Wit & Wisdom

Dancing on a volcano – the unspoken scientific endeavour

Iris van Zelst October 2, 2019

Here I am, standing on a volcano: I have finally reached the top! But wait, is this actually the correct volcano? I think the proposal mentioned a different one... Erm... How do I get down?
Illustration by Floor de Goede from the book 'Dansen op de vulkaan' (more information below).

Doing science is not a walk in the park. In fact, it might be closer to dancing on a volcano. Dan Bower, CSH and Ambizione Fellow at the University of Bern, Switzerland, takes full advantage of the creative freedom of a blog post to reiterate that scientific progress is not a straight-forward endeavour. We all learn early in our education about the scientific method—the scientific approach t ...[Read More]

Writing the Methods Section

Editorial Team 3 September 20, 2019

Writing up the methods? Not a trip to fantasy land!

An important part of science is to share your results in the form of papers. Perhaps, even more important is to make those results understandable and reproducible in the Methods section. This week, Adina E. Pusok, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, shares some very helpful tips for writing the Methods in a concise, efficient, and complete way. Writin ...[Read More]

Writing your own press release

Editorial Team 2 July 24, 2019

Do you have an upcoming publication and would like to extend its reach through a press release? Maybe your university doesn’t have a media office able to help, you are short on time, and/or don’t know where to start. Don’t fret, this week Grace Shephard (Researcher at CEED, University of Oslo) shares some tips for writing your own press release and includes a handy template for download. She also ...[Read More]

It doesn’t work! (Asking questions about scientific software)

Editorial team 1 July 3, 2019

Numerical modelling is not always a walk in the park. In fact, many of us occasionally encounter problems that we cannot directly solve ourselves, and thus rely on help from others. In this month’s Wit & Wisdom post, Patrick Sanan, postdoctoral researcher at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics group at ETH Zurich, will talk about asking the right questions about scientific software. As an experienc ...[Read More]