Of course the sadness is not an intrinsic part of these things I see. The sadness is firmly in me today, and has been these past few weeks, a filter through which all else is processed. I am not ...

There is such a stark divide between those who understand scientific complexity and those who urgently need or want to. The onus falls on the former to translate their messages in a comprehensible way ...

It’s one of those weekend afternoons when the garden is almost too beautiful. Too much. I sit here under a blanket on a deck chair in the blustery wind, trying to write, but all the songbirds have ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

This one kindly sent in by our Correspondent of all things Chthonic, Mr C. D. of Leeds. I think it speaks for itself. What it is saying, though, is less clear.

My annual selection of favourites from the photographs I took in the past year is now available on Flickr. Do people still use Flickr? I have broken my usual rule of not including family photos ...

When you are a scientist, your daily concerns revolve around mundane issues, so mundane that most normal people would struggle to recognise them as urgent: primarily funding woes, like I wrote about ...

The preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same I cannot point to a moment when I knew I was called to serve God like this. The image is more like a watercolour, built up in layers, or a ...

There has been much fuss and flapdoodle about a company called Colossal Biosciences that aims to use the wonders of modern genetic technology to call extinct species back from the other side of the ...

On Tuesday evening I was asked by Research Professional News for my views on a new report from think tank UKDayOne, which is calling for the abolition of the Research Excellence Framework, unlovingly ...