BorisBarbour

@BorisBarbour@mastodon.social

Neuroscience (CNRS, ENS); pubpeer.com; peeriodicals.com; referee3.org. Views my own. Inactive https://mastodon.social/@BorisBarbour on Twitter

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BorisBarbour, to random

How bad are citations as a metric? The world is already upside down. Clarivate can no longer produce a list of highly cited mathematicians. Obscure Chinese medical schools (without a maths department) are more cited than Princeton.

https://www.science.org/content/article/citation-cartels-help-some-mathematicians-and-their-universities-climb-rankings

"Highly cited researcher" is on the cusp of becoming an insult in every field.

We should really drive a stake through the heart of bibliometry once and for all.

BorisBarbour, to random

This investigation of Ranga Dias' superconductivity publications is remarkable for multiple reasons.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00716-2

Nobody comes out of it well, but Nature are much more transparent about the editorial process than I can ever remember. (It's a little unclear if that was spontaneous, but, if not, the frequently claimed independence of Nature News came good.)

Thread. /1

BorisBarbour,

@moritz_negwer

Short-term and short-sighted management of reputation and finances.

BorisBarbour,

The "research" is at times risible. Key experimental results appeared suddenly in a manuscript version upon which lab members were given a couple of hours to comment before submission to Nature.

"When the students asked Dias about the stunning new data, they say, he told them he had taken all the resistance and magnetic-susceptibility data before coming to Rochester."

Just nonchalantly sitting on proof of room-temperature superconductivity for a few years, as one does. /2

BorisBarbour, to random

You know how most papers suffer in journal clubs? But probably the authors have answers for many of the criticisms? Well, one of the hopes in creating PubPeer ("The online journal club") was to be a forum where authors could defend their papers. So it's great to see Beth Stevens replying to some accumulated questions on her work about synapse-pruning by microglia.

https://pubpeer.com/publications/9775AFC4086EF678B10238F0594B07#19

We continue to believe that public confrontation of ideas will accelerate scientific progress.

BorisBarbour, to random

And so it begins.

https://pubpeer.com/publications/A50285DD4CDA64822B23AA4E86DDC0

BorisBarbour, to random

Missing data? Ctrl-D (fill down) or Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V (copy/paste) in Excel. Not worth even mentioning in the Methods.

A full professor.

We are drowning in garbage and still rewarding those who produce it (and rewarding the journals publishing it).

https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02/05/no-data-no-problem-undisclosed-tinkering-in-excel-behind-economics-paper/

BorisBarbour, to random

Riddle me this. Many (161 and counting) articles with different authors, publishers and subjects contain the same, completely incongruous citation. Why?

https://pubpeer.com/search?q=vickers+animal+communication

BorisBarbour, to random

Comically, tragically predictable.

https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-politics-2023-8-post-brexit-talent-visa-gets-just-three-applicants-in-two-years/

BorisBarbour, to random

Announcing the 2024 edition of the Paris Spring School for Optical Imaging and Electrophysiological Recording in Neuroscience

15-28 May 2024

https://parisneuro.ovh/

Application deadline Feb 1st.

Boosts appreciated.

BorisBarbour, to random

Install the PubPeer plugins and win $80000000 (well, not lose them).

https://pubpeer.com/publications/70714D8ACB8F13164A2752B4335F38#226

BorisBarbour, to random

"Emily M. Bender" (in a citation)
->
"Emily M. Drinking spree"

https://pubpeer.com/publications/FD1118EA836C25C74C89A7F76E23C8#2

BorisBarbour, to random

During the break, maybe pour one out for the PubPeer commenters working through "editors who handle their co-authors papers".
There is something for many publishers, but this one should be Elsevier's round.

Example: https://pubpeer.com/search?q=pau+loke+show

BorisBarbour, to random

What must the inside of a lab be like for people to recycle images from antibody catalogues (amongst many other sources)?

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/2/1/harvard-neuroscientist-research-misconduct/

https://pubpeer.com/publications/FF5706E8826CB8D45481E942A679EE

Of course, the institution “is committed to preserving the highest standards of biomedical research and fostering scientific innovation.”

BorisBarbour, to random

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00816-z

BorisBarbour, to random

Wow.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/25/at-four-i-was-kidnapped-and-sex-trafficked-for-years-now-i-fight-for-the-powerless-and-win-every-case

BorisBarbour, to random

I'm genuinely curious to discover whether Nature Neuroscience have consulted with a statistician.

https://pubpeer.com/publications/98FCB4581543F4A4D1BE2F386D6BDA#35

BorisBarbour, to random

Bastards. Gratuitous, self-harming cruelty from the UK government.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/09/uk-visa-rules-families-income-threshold

BorisBarbour, to random

Volunteer outsiders doing a far better job than French authorities and institutions...

https://www.science.org/content/article/failure-every-level-how-science-sleuths-exposed-massive-ethics-violations-famed-french

BorisBarbour, to random

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/07/spanish-woman-deported-from-uk-after-returning-from-christmas-holiday

BorisBarbour, to random

Ouch!

That modern decrease of disruptive research?

"A reanalysis of the data in the paper shows that the main results of the paper are likely to due a bug which affected inclusion of papers"

https://pubpeer.com/publications/E728CA80B5E267FA3F6C6B318BEEDA

BorisBarbour, to random

Not sure I would have gone with the "Elisabeth Bik is an unreliable judge of blot duplications" defence. Twice.

https://pubpeer.com/publications/98784D9AF9B1E8B5B1818E516B5001

https://pubpeer.com/publications/52D37ED6C4D16682694521FA04B2BA

neuralreckoning, to random
@neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social avatar

UX peeve. Lamps that you have to tap repeatedly to adjust brightness so that if you want it to get less bright you have to cycle through more bright first. Bring back clunky analogue switches. Touch interface is bad for everything except a phone.

BorisBarbour,

@neuralreckoning @elduvelle

Totally. But how to move away from purchase price as the main differentiator?

Only vaguely related, but I was day-dreaming that in a move to improve product quality the EU imposed a standard guarantee of 5 years instead of 2.

BorisBarbour, to random

Really important because of Ukraine, but it also feels like a bubble is bursting.

https://newrepublic.com/article/180808/mike-johnson-pro-ukraine-speech-maga-deep-state-lie

andrewplested, to random

Me: 10.7Mb PDF, please reduce the file size.

Adobe Acrobat: OK, 11 Mb

BorisBarbour,

@steveroyle @andrewplested

There is also a ghostscript command line for different pdf compression levels.

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

where "screen" is probably too compressed. Alternatives are "ebook", "printer", "prepress". (It may be possible to bump the CompatibilityLevel to 1.5). Not very fine-grained, but it can compress a lot and all elements are compressed consistently for the output

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