Month: March 2012

Scientific reputation is essential to researchers for their academic advancement, tenure, research grants and fellowships. It relies, most of the times, on quantitative metrics such as the H Index, citation counts, article counts etc. And, of course, getting published in a journal in the first place is down to the age-old tradition of anonymous peer review.

The community has begun to struggle with this approach for many years now. The likes of arXiv (for physics), open access journals and other efforts have begun to look at alternative publishing models, but anonymous referees have remained at the heart of the process.

A new site – Peer Evaluation – hopes to complement the conventional quantitative metric system with a whole new set of qualitative indicators that are comprehensive, transparent and immediately verifiable by researchers and funding institutions, allowing scientists themselves to curate the peer reviewing of their own papers.

Will it succeed? Are we about to see a new dawn for science? Or, will tradition hold sway?

UPDATE: 27 July 2019 I don’t think I’d formed my band C5 at the time I wrote this, with it my shy extroversion/showy introversion expanded a little more as we have ended up playing in front of half-decent crowds at pub gigs, various outdoor festivals, England’s oldest village fair (Reach Fair), several significant birthday parties and weddings, and I’ve organised and the band has headlined at four big fund-raising events in the Cottenham Community Centre. I’ve played probably a dozen or more times solo at various events too. Playing solo at a birthday bash this evening and in The Hop Bind pub, Cottenham on Sunday afternoon.

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I’ve always thought of myself as a shy showoff…others may disagree, especially my fellow singers in the choir bigMouth and those with whom I jam on guitars and sing etc. But, nevertheless, to my mind, it explains why you’ve probably never seen me give a lecture a science or journalism conference but you may have heard me sing and play guitar in front of 600 people at West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge or perform at the Royal Albert Hall in front of quite a few more than that. Anyway, character traits are almost always spectral. Some people are highly extrovert, exhibitionists, hankering after fame and celebrity, others prefer the quiet life and their books illuminated with a comforting reading light rather than the sulfurous glow of limelight.

I was intrigued to watch a recent TED Talk by Susan Cain on the subject of the power of introverts, then that discusses how there are many people who are neither extro- nor intro-, but ambi-verts. As with those of us almost equally happy to use left or right hand for countless tasks, an ambivert is equally happy to be chatting and laughing out loud (or playing guitar in front of a crowd) as alone musing on the meaning of liff. All of us, wherever we turn on the character spectrum should recognise that others may be on a different wavelength and that there are benefits to learning how each perspective can benefit the others.

In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.

UPDATE: 2022-11-17 I got to about 55000 followers ultimately, but that number has been falling for about 7 or 8 years through natural attrition and followers being closed down. Currently, just under 40000 just at the point everyone is worried that twitter will go down the tubes because of the Leon Umsk purchase in October.

Twitter Counter tracks statistics of more than 10 million Twitter users, it’s always interesting for us uber-geeks to take a look at such stats and having made The Independent’s Top 100 British Twitter users (at #73 this year, down from #47 in 2011), I thought I’d show you the enormous impact such a placement can have, or not, as the case may be. Sciencebase did gain several hundred new followers on Twitter and Twitter counter reckons we’ll have 16k within a week or so. 100k within a mere five years! Thanks for joining us to those who came along after The Independent published their list.

You can see from the 3-month rolling chart that the impact of a British national newspaper on a site like this is not enormous…

 

You’ve heard of rose-tinted spectacles, red lenses as it were., but how about a pair of glasses that gives you the edge on assessing a person’s inner emotions or helps medics work out who is truly ill.

A rosy blush or the sickly green colour of one’s skin can reveal different aspects of mood and health, as I discussed in a review of Mark Changizi’s recent book. It’s deceptively powerful and socially insightful aspect of vision and the reason that there is no single word for the colour of your skin, regardless of your race.

A startup company is hoping to exploit this in a product that reveals a person’s true colours. Changizi told Sciencebase he has patent pending on the system.

1. Brian Cox
2. Ben Goldacre
3. Richard Dawkins
4. Neil DeGrasse Tyson
5. David Bradley
6. Robin Ince
7=. Andy Lewis
7=. Mo Costandi
9. Roger Highfield
10. Tim Berners-Lee

You can subscribe to them via my Twitter list.

via The Twitter 100: Top 10 science – News – People – The Independent. Nice to have beaten Robin Ince, maybe he’ll respond to my tweets now! I made it to joint #73 in the Top 100 “Titans of the Twittersphere” overall, sandwiched between journalist India Knight and politician Louise Mensch and sharing the slot with those two and journalist and entrepeneur Alberto Nardelli. I always thought it was Blogosphere and Twitterhood.

Odd search phrase popped up in the Sciencebase logs today. Unfortunately, there isn’t an item in the archives that’s particularly relevant other than a story about a baseline analytical study that looked at arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury content of tinned sardines using spectroscopy. I was intrigued, is there some advocacy (perhaps initiated by the fishing industry) to the idea that sardines can boost fertility. A PubMed search with surrounding terms: pilchards, fertility, sperm, sardines, brought up just one research paper: “Reproduction of the Spanish sardine, Sardinella aurita (Clupeiformes: Clupeidae) from the south-eastern area of Margarita Island, Venezuela”. Probably not entirely relevant.

The nutrient coenzyme Q10 (ubiquinone), which is found in beef, soy, mackerel, sardines, spinach, peanuts and vegetable oil is purportedly linked to increased sperm count and sperm motility although it is present mainly in the mitochondria and is linked to cellular energy from ATP. Research has suggested that it has a positive impact on seminal oxidative defence but doesn’t affect sperm number nor motility. So, maybe that’s a red herring (pardon the pun). A slightly more recent paper suggests it does have a positive effect, however.

There is a lot of spurious information on so-called “natural” fertility improving sites. Several of which mention sardines in a long list of foods that are supposed to be beneficial. Others simply say that it cannot hurt to eat healthily and cite the fact that sardines contain healthy fats (polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids: eicosapentaenoic acid, EPA, and docosahexaenoic acid, DHA) that might improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation, which are “critical to fertility”. So, just generic and general advice there with no specific scientific support for sperm. There also wild claims that the omega-3 in sardines boost libido…

I wonder whether Oprah is a fan or they featured on Letterman or got a celebrity endorsement. That might explain the sudden rush of visitors to Sciencebase searching for “sardines for fertility”? Anyone know?

As an aside, is my photo of gutted trout a red herring too?