The core idea here is that if you’re a post doc, don’t just do what you’re told.

Science is done by people for people. We should structure our work to give the people what they want and frame it in a way they can understand.

Interesting idea.

When the research being promoted is about sex-differences, the soundbite/clickbait approach involves leading with some attention-grabbing statement about men and women that basically accords with most people’s preconceptions. The message is that Science has now confirmed the accuracy of a commonplace gender stereotype.

Title is a bit clickbait-y, but it is quite a good historical overview of transphobic science and ideology in the United States.

Medicine loves guidelines. But everywhere else, guidelines are still underappreciated.

via: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/11/17/how-to-diy-new-scientific-protocols/

The place of scientists in society over the past 80 years has been a historical anomaly.

Something to chew on as I get ready to apply to grad school and continue to seek a research profession.

Sign the pledge not to review for closed-access publications!

via: https://julesh.com/

Thomas Bloom’s erdosproblems.com site hosts nearly a thousand questions that originated, or were communicated by, Paul Erdős, as well as the current status of these questions (about a third of which are currently solved). The site is now a couple years old, and has been steadily adding features, the most recent of which has been…

Ending the war on poverty will take more than cash transfers

via: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/08/31/links-for-august-2025/

I have great respect for Mickey’s commitment to improving our science, and he’s always a sharp and provocative thinker. But we can gain a much broader perspective on the question of replicability by considering the evidence from as many of the best tools at our disposal.

Smart people are sometimes the last to realize that the cognitive ship they are captaining is about to sink.

Brings up excellent questions regarding how and when we can know a theory is dead.

Scientific paradigms and religions reframed in the language of memetics.

What does this mean for the aspiring palaeontologist? It means that his or her most rational strategy for landing a job is to socially cultivate as many lab leaders as possible, especially those who work in strata likely to turn up preserved soft tissue, and hope to get in on a Nature or Science paper — so that their job applications get through to the stage where their actual work might get some scrutiny.

Can we all agree that this is idiotic?

via: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/07/29/links-for-july-2025/

Ten years ago, almost to the day, Matt and I were having a conversation vie Google chat. We got onto the evergreen topic of scholarly publishing. Let’s ignore the somewhat dated references to Twitter and Skype, and listen in on those two starry-eyed youngsters …

via: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/07/29/links-for-july-2025/

Mechanism alone cannot make a science credible. It must describe its subject matter in terms of entities, properties, and rules.

via: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/07/29/links-for-july-2025/