Everyday Scientist

New Rule

Ubiquitous subjects are ubiquitous in chemistry.  If a compound, protein, reaction, etc. really is ubiquitous, then it is likely widespread enough that you don’t have to inform everyone of its ubiquity.

hard-core sugar balls

Andrew alerted me to this awesome title:

Wow.

enormously large!

Now here is an exciting title:

“Enormously large (approaching 14 eV!) electron binding energies of [H_nF_n+1]^– (n=1-5,7,9,12) anions”

I just love exclamation points in titles.

stanford grad students are NOT eligible for worker’s comp

According to this official document, Stanford graduate researchers are not covered by worker’s compensation. If we get injured on the job, we have to pay using our private insurance. Well that sucks. I can’t see any reason that a postdoc working in lab should be covered but a grad student doing the exact same thing is not.

Students at Notre Dame, Rice, UIUC, and Caltech are covered. Why aren’t we?

This means that we graduate students should be more vigilant at demanding safe working environments, refusing to even enter an area that is at all questionable, refusing to work with or around unsafe individuals, and asking postdocs or professors to perform all strenuous or risky tasks (such as heavy lifting or working in the machine shop).

UPDATE: I’ve heard of two cases of graduate students getting injured while in lab, and Stanford refuses to pay the workers comp. In one case, the student’s private insurance paid. In the other, the Stanford-branded health insurance (Cardinal Care) also refused to pay, because the injury occurred at work; that student got a hospital bill for nearly $2000. Something is wrong here!

Murphy’s Law of Water Titrametrics

It will ALWAYS be raining whenever you need to do Karl-Fischer titration in another building.

Corollary:

El Nino sucks.

go get your own alligator!

“They cannot argue with this data,” she said. “I have three lines of evidence. If they don’t believe it, they need to get an alligator and make their own measurements.”

(via Randy and Eric.)

Biophysics Meeting

Give a big shout-out if you’re heading for the Biophysics Meeting in a few months.

On a related note, this here video summarizes why biology is so friggin’ cool!

acronym fail

Strange choice for the name of the fluorescent probe.

The “SS” stands for the disulfide bond; the “A” for acetylnaphthalene. I think. Fortunately, the authors never used the phrase “ASS probe” in the paper.

liquid oxygen

Not a good idea:

I don’t think putting liquid oxygen on your tongue is so smart. Fortunately, it’s not really liquid O2, it’s just salt water:

“The chemical components in Liquid Oxygen are distilled water, sodium chloride, dissolved oxygen and essential and trace minerals. The species of oxygen found in Liquid Oxygen include O2, and O4. The active ingredient in Liquid Oxygen is a relatively stable nascent molecule of oxygen in the form of O4. All other oxygen type supplements bond their active oxygen to salt molecules forming oxychlorine or oxy-halogen compounds driving up the pH to levels that could be dangerous to the skin and delicate membranes in the oral cavity if taken improperly. In addition, additional stomach acid activity is required to break these molecules down to release the oxygen.”

Huh?

tebow celebrates my PhD defense

In the Sugar Bowl tonight, Florida’s Tim Tebow kindly reminded the world that I’ll be defending my PhD Dissertation on February 8, 2010.

That’s nice of him.

lobsters chelate

As a Mainer, I appreciate this table-of-contents artwork:

Cute.

to be unpublished

Footnote 20 is great.

Lipscomb, W. N. J. Chem. Phys. 1954, 22, 985-988. (Thanks Mike.)

check out this cool link

Check it out here. I promise you won’t be rickroll’d.

how to respond to referees

Now that I’ve listed some pointers on how to write a referee report, I want to discuss how to respond to reviews of your own manuscript. Again, I’m still a novice at this, so I’d love input from the audience!

1. Try not to be offended. It’s hard not to, but try not to hate the reviewer when they criticize your manuscript. Usually, I get one referee who says the paper is great and another who says it’s crap. It’s hard not to want to hurt that latter type. Bad. But they might be partially right, so correct the issues they find that have merit, and defend your original manuscript against the foolish criticisms.
2. Organize your response. I like to make tables with one row being the referee’s comment and the other being my response, with each comment on a separate row. Any way you do it, respond to each referee point-by-point. In your cover letter to the editor, summarize the major requests by the referees and the main changes in the revised manuscript.
3. Stand your ground when you’re right. Don’t make changes that make your manuscript worse. If the referee is wrong about something, say so (gently). Your goal is the editor seeing that you are right. If you’re too rude in your response to an incorrect referee, the editor may think you protest too much and become suspicious.
4. …but don’t pull an Einstein. Sometimes referees find a problem with your science or reasoning that, no matter how much it pains you, is worth seriously considering. Referees can make your papers much better, so it is important to listen to them.

Number 1 is the one I have the most problems with. I don’t understand why some referees have to be so unreasonable and wrong when writing their reports. I usually draft very snarky responses, only to replace them with polite disagreement before sending my revisions to the editor. And complain to friends a lot. Not sure if that helps me or keeps me angry.

Others?

how to referee a paper

Here are some pointers about how to referee a scientific journal article. I’ve picked these up both from having refereed papers myself (with my PIs) and more importantly from reading referee reports (good and bad) of my own manuscripts.

1. Be timely. Editors often proceed with the publication process after getting back only two (or sometimes one) review. If yours is the third to come back, it may be too late. I’ve learned the hard way that, if you take too long to submit your review, your hard work might be all for naught. Of course, it is totally inappropriate to sit on a review purposefully to give yourself time to scoop a competitor.
2. Be positive. Authors will be more willing to make the changes you suggest if you “sandwich” the constructive criticism between positive comments about the manuscript. It’s easy as a reviewer to only see the bad and forget that the science and writing took a lot of effort from the authors.
3. Organize your criticisms. At minimum, split the changes you’re asking for into essential and minor. For instance, don’t bury a serious problem you found among a bunch of nit-picky points. First list the essential changes that need to be made in order to make the manuscript publishable, then you may list typos and minor points if you wish. This way, the authors (and editors) will immediately understand your assessment of the paper, and not get offended by what feels like an endless list of complaints. Remember: you’re a referee of the science, not an editor. UPDATE: Also, as MRW says in the comments, write your report so it can be responded to point-by-point.
4. Do unto others… Remember what you appreciate in a review of your own manuscripts (and what drove you mad), and go from there. The authors are not your enemies—even though some of them torture you with their unclear writing and lackluster science—treat them like you would want to be treated.
5. But be a good filter. Don’t let fatally bad science into the literature.

The best referees are the ones that help the authors make the paper better. Try to be that kind of referee. The worst are the ones that don’t read the manuscript closely enough, then unfairly criticize it. The just plain unhelpful are the ones who just say “publish as is.”

I’m sure I have a lot more to learn, but these are some things I’ve picked up so far. Others?

(Later, I’ll talk about how to respond to referee reports of your own manuscripts.)