In science the dilemma of either cooperating or competing is everywhere. The situation is never black or white and depends on the discipline. In this post I will limit myself to the typical small-science group model: one group leader, one or two postdocs and a number – typically between 4 and 6, of PhD students.

Pressure
All the group member are under pressure. PhD students have to finish their thesis in time, with preferably a couple of first-author articles in glossy magazines.

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I haven’t posted to this blog for while. There has been a perfectly good reason for this: I have been busy in the past year applying for and then moving to a new job. Now that things are settling down a tiny bit, I thought that some of you might be interested in some aspects of that.

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The Internet is here to stay. Besides its many advantages two major drawbacks are daily visible: (i) abuse of anonymity and (ii) lack of quality control of presented information. These two issues are related: if  an onymous (pun intended) person with an impeccable reputation endorses an article on the web, chances are high that the paper is indeed of quality.

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