When scientists present in an informal setting where questions are expected, I always have an internal bet with myself as to how long until some daring person asks the first question, after which everyone else joins in and the questions rapidly start pouring out. This usually happens around the 10 minute mark. This phenomenon has gotten me wondering what this means for how best to structure a scientific talk.| RajLab
Just listened to a great Planet Money episode in which Dr. Cecelia Conrad describes how she dealt with some horrible racist students in her class who were essentially questioning her credentials. She got the advice from a senior professor to be less clear in her intro class:| RajLab
Guest post by Eric Sanford| RajLab
Got an email from someone who got asked to write a letter for themselves by someone else and was looking for guidance… haha, now that PI has made work for me! :) Oh well, no problem, I actually realize how hard this is for the letter drafter, and it’s also something for which there is very little guidance out there for obvious reasons. So I thought I’d make a little guide. Oh, first a couple things. First off, I don’t really know all that much about doing this, having written a few fo...| RajLab
Just got back from a Keystone meeting, and I’m just going to say it (rather than subtweet it): most of the talks were bad. I don’t mean to offend anyone, and certainly it was no worse than most other conferences, but come on. Talks over time, filled with jargon and unexplained data incomprehensible to those even slightly outside the field, long rambling introductions… it doesn’t have to be this way, people! Honestly, it also begs the question as to why people bother going to these mee...| RajLab
___ toiled over ridiculous reviewer experiments for over a year for the honor of being 4th author.| RajLab