Last year, Fang & Casadevall (2016) wrote an editorial entitled Research Funding: the Case for a Modified Lottery highlighting the chronic and severe lack of research funds and the resistance to change how these funds are allocated. While their proposal may seem drastic, especially to the lucky 10% or so who get their grants funded, the arguments put forth by
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Three years ago, Greg Wilson of Software Carpentry fame, along with fellow members of the Software Carpentry Community, published an article entitled Best Practices for Scientific Computing. This article is a great reference and covers all aspects of scientific computing. However, the paper could be intimidating to novices. To remedy this, Greg Wilson et al. recently published a follow-up paper
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As highlighted in previous posts (e.g., 1, 2, 3), reproducibility and replicability are key features of scientific studies that have received considerable attention in the popular press and the scientific literature. However, as highlighted in a recent paper by Patil, Peng & Leek, there is no consensus on what these terms mean. Therefore, these authors took on the task of
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Almost all scientists use computers on a daily basis. While some of the software they use will be proprietary, other software are conceived and developed by researchers themselves. In line with the current push for open and reproducible science, making scientific software available for inspection and use by other researchers is an important step in the research process. Furthermore, making
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It is not easy being a successful young scientist. The numbers do not lie: there is more competition for fewer tenure track positions and grant funding success rates have reached an all-time low. If you have a tenure track position and hold a grant, consider yourself lucky! In October last year, Nature published an article entitled Young, talented and fed-up.
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I have completed undergraduate level research, a Master’s degree, a PhD, and two post-docs, yet I have never been taught or told how I should organize the files and folders related to a project. Being organized is essential in most aspects of life, and this is particularly trying when conducting research. I only found a few online examples of blogs
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Scientifically Sound 