This article represents the outcome of a series of correspondence between myself and OpenCon. I am posting the full and original letter here sent to them on November 28th for the sake of transparency and honesty. I’ve provided a summary timeline here first for clarity about the series of events: Nov 03, 2018: OpenCon notifies […]
So, that was an interesting year. I feel that these transitional times are always a good opportunity for longer-term reflection. This year has, without a doubt, been the most challenging of my life in a number of ways. However, if I look back with a focus just on this year, it seems too short-sighted. If […]
In November 2018, I was formally notified that I was banned from the OpenCon community and events, on the basis of the OpenCon anti-harassment policy as written in the OpenCon Code of Conduct. Since then, I have accepted and respected this decision. The last OpenCon I formally attended as a participant was in November 2016, […]
Last week, I had the pleasure and honour of giving one of the opening talks at the special Hatun Tinkuy event, organised by the Peruvian research council, Concytec, in Lima. My full talk is available online here, and below, with Spanish translations. Definitely worth watching the other talks too. You can pop on English subtitles […]
“Never mind bats and birds, pterosaurs were the first real evolutionary heroes who gained the ability of powered flight. While often mistaken for dinosaurs, pterosaurs are actually more like their cousins. Being a bit of an evolutionary marvel, with their thin membranous wings, fragile skeletons, and long, pointed beaks, they have become quite a fascinating […]
Today, Tony Ross-Hellauer and I have a new preprint shared on SocArXiv. It’s about the limits to our understanding of peer review. Rather than simply being another meta-analysis of all of the things we do have evidence for about peer review, we tried to think of it a different way: what are all the things […]
This morning, Times Higher Education published a strange and awkward piece from a representative of Elsevier. If you have a subscription you can view it online here. Unsurprisingly for Elsevier though, it contained a number of misleading statements. As such, I left a comment on the article challenging many elements of this, which you can […]
A new article in the Washington Post is out now, co-written by Paul Thacker and I. It is based off one of the ‘myths’ from our latest research paper. Here’s a snippet, enjoy! In July, India’s government dismissed a research paper finding that the country’s economic growth had been overestimated, saying the paper had not […]
Today, we are still in the middle of a global scientific revolution. Whatever you think it is ‘open science‘ is here on the menu, and it is not going anywhere. In this episode of Science for Progress, Dennis Eckmeier and I talked about the different understandings of open science, and what it means for us […]
Everyone loves dinosaurs, right? There’s a new podcast episode out with Joel Werner at the Sum of all Parts where Steve Brusatte and I chat about the ongoing explosion in dinosaur discoveries, and what this means for science. Enjoy!