Is Reviewer #2 really the harshest? A pseudo-scientific answer.

Nowadays, many journals are openly sharing the peer review reports for the articles they publish. If the report is there, it will be the first thing I read, even before looking at the actual results i...

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Light gray ethics

We are familiar with the “fraud in science” stories that make the headlines. Those are the ones that are the most unacceptable, dramatic and scandalous. They usually emerge after years and years of be...

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A short list of things I wish I had done during my PhD

This is a list coming straight from my experience and it is NOT a listicle (I hate that word. And the concept.). Just putting it out there, that I wish.. ..I had written a review in my field BEFORE ...

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Suffer-culture in academia

“I spent the holidays in the lab.” “I started at 5.00 this morning.” Have you ever had that person in your team that made sure to explicitly share that they have been working during crazy hours, eve...

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The politics of citing papers

There was another lab working on our “favorite” protein. Not in our building, and not even in our time zone but our questions and models were quite similar. We knew of them through the usual channels:...

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Sliding labs

“With the rising competition for funding, securing a grant has become less about advancing science and more about staying in science.” ↪ Mentioned recently in a Nature News article.  As you may know...

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Welcome to the family, call me Professor

When I first started my PhD in France, I couldn’t help but address my PI with the formal “you” in french (“vous”), instead of the informal “you” (“tu”). She was very quick to tell me to use the inform...

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Are you winning?

By the end of my PhD, I was somewhat disillusioned by the way scientific research worked and decided to pick a field that could open up a (small) door to industry, if I ever decided to take that route...

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The split-screen mind of the researcher

“So, what experiment should we do next?” asks the student.  And two different tabs open up side to side in your mind.  Tab 1: Taking a stroll in your field In this tab, there are no real rules. Yo...

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Every rockstar scientist has an origin story

Six years ago, during a science communication session at a conference, we were given the task to explain “why we do what we do” to people unfamiliar with our research. While having this chat with a fe...

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Spoiler: there is no end to this

Being a researcher implies a long stretch of studies at the university to specialize in a certain field. To me personally, it felt like I just kept studying and studying, year after year, and… here I ...

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Symptomatic treatment of a broken system

The “publish or perish” culture pushes researchers to publish papers (regardless of the state of their research) for career survival. Academic jobs are tied to people’s publication records; and althou...

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Academic nomadism and impostor syndrome

Two years ago at a conference, I was talking to a professor whom I deeply respect, telling him that I honestly do not know where my home is. I left the country I grew up in when I was 18, spent 11 yea...

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The Ghost / Ghosted Authorship Dilemma

For my very first blog post on this platform, I got inspired by the name of the blog support system itself—Ghost. It made me reflect on a phenomenon that many early-career researchers quietly experien...

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The cult of novelty

I know you are conditioned to think that what you are researching has to be novel.  But let’s think about it for a second.  Is the importance of novelty and the constant push for it in publications ...

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You are a scientist: a play in three acts

Act I: Enchantment It usually starts early on.  You are looking at something. A couple of bugs on the ground. A star in the sky. The veins on a leaf. The stream of bubbles in your soda. You are just...

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Reviewer #2 Was... A PhD Student

In the 20th century, Tom Clancy’s espionage novels became so popular that his publisher started hiring ghostwriters to respond to the popular demand. But in science, such a thing would be unthinkable,...

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The disinhibited reviewer

Just like the anonymous commenter on a reddit thread or a social media post, I think the anonymous reviewer suffers from the “disinhibition effect” that comes with knowing that they cannot be identifi...

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The perils of low hanging fruit

The first time I heard the expression "low hanging fruit" in science, I got excited. Simple projects that seem to be straightforward – seemingly untouched by other scientists. Projects you could pluck...

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Predatory journals mirror the flaws in academic publishing.

How to catch a predator in the academic publisher quagmire.  Dear esteemed Professor Waltho, I would like to take the privilege to invite you to contribute your research/discoveries to our overly op...

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Law & disorder in academic publishing

Impact factor. The power of this term is unparalleled in academia. The word “impact” by itself is already so profoundly heavy. And second in line to it, would be tenure. I put it in second place, bec...

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The Flattening Soul-Crushing Effect of Cradling Yourself in a Bubble

I was recently at a conference – the friends-and-family kind. International, sure, but mostly populated by academically 'related' researchers. A chance to get all together, talk about new projects, sh...

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How to survive reviewers' comments. No, it's a question.

At times, critique could be mistaken as criticism, even though it’s not meant to be. Still, even critique is difficult to deal with.  With time, I learned to ask “What is the intention behind this co...

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