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Lay Science: Setting free the Data

April 22, 2010 By

The Guardian published a story earlier this week about a Belfast climate scientist Prof Mike Baillie, who is disgruntled at having to make his department’s decades’ worth of tree ring data available to a known climate sceptic as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. This story prompted the editor of this blog to post the above tweet. Also: “I don’t see the point of curating data for the public”, and “any nutter can attempt to disrupt my research”.

I wrote a post on Lay Science today about data sharing in science. Go read it here.

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The Lay Scientist: Of women and stilettos

January 12, 2010 By

AA Gill wears his with pride

Go read the post I wrote last night over at the Lay Scientist, in which I get worked up about a pair of shoes sent to me by the Dutch science funding council NWO.

Seriously though, don’t let this feminist faux-pas on NWO’s part put you off applying for this fellowship scheme. It’s a good programme and I wish they’d advertise more widely. The next deadline is on 11 February, for the mid-career Vidi scheme. Read more here.

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The Lay Scientist: A dark winter for UK physics

December 27, 2009 By

Despite widespread financial gloom, 2009 has been an excellent vintage for physics and astronomy. The Hubble Space Telescope‘s final servicing mission was declared a resounding success, LHC finally powered up after last year’s false start, several new astronomy satellites were launched and astronomers have tantalisingly reported a possible first-ever detection of dark matter particles. But in the UK, the year was closed on a blue note following an ominous pre-budget report in early December and the subsequent announcement of drastic cuts to the particle physics and astronomy programmes by the country’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC.

For the sake of spreading the word to a wider community, I wrote a general overview blog post on the Lay Scientist blog about the funding cuts to British physics and astronomy research. Go read it here.

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The Lay Scientist: Belle De Science

November 15, 2009 By

For over 5 years Belle de Jour has been one of the most high-profile and successful anonymous bloggers. In her blog, Belle talked about her experiences as a high-class London call girl. A book followed, then a popular TV series.

Today, Belle revealed herself as Brooke Magnanti to The Times. And that’s Dr. Brooke Magnanti. She’s a scientist.

I wrote a guest post on the outing of anonymous blogger Belle de Jour. Go read the rest of it over at The Lay Scientist!

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The Lay Scientist: Scapegoat Science

November 7, 2009 By

The financial crisis of 2008 was heralded as the end of the West’s love affair with free-market capitalism. The combined crashes of banking industry and real estate market should have been the final nail in the coffin for the unbridled power of corporations, who for decades have flaunted all social responsibility in search of profit. Why is it then, as we see the dust slowly settling, that nothing appears to have changed?

Earlier this week I signed up to write some guest posts on another science blog, The Lay Scientist. Edited by Martin Robbins, this blog has some excellent writing around all aspects of science, health, policy, environment, religion and much more. From Twitter I gather that Martin et al got a big nod from The Times this week, so I’m extra chuffed that I get to post there.

So if you want to read the rest of this post, follow the jump! And yes, it does go on to talk about science.

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