Succinct advice from a Nobel laureate

Had the chance to attend a talk given by a Nobel laureate today (only the second one of these ephemeral creatures I’ve seen give a talk live) and he had some succinct advice on what one needs to be a successful scientist (in this order): 1) Luck 2) Passion 3) Persistence   I could go [...]

What would you rather have?

I was chatting with one of my postdoc colleagues over lunch about citation metrics and papers etc, and he asked the following question: “What would you rather have: a paper published in Nature and cited 4 times in the first year or a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry cited 50 times in [...]

So who is winning the war on terror anyway?

The Washington Post had an intriguing opinion piece recently on the effects of increased “national security” on freedom in the US: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html?tid=pm_pop   Looks like Osama Bin Laden may have lost the battle for his life, but is very much winning the “war on terror”…