"We find it hard to see what publication would achieve at this stage"
Theoretical physicist Terry Rudolph shares a story about preprints and the editorial process at a top science journal: "Guest Post: Terry Rudolph on Nature versus Nurture". In short, there was no...
View ArticleWithout the code, it's hand-waving
A new post by C. Titus Brown is worth reading: "Anecdotal science"I'm starting to notice that a lot of bioinformatics is anecdotal.People publish software that "works for them." But it's not clear what...
View ArticleLink parade, 2
Ben Phelan at Slate writes about the recent evolution of lactase persistence: "The Most Spectacular Mutation in Recent Human History". The plot is still fuzzy, but we know a few things: The rise of...
View ArticleBigfoot DNA?
A press release claims the recovery of Sasquatch DNA:“Sasquatch nuclear DNA is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also...
View ArticleOpen access and Creative Commons
Cameron Neylon comments interestingly in Nature on the intellectual property drawbacks of publications that are free to access but not to reuse: "Science publishing: Open access must enable open use"....
View ArticleCrowdsourcing paleoecology
Jacqueline Gill reports on a conference with a provocative organization: "Crowd-sourcing the 50 most pressing questions in paleoecology". Conference attendees (of which I believe were around 60) were...
View Article"Brittle techniques"
I was pointed to a rant from early last year written by Fred Ross: "A farewell to bioinformatics". Like any good rant, it is extreme and I don't endorse it, but like all good rants it has kernels of...
View ArticleScholarship and experience outside the academy
The Wall Street Journal has an inspiring story of a hairdresser who turned her curiosity about Roman hairstyles into novel scholarship: "On Pins and Needles: Stylist Turns Ancient Hairdo Debate on Its...
View ArticleOpen 3-d archive of Kromdraai
A new paper in the Journal of Human Evolution by Matthew Skinner and colleagues [1] announces the new availability of an open archive of microCT data from the site of Kromdraai, South Africa, with a...
View ArticleWhite House to recognize open science
The White House is looking to recognize people who are leading in open science efforts, either by providing free access to data or by using data that is already publicly available. I imagine that...
View ArticleFear and the impact factor
Mark Johnston, editor-in-chief of the journal, Genetics, recently published an editorial decrying scientists' reliance on "impact factor" of journals to make decisions about grants, tenure, and awards...
View ArticleRising Star: In the hot seat
My first Rising Star Expedition update has been posted on the expedition blog: "In the hot seat". I’ve had an extraordinary number of new fossils pass through my hands in the last four days. But here’s...
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Rising Star: What we know and don't know
Today's blog post on the Rising Star Expedition blog provides an FAQ about the expedition's results so far: "What We Know and Don’t Know So Far". I tackle questions about the dating of the site, the...
View ArticleRising Star: The view from a caver/scientist
Today's post on the Rising Star Expedition blog is by one of our six advance scientists, Elen Feuerriegel: "The View From a Caver/Scientist". In the process of clearing the Puzzle Box, Alia and I...
View ArticleUpdate, March 2013
We want to thank everyone who has assisted with the project. If you're just arriving here, welcome! Rachelle Keeling has completed the first round of analysis, including several parts based on...
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