking globally about research evaluation &#8211; LIS-Bibliometrics talk

Since its announcement on 4th September the European Commission’s plan to make a radical shift towards open access (OA) has caused quite a stir. Backed by eleven* national funding agencies, the plan aims to make the research that they support free to read as soon as it is published.

Academic freedom and responsibility: why Plan S is not unethical

Last week Elsevier’s VP for Policy and Communications, Gemma Hersh, published a think-piece on the company’s vision of the transition to open access (OA). She makes some valid points but glosses over others that I would like to pick up on. Some of Elsevier’s vision is self-serving, but that should come as no surprise since the company has skin in the game and naturally wants to defend its considerable commercial interests.

Why I don&#8217;t share Elsevier&#8217;s vision of the transition to open access

I am on holiday – in Mauritius, a tiny tropical island in the Indian Ocean. And when I go on holiday, I make ridiculous plans.  I told myself I’d start running again. I’d get up early every morning, slip out of bed without disturbing my wife and cross the road to the beach. It might be hard at first but I could jog along the compacted sand at the shoreline, the sun rising at my back. It would be good for me.

I told myself…

New Year’s Eve is almost upon us, so here we are again at the close of one long year and the start of another. Personally, it has been a year of endings and beginnings. Readers of this blog would be forgiven for thinking that it is one of the things that I have wound down in 2018, but in fact I am hoping to stir it to new life.

 Sunrise or sunset?

Endings and Beginnings

I wrote this piece a few months ago at the invitation of The New Atlantis. It was supposed to be one of a collection of responses to a polemical essay that they published last year on the parlous state of modern science by Dan Sarewitz.

Does science need to be saved? A response to Sarewitz.

Today is the tenth anniversary of my very first blog post. When I look back at that day in 2008 when I set out my stall on Reciprocal Space it seems a long time ago and a long distance away. It’s been quite a journey. Some things haven’t changed. I still hate the terminology, though I have mostly managed to swallow my embarrassment.

Ten Years a Blogger

Though a long-time critic of journal impact factors (JIFs), I was delighted when the latest batch was released by Clarivate last week. It’s not the JIFs themselves that I was glad to see (still alas quoted to a ridiculous level of precision). Rather it was the fact that Clarivate is now also making available the journal citation distributions on which they are based.

Ready-made citation distributions are a boost for responsible research assessment

For me the most memorable event at last week’s ASAPbio-HHMI-Wellcome meeting on Peer Review, which took place at HHMI’s beautifully appointed headquarters on the outskirts of Washington DC, was losing a $100 bet to Mike Eisen. Who would have guessed he’d know more than I did about the intergalactic space lord and UK parliamentary candidate, Lord Buckethead? Not me, it turned out.

Opening peer review for inspection and improvement

At the beginning of June I attended the first BAMEed conference. It was an unexpectedly memorable and inspiring occasion.

 Final panel discussion at #BAMEed2017

Though billed as an “unconference” – a sort of self-organising gathering that fills old fogies like me with horror – the one-day meeting had in fact been meticulously planned.

BAMEed: the voices of the people

I’ve already shared this video on Twitter and Facebook but wanted to post it here as a more permanent record. Two weeks ago I fulfilled the ambition, held since I had seen Nic Stacey’s and Jim Al-Khalili’s quite wonderful BBC documentary on thermodynamics, to visit the steam engines at the Crossness sewage pumping station.

The Cathedral on the Marsh

On Tuesday morning last week MPs, MEPs, and representatives of various organisations with a stake in post-Brexit UK science gathered in the Churchill Committee room at the House of Commons for the launch of  the “Scientific priorities for Brexit” report, published by Stephen Metcalfe MP, chair of the Commons select committee on science and technology.

Grim resolve at the House of Commons on the scientific priorities for Brexit

Those of you who have read all 346 posts on my Reciprocal Space blog will have no need to read this one. You probably already have a sense of what I do and what I’m like – my science, my hobbies, my hobby-horses, and my foibles.  But on the off chance that you’re new here, or are a faithful reader who just can’t get enough, here is an interview I did with The Free Think Tank. I say ‘interview’ though this was no Michael Parkinson affair.

Interview with the author

Last night made my way to an upstairs room at The Castle pub near Farringdon to participate in a debate organised by Stempra on the forthcoming March for Science.

The March for Science: advocacy masterstroke or PR misfire?

Science is Vital this week launched a campaign to seek amendments to the Higher Education and Research Bill 2016. The bill is a rather dry and procedural piece of legislation but hidden amongst its many sections and schedules are real threats to the autonomy and independence of UK universities and to the capacity of the research community to guide the research agenda.

Reciprocal Space

The Cathedral on the Marsh

Ways of Seeing

Artful History