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How can I update myself on the latest in physics?
Answer: Watch Michio Kaku, father of string theory, give the “big history” of physics in just 42 minutes.
Michio Kaku: The Universe in a Nutshell
Wow! Awesome! Michio Kaku is the father of string theory. In this 42 minute video, he explains the history of physics and the universe. He’s a brilliant mind and a brilliant communicator. Everyone should watch this!
How to choose a supervisor/mentor
from an interview of Dr David Edelman, a neuroscientist, by Mike Lisiesky:
Interviews on Consciousness – David Edelman
Being a student, I’m interested in the process of becoming a scientist. Do you have any comments or advice for people who might what to pursue research in the area of animal cognition and/or consciousness?
Most of my advice is very practical. Research the graduate program you decide on really well, and talk to the faculty and some students from the program. Following from that, pursue somebody who’s a strong mentor, both in an intellectual and a practical sense. My graduate advisor at Penn was a very smart guy, he was very personable, and I liked him a lot, but he wasn’t an activist advisor. I saw around me, people outside of anthropology, people in biology, their mentor took it upon themselves to help shepherd that person out into the world, beyond simply reading the dissertation and suggesting things, really figuring out how to get that person ensconced or active in the career. This is very important and this is not necessarily that easy to get at, but you can sort of look at people’s track records and see who their graduate students were and what they have done with themselves, and that’s probably a fairly good indication of how active the mentor was in getting them out there. That seems like sort of far down the pipe for any potential graduate student to consider, but the more and more I think about it, the more I believe that that’s an important area to bone up on before you take the plunge.
The Science of Writing – the classic Scientifc American article on how to write well
The Science of Writing by George Gopen and Judith Swan
This article was published in the Nov-Dec 1990 issue of Scientific American.
From the introduction:
Science is often hard to read. Most people assume that its difficulties are born out of necessity, out of extreme complexity of scientific concepts, data and analysis. We argue here that complexity of thought need not lead to impenetrability of expression; we demonstrate a number of rhetorical principles that can produce clarity in communication without oversimplifying scientific issues. The results are substantive, not merely cosmetic: Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought.
Gopen and Swan propose offer these 7 writing-style rules:
- Follow a grammatical subject as soon as possible with its verb.
- Place in the stress position (i.e. the end of the sentence) the “new information” you want the reader to emphasize.
- Place the person or thing whose “story” a sentence is telling at the beginning of the sentence, in the topic position.
- Place appropriate “old information” (material already stated in the discourse) in the topic position for linkage backward and contextualization forward.
- Articulate the action of every clause or sentence in its verb.
- In general, provide context for your reader before asking that reader to consider anything new.
- In general, try to ensure that the relative emphases of the substance coincide with the relative expectations for emphasis raised by the structure.
OK – – the authors weren’t the clearest of writers. The rules are sound, but writers will need to do practice exercises to master them. So has someone produced any useful practice exercises?
Filed Under: career health, how to be a good social scientist academic, how to write scientific papers, The Science of Writing - classic Scientific American how-to-write paper Tagged With: effective writing style, how to communicate well, how to write a scientific paper, how to write well, The Science of Writing
Expect ground-breaking discoveries to get rejected initally
This editorial in Nature (16 October 2003 Volume 425 Issue No 6959) discusses how the scientific peer-review process struggles with assessing ground-breaking new ideas:
From the introduction:
“Accounts of rejected Nobel-winning discoveries highlight the conservatism in science. Despite their historical misjudgements, journal editors can help, but above all, visionaries will need sheer persistence.”
Here is the paper by Juan Miguel Capanario mentioned in the Nature article that finally found a journal that agreed to publish it in 2009!
Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries.
Filed Under: career health, expect ground-breaking discoveries to get rejected initially, how to be a good social scientist academic, how to handle getting a paper rejected Tagged With: coping with getting scientific papers rejected, coping with having your ideas rejected, overcoming discouragement, scientific writing
Stephen Pinker’s 2012 lecture on 21st century scientific writing style
Click on the link below to watch Stephen Pinker, one of social science’s greats, give a one-hour talk on how to write good scientific papers:
Communicating Science and Technology in the 21st Century: Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker: “The Sense of Style: Scientific Communication for the 21st Century”
Harvard College Professor, and Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard University
Let’s face it: most scientists are terrible communicators. Why do the world’s most cerebral people find it so hard to convey their ideas? And how can we learn to do better? I suggest that answers can be found in a number of ideas from the modern sciences of mind and language. Among them are: The Tree and the Chain (how multidimensional ideas are mapped onto one-dimensional strings); The Curse of Knowledge (why it’s so hard to imagine what it’s like not to know something you do know); and Long Shadow of Mrs. Grundy (how to distinguish rules of proper usage that are worth keeping from those that are bogus)
The first annual Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering lecture about communicating complex scientific and technological subjects clearly and engagingly in the series: “Communicating Science and Technology in the 21st Century.”
Recorded on 9/12/12
The bridge experiment – be careful whom you’re with when your heart is racing or you might fall in love
Dr Art Aron explains his famous Bridge Experiment in this 2 minute video excerpt from This Emotional Life:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1373962223
