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.

In a recent post in Science Careers Blog Jim Austin argued that young researchers should get easier funding with science supporting agencies. That would be the best way to get them into the system.

I strongly object and put a reaction there, that I hereby reproduce:

This would be age discrimination. I agree that there is problem, but I think I have a better solution, or at least a solution that is worth discussing IMHO. A remedy that does not suffer from this type of discrimination. In what I suggest it is not the old guy against the young guy. It is the established scientist against the newcomer. To solve the problem at hand, in the Netherlands (physics) granting organization FOM, has come up with a scheme in which newcomers get an advantage by giving them bonus points. With these bonus points starters get funded (considerably) more easily.

When a junior scientist - graduate student or postdoc - starts working the end of his contract seems very far away. In all cases (my experience relates to 30+ supervised PhD theses) the end of this period comes in sight much quicker than anticipated both by the junior as by the supervisor. So you have to be very efficient with your time.

Left or right
In western societies we write from left to right. In mundane texts lines are left justified. This alignment allows for quick reading. You do not know yet what will be in the new line, but you (and above all your eyes) sure know where it begins. You can improve readability by implementing full justification. But only if you use a lot of hyphenation and micro-space adjustment. Otherwise you get those ugly stretched sentences that hamper reading, rather than facilitating it. If you use MS-Word and full justification use the WordPerfect compatibility switch, as explained here.

For editors of scientific journals it is quite hard to find referees, leave alone good referees, for peer reviewing their received manuscripts. A good referee is a person that sends in a good referee report and does so in time, and responds quickly to additional requests from the editors. Why don’t peers want to review manuscripts of their colleagues?

There are a number of reasons. Professional scientists are very busy and - perhaps more importantly - they will never get public credit for their review job.

Presenting science in front of an audience invariably implies presentation of slides, either as support for the spoken text, or as the main ingredient of the presentation. I always wonder why these slides are so ill-designed: awful contrast, extremely busy, inconsistent lay-out through the slide show, wildly varying font sizes etc. The metaphors that come to mind are that of an elementary school playground or (comparison from a colleague of mine) that of an indoor swimming pool full of children. (picture © Kilian-Nakamura.com 2007).But we scientists are amateurs with respect to design of graphics. So let us see how the professionals do this.

Young people, in tenure track positions, feel they to have to collect as many authorships as possible. Questions like “Will I be a coauthor?” and demands as “I have to be a coauthor” are part of daily conversations in science institutes.

But not only junior scientists are eager to boost their cv’s with authored papers. Seniors use their social status to fight themselves into the list of authors.

In a number of groups the list of authors is not discussed but imposed upon. The boss decides. Him being the last author is an axiom. The issue of free riders imposed by the boss, gives rise to a lot of frustration on the side of the first author.

Not only the scientific glossy magazines but also the professional journals are invaded by the colorful graphs that either look like an artificially colored moon landscape, or like a collection of candy sticks or like a flying carpet. I do not like them and in particular the candy sticks I find ugly.

In physics and mathematics progress is made by generalizing and abstracting. The ultimate result is the capturing of one’s finding in a mathematical formula or an - admittedly dull - scientific X-Y graph. As a result physics papers were are full of these terrifying items. I say were, as the X-Y plot is on its way out.