I continue to be fascinated by the discourse around so-called “AI” writing tools: it’s an amazing window on the ways smart people confront a big change that’s emotionally charged. Especially on social media (no surprise), some of this discourse is very loud. Some of the loudest seems to be from those who are fervently opposed […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
We (that’s Bethann Garramon Merkle and I) are getting very excited about our new book, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach. Over the last few months, we’ve been working with the University of Chicago Press to take it through all the steps of book production: copyedits, proofs, indexing, cover design, and […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
Warning: self-indulgent and strange (a two-for-one) I’ve been spending a lot of time at my keyboard this summer. OK, that’s nothing new: as a scientist, I write papers and grant proposals and reports and more; and I write this blog; and I write books. Books are the theme, this summer. I’m working, bizarrely, on three […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
A month or so ago, I let myself be inspired by bad papers I’ve read,* and wrote a post called “What your Methods section isn’t”. Today, following up on that and with the same inspiration: what your…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
I’ve been thinking, possibly more than I really want to, about uses of LLMs (large language models, like ChatGPT and its ilk). Specifically, I’m thinking about uses for scientific writers, and for …| Scientist Sees Squirrel
Being a Principal Investigator (PI) in science comes with a whole array of challenges—juggling admin, mentoring, grant deadlines, and finding time for your own research and writing. And almost none…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
If you’re a scientist like me, you read a lot of papers – and a lot of submitted manuscripts, drafts, and other larval stages of papers.* This is extremely helpful when it’s time to write your own …| Scientist Sees Squirrel
About six weeks ago I annoyed a lot of people by pointing out an inconvenient truth about generative AI (ChatGPT and other large-language models): it is not, in fact, burning down the planet. Despi…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
I used to think it was merely a post-COVID19 hiccough, but the extensive delays in receiving reviews for submitted manuscripts that I am seeing near constantly now are the symptoms of a much larger…| ConservationBytes.com
At least on social media, it’s become common to see ChatGPT and other large-language model writing tools* described as “the plagiarism tool that’s burning down the planet”. This is, I have to admit…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
Here’s an interesting thing about “AI”* writing tools (ChatGPT and the like, better called LLMs for “large language models”): there’s an enormous amount written about them, and yet little of it is …| Scientist Sees Squirrel
About a year ago, I posted some basic information about my new book, coauthored with the brilliant Bethann Garramon Merkle. It’s time for an update: as books grow up, they change and presumably imp…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
For scientists, writing well (or well enough) is a critical skill, as written texts are essential for communicating research. Of course, not every scientist should be able to write well, as some may rely on collaborators. In a lecture on "Writing physics", David Mermin emphasizes the importance of language and writing through a famous example:| Research Practices and Tools