Travelling Stockholm - Hamburg - Cologne - Brussels for a two-day conference about public metal detecting. It'll take 24 hours, one third of which I'll spend asleep. It's the 2024 way to #travel.
Wrote this paper where I first present some enigmatic evidence, then reveal a cool well-supported interpretation with an elegant flourish. Peer reviewer and editor tell me they know nothing about Sweden and are just confused by this. So now I have to start with the interpretation to get all the foreigners on board, then present the evidence after they have been primed how to think about it. It irks me but I'll do it. They are after all indicative of the readership. /-:
Yesterday would have been the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, but oceanographers and our ability to make predictions called for a one-day delay. This ensured that the landings were a success. #WorldWarTwo
"You learn a lot from failure, but I’ve been unable to persuade our graduate students and our faculty. Our faculty should be willing to give the Ph.D. for an experiment that failed, provided it’s been done responsibly." – Walter Munk
I hate - HATE - Concur with the power of a thousand suns. The simple recording of 3 receipts (hotel, airline ticket, conference fee) becomes a two-hour time trap in a labyrinth Stanley Kubrick would admire. #academia#academicchatter
Did I share this here earlier? Over 1300 Jewish faculty urged against turning "Antisemitism Awareness Act" into US law
"Criticism of the state of #Israel, the Israeli government, policies of the Israeli government, or Zionist ideology is not – in and of itself – antisemitic. We accordingly urge our political leaders to reject any effort to codify into federal law a definition of #antisemitism that conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel"
We've all suspected this one, but here's an actual experiment: if the people deciding on grant proposals get only a 1-page summary instead of the full proposal, it doesn't really make any difference. 😑
(Probably even more noteworthy: even if both panelists see the full proposal, they're only in agreement 53.4% of the time, which is basically random chance 🙄)
So it's all one big lottery, who would have thought.
Apparently one of the most common uses of LLMs in #academia is copy editing: cleaning up your #writing on points of spelling, grammar and style. This is wildly unattractive to me. I love writing. My personal style, my personal voice, are extremely high priorities to me. It annoys me no end when a journal editor replaces one of my unconventional style choices with something bland. If an editor ran a paper of mine through an #LLM I would scream bloody murder.
If you are gonna nitpick authors about an arbitrary overlap percentage in Crossref reports, then don’t run the report including the affiliations, author list, references, standard disclosures, and mandatory statements in the cover letter (not even part of the manuscript!) all counting toward the overlap.
So annoying. Authors are stuck dealing with manuscripts that obviously do not have problems with text borrowing
Right: A kid from a local high school got in touch with me over LinkedIn--they are starting a neuroscience club, and wanted to talk about neuroimaging, and any other advice for the club.
Anyone out there know anything about running a neuroscience club in high school, want to weigh in with advice? Now's the time!
I can tell them about neuroimaging research and academic life etc. but other than that I'm a blank.
Sure #academia can be toxic at times and all of that.
Also:
this week I sat several times together with colleagues from Russia and Ukraine to discuss future possible projects.
an iranian told me how it was to be in Tehran at the end of April, when the Isreel-Iran situation escalated.
yesterday at my dinner table there were 1. an italian 🙋♂️ 2. a german 3. a brazilian 4. a kroatian 5. an iranian , and it was awesome to discuss the state of the world from all points of views.
"We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again."
Over the past few years, Republican state lawmakers have introduced more than 150 bills in 35 states that seek to curb academic freedom on campus. Twenty-one of these bills have been signed into law. #Academia#HigherEd#Colleges
How can we improve #accessibility for scientific conferences? This short guide by Ulla McClurg covers many of the issues that organisers (and attendees) can consider.