Author Archives: Campbell Aitken

My last post concerned peer review and its importance in academic publishing, and how some dodgy journals that claim to be peer-reviewed will in fact publish anything  – literally, anything – without any review at all.  But as Will Oremus wrote … Continue reading →

Publishing is a crucial part of a scientist’s job. It allows others to evaluate your findings, try to replicate them, argue against them, incorporate them into their own work. It’s also a vital indicator of the worth of the research; the … Continue reading →

Many people have trouble with punctuation. The apostrophe is undoubtedly the most misunderstood and misused of all forms of punctuation (as the image below demonstrates – a rare example of two unnecessary apostrophes in one word!), but the semicolon is … Continue reading →

In March 2013 Stephan Lewandowsky and his colleagues published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Psychology in which they argued that people who reject climate science are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Their conclusion was based … Continue reading →

Dunning et al. [1] showed that incompetent people tend to be blissfully ignorant of their incompetence (the Dunning-Kruger effect), lacking both the ability to produce correct responses and the expertise to identify their problems. Incompetent people base their perceptions of … Continue reading →

In many respects academics have it pretty good: they work on topics about which they’re passionate, have a lot of flexibility and freedom, interact with smart and interesting people every day, and are paid well by most people’s standards. Nevertheless, there are downsides, notably constant … Continue reading →

This story from theguardian.com (26th February 2014) begins as follows: Three MIT graduate students wanted to expose how dodgy scientific conferences pestered researchers for papers, and accepted any old rubbish sent in, knowing that academics would stump up the hefty, … Continue reading →

Morwell’s air is extremely unhealthy right now (28th February 2014) due to the continuing fire in the Hazelwood coalmine. About an hour ago, Rosemary Lester, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, advised “anyone over 65, pre-school-aged children, pregnant women and anyone with a pre-existing … Continue reading →

My family loves great cheese and high-quality food in general, and consequently we’ve always pooh-poohed low-fat products – mostly because many such foods are highly processed and stuffed full of sugar or artificial sweeteners to compensate for their reduced fat content. … Continue reading →

Evidence is crucial to academic writing. Every statement presented as fact should be substantiated with a citation, and citations are given in full as references (for a journal article, typically author(s), year of publication, article title, journal name, volume and issue numbers, and page … Continue reading →