I still remember those days that my thesis supervisor didn’t have to justify why he wanted to buy a particular, expensive, piece of equipment. When I became a group leader those golden days were already gone forever.

Nowadays scientists fight for research money in fierce competitions. I certainly agree that some competition is healthy. Although, I would like a situation where the science policy makers themselves and the board members of science-supporting agencies, for the sake of improving their quality, would have to write and defend as many proposals as we scientists have to do; given the funding rate that these science managers find socially acceptable for us, I would suggest for them also a funding rate of about 5%.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dutch science was without doubt world-class. The first Nobel Prize for chemistry went to the Dutchman Van ‘t Hoff. The first three recipients of the Nobel Prize in physics were either Dutch (Zeeman and Lorentz) or were partly educated in the Netherlands (Röntgen).  All of them were born in upper-middle-class families.

I am happy that my book Survival Guide for Scientists, published about a month ago, is selling very well. Today I went through the final proofs of the second edition. Corrections were only minor (some inconsistencies in italic versus roman fonts will be corrected). Up to now the marketing has only been done in the Netherlands. Shortly, our US-publisher will take care of that part of the market.

From the reactions I conclude that my expectation that the book would also be useful for non-scientists, turns out to be more than correct: lawyers, consultants and managers buy the book. And parents buy it for their university-going children. Tell me your opinion about the book.

A few month ago, I met a Professor who is now a very successful Biomedical physicist. I knew him before from his very nice articles, which he had published in high-impact journals during his PhD research. Those articles included very fundamental theoretical results and at that time very progressive experiments on deep physics. For reasons unknown to me, he had decided not to continue in the same field after his very successful PhD, and got involved in the more application-oriented field of biomedical physics, which naturally results in less PRLs but more publications in medical journals and patents.

After many years of experience I come to the following conclusion: Giving a good talk for a lay audience is extremely difficult and not very rewarding. Reading this statement will upset a number of people. So I have to do some explaining.

Entrepreneurship is a personal character that is mostly used for businessmen, but can also be found in scientists. In fact, as creativity is an essential ingredient for a successful scientific career, I may even claim that there sit more entrepreneurs in a research institute than a company, but I do not insist.

Some business-psychologists describe entrepreneurs as fire-starters because they love to initiate new projects and are always eager to bring a new idea, which they never lack, into reality. But, unfortunately, as soon as the project is in action the joy is over for the fire-starter. Soon it happens that he makes himself busy with a new idea and abandons the older one, even though the harvest time of the previous project has just started.

My first university course was in elementary calculus. The course itself was foremost a repetition of what we had already learned in secondary school and was therefore in itself not very interesting. However, those first days did learn me a lot about physicists. I was surrounded by nerds, geeks, whizzkids. Badly shaved guys, elegantly dressed with shorts, white sport socks, and sandals. Since most of them used to be the best of their class, they (and I am afraid I should include myself in this category) thought they were to a large extent omniscient. During the calculus course, they considered everything to be self-evident, exclaiming phrases like ”of course, tell me something new”. It was absolutely not accepted to admit not to understand something. Our ego’s created a non-critical atmosphere, in which questions were looked upon with suspicion. Indeed it was very unscientific.

PowerPoint does not help
I have seen quite some historical developments with respect to visible aids used to clarify oral scientific presentations. I have seen talks illustrated with, slides being projected through a slide projector, transparencies made visible with an overhead projector, and - now - digital slides that come to the audience through a beamer. But with all these modern developments, which certainly seem to look like improvements, a lot of things have not changed for the better. Presenters going way over their time. Showing of bad slides (ugly, busy, unclear, …). Too Much Information (TMI). Much too high level for the audience. Why does this situation continue? My answer: a.o. lack of feedback. (Fig. Uncle Sam)

A number of bloggers blog under pseudonym. Unfortunately these writers refer to themselves as anonymous bloggers. Writing under pseudonym means you use a fictitious name, a name different from your own, whereas corresponding anonymously means you use no name at all. On many Internet discussion forums users register under pseudonyms. Their real identity might be known to the forum moderators, but it is certainly not disclosed (unless the long arm of law would be involved, of course). As a matter of fact forum owners often warn new users not to use or reveal their real name in their posts.

I very much like the following quote from Groucho Marx:

I don’t care to belong to a club that
accepts people like me as members

Recognition
Many professional societies like to acknowledge members that are exceptionally good at their profession. If in addition the activities of these specialists are useful and visible to a broader public, acknowledgment can also come from outside the professional circle. As a result prizes, without and with competitions, and other tokens of recognition are bestowed on the exceptional achievers. The community of scientists also has its medals, prizes, and decorations.