Thinking Minimum Viable Mindset “Publish houses of brick, not mansions of straw”, says Bill Kaelin, Nobel laureate and professor of medicine. Scientists need to write papers that include fewer grand claims and more proof to make the scientific literature more reliable. Scientists need minimum viable discoveries.
Thinking Naming things One of the key functions of science is to organize knowledge. Scientists take new information and classify and categorize it — connect it with the known. Name it. But knowing the name of the thing is not the same as knowing the thing.
Science Scientific judgment under uncertainty How is it that we are quick to be skeptical of science but less skeptical of news? Why this difference?
Science A publishing problem If I needed to send every article to a ghostly editor of this site's publishing platform to read and decide whether it's interesting enough, you'd never read an article here and I would be stuck in publishing limbo. This absurd universe describes the academic publishing system.
Science A funding problem In 1999, the NIH set a modular budget of $250,000/year. In the past 20+ years, the modular budget has not moved. Ask any academic scientist about the hardest part of the job, and they will undoubtedly say funding.
