Scientist Sees Squirrel

Just last week I hit something of a career milestone: I had a paper accepted for publication that marks #100 for my career.* It’s been a long time coming – I seem to be an eternal optimist, so just as when approaching summit on a mountain trail, I’ve been…

For those of us in the Great White North, yesterday was Thanksgiving Day.* Now, I’m on the road this year, so I didn’t quite pull off the usual Thanksgiving roasting feat, but I nonetheless have a particular smell on my mind – and quite possibly you do, t…

The third edition of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing has been out for two months now.

In the last year, I’ve published not one but two books on scientific writing: the new edition of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing just last month, and Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences (with the wonderful Bethann Garramon Merkle) last Decembe…

Everyone has a story to tell about a new layer of complicated procedure, often involving paperwork, to accomplish something that ought to be simple.

There’s quite the hullabaloo, these days, around the use of so-called “AI” writing tools (more precisely “large language models” – ChatGPT and its kin) in writing.

Last week one of my students defended her PhD thesis.

The release of the 3rd edition of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing, just last month, got me thinking (again) about whether and how scientists look for writing advice.

Last month, the announcement of a new-to-science monkey species from the Congolese rain forest made a bit of a splash.

A while back I had lunch with Jeremy Fox, of Dynamic Ecology, and since we each had a book part-way done, we were talking about that.

It’s entirely possible that the world has heard just about enough from me.

Some things don’t ever get old, and I can tell you that publication day for one of your books is one of those things.

I got a little bit riled up the other day, and I realized that it might be worth sharing because the thing that riled me is a longstanding pattern in academia (at least in Canada, anyway).

I’ve been neglecting one of my favourite hobbyhorses lately.

A few months ago I got to read one of the most entertaining scientific papers I’ve seen in a while.* It’s a study by Stefano Mammola and colleagues that documents patterns in the use of jokes in scientific talks – in particular, talks at conferences (you…

Note: This is a jointly-written post with Bethann Garramon Merkle.