As a recent member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, I’m marveling at their events calendar which strikes me as hands down the best entertainment programme in London (if you’re into scientific talks, that is). Two of the four lectures I’ll be attending in the coming weeks are part of the members-only, black-tie “Friday Evening Discourses” that were started by Michael Faraday in 1826 - isn’t that amazing?

One of the talks that I’ll unfortunately have to miss (because I’m travelling to Germany) is this one next Monday, 20th October:

Murder in Mayfair

London is an epicentre of medical advancement, from Edward Jenner’s pioneering work on vaccination to the world’s first heart and lung transplant. But London is also a hotbed of disease and demise and this event will take a look at the notorious murders and strange deaths in the capital. [...].

London has a rich and gruesome history of untimely demises. From the recent past we have the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, only a few minutes’ walk from the Royal Institution, who was killed by a radioactive teapot. 18 years earlier, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was dispatched with a poison tipped umbrella by Waterloo Bridge.

Or how about this one on 4th November:

The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy

Gray’s Anatomy is probably one of the most iconic scientific books ever published: an illustrated textbook of anatomy that is still a household name 150 years since its first edition, known for its rigorously scientific text, and masterful illustrations as beautiful as they are detailed. The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy tells the story of the creation of this remarkable book, and the individuals who made it happen.

Wonderful, isn’t it? So, in the spirit of peppering this blog with Edo period, medieval, and Japanese monster anatomy, here are some more highly rigorous anatomic drawings I just came across:

Via Gizmodo.

Long time no blog, indeed. I had wanted to write more about the numerous workshops and conferences I attended, but I didn’t get around to it because we’ve been very busy here at Mendeley HQ. Among other things, we’re planning a new release of Mendeley Desktop soon. Without giving too much away, it will include a few long-awaited and highly-requested new features. Stay tuned!

So I’ve been looking for a way to sum up my recent travels. With total disregard for Blaise Pascal’s famous quote “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”, I concluded that Haikus might be a solution. Here goes:

In Soton I sleep
on Ben’s futon which fails, my
talk is all woozy

Said futon

Listening to Yaroslav’s talk

Moving on - my Science in the 21st Century haiku:

Waterloo WiFi
breaks during the demo yet
enthusiasm wins

Chad Orzel on Newtonian vs. Galileian science - our former landlord Michael Palin making another unexpected appearance

Collective mind-mapping exercise devised by Alex Pang

Panel with Steve Weinstein, Harry Collins, David Kaiser, Lee Smolin and impressively bescribbled blackboards

In short, I had a marvelous week at the Perimeter Institute. Thanks to Sabine for organizing such a great conference, to Mark and Eva for the many inspiring conversations, to Jen and Michael for inviting me over to dinner, to Chad, Simeon, John and Cameron for the nice evening at the brewery, to Katy for offering to help us develop data visualizations, to David and Paul for sharing their insights into the current US presidential election (and Paul giving me one of his Analog SF magazines so I’d have something to read on the plane), to Gerry for sharing his thoughts on social networking (and looking like Albert Einstein), and to Hassan for inviting me to contribute an essay about reputation systems in science to his upcoming book.

My jetlag is in full swing as I’m writing this from my room at the lovely Walper Terrace Hotel in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario. The local time is 10pm, but my inner clock (still set to GMT) tells me it’s 3 in the morning, thus lending incredible appeal to the hotel bed behind me. But I’ve decided to grim up and write about the conferences and workshops I’ve been attending in the past week, because everything whizzes by so fast that the backlog of blogworthy events is just getting bigger and bigger.

So, to start off, I participated in the Science Blogging 2008 Conference that was held on the 30th of August at the Royal Institution in London. More on that later; the conference was preceded by a “London Science Tour” on the 29th of August, led by Matt Brown, Editor at Nature Networks, writer for The Londonist and genuinely nice guy. Matt took us (a group of science bloggers + me) on a day’s walk to a number of scientific points of interest, exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection and behind-the-scenes tours the Linnean Society of London, and the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum. I could sit here all night enthusing about the incredible wonders nature on display there, but I’ll just say that - if you get the chance - you should see it for yourself. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Wellcome Collection - Malaria info booth

Wellcome Collection - Creepy crawlies that spread diseases

Linnean Society - Butterfly specimens collected almost 240 years ago

Linnean Society - Coleoptera of 1772, pleased to meet you

Linnean Society - 17th century books on horticulture

Darwin Centre - 8.6m squid “Archie” (Architeuthis dux)

Darwin Centre - A “really big-headed fish in a tube” (excuse my ignorance)

Darwin Centre - A “really poor, cute beaked guy in a glass” (belonging to the Tachyglossidae family? Excuse my ignorance)

Darwin Centre - Snake specimens

During the walk, I got to know some very nice people such as Heather Etchevers, Yaroslav Nikolaev, Martin Fenner (who by now has posted an interview with me on his blog), and Mo Costandi, author of the brilliant Neurophilosophy blog.

The funniest moment came later that night at a pub in Soho. Mo had just introduced me to some guy named Vaughan, and we were standing there with a pint of beer, talking about this and that. Up to that point, I had only exchanged about two sentences with Vaughan, and instead had started telling Mo about how my favourite neuroscience/psychology blog was Mind Hacks and how great Mind Hacks was - and Mo pointed over to Vaughan and said: “That’s Vaughan’s blog!”.

So I got to know the author of Mind Hacks by accident, which was completely awesome. As it turned out the next day, someone else shared my feelings. Ben Goldacre, famous Guardian Science Blogger, told a similar story about meeting Vaughan at the pub that night (”No way, you’re the author of Mind Hacks?! I LOVE Mind Hacks!”) during his opening keynote speech at the conference.

Well, so much for my plan to write about Science Blogging 2008, the Southampton Open Science Workshop, which I attended subsequently, and the Science in the 21st Century Conference, where I am now, in one go. It’s already 4.32am on my inner clock now, and I can’t resist the bed any longer. I guess this will be a multi-part post…

I received a very tempting offer today: A friend of mine, who’s faculty at a major research university here in London, invited me to become a guest lecturer for the next spring term and take over a class in consumer behaviour. It would have been seven sessions, three hours each.

I always enjoyed teaching, and the study of consumer behavior (with all its ethical, cultural, and economic implications) was what got me interested in a career in academia in the first place. So I really struggled with myself before turning down the offer. The classes are scheduled to start in January, hence I would have had to begin preparing the lectures in November at the latest - and there was no way of doing that if I still wanted to submit my Ph.D. thesis this year and work on Mendeley at the same time.

Luxury problems, I guess, but I still feel a little sad over this missed opportunity. Well, maybe in the fall!

And now for something completely different. Do you know 14? 14 is an artist who satirizes celebrity culture on her blog Gallery of the Absurd. Here’s my favourite of her paintings:

For months the world has been anticipating the arrival of the Brangelina baby. Tabloids and bloggers have been speculating that this baby is destined to be the Most Beautiful Child Ever. New York Magazine ruffled feathers when stating “Not since Jesus has a baby been so eagerly anticipated.” What I’d like to speculate is…..what if the offspring of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt isn’t as stunningly gorgeous as everyone assumes? What if she’s just a regular looking baby….maybe even a little goofy looking? It could happen!

Now, did you ever wonder what would happen if scientists were tabloid fodder? I actually didn’t. But 14 does:

I’ve always wondered what our culture would be like if we obsessed about the private lives and accomplishments of scientists, researchers and great thinkers the same way we obsess over celebrities. Would we follow closely the scandals of scientific study the same way we follow the scandals of Britney or Madonna? Would certain appealing scientists be given their own reality shows?

… and her answer is hilarious:

Unfortunately, my scientific achievements are not yet colossal enough for me to be included in the science tabloids. I still hope to win the Ig Noble Prize one day.

Via Gallery of the Absurd.

After writing so much about the other fun speeches, sessions, and things to do at the ESOF2008, I didn’t manage to talk about our own session, “Euroscience’s Interactive Workshop: Development of a virtual network custom designed for scientists”, which took place on Monday afternoon.

The sessions was started off by Professors Peter Westh and Roberto Poli, who each presented their vision for an interdisciplinary network for researchers. In their view, ontologies and semantic knowledge will play a key part in establishing a useful network that is not merely a “Facebook for scientists”, but helps to connect researchers through highlighting common areas of interest or - as Prof. Westh emphasized - possible new applications of existing knowledge.

That, of course, was music to our ears. We’ve talked about our “Mendeley = Last.fm for research” vision before on this blog, but the EuroScience workshop was the perfect venue for tossing the idea around a bit further. After all, Last.fm has managed to create the largest ontological classification (and the largest open database) of music in the world, by aggregating the musical tastes of its 20 million users and then data-mining it for similar musical genres, artists, and songs.

So our presentation was aimed at exploring how these principles could be applied to research. You can find an abridged version below! I tried my best at voiceover narration, but doing it in front of my computer at midnight just doesn’t turn out as lively as standing in front of an audience:

After the talk, we got great feedback from the audience. The panel moderator, Jens Degett, even wondered whether we just might have solved the major problem of Open Access - the researchers’ lack of participation: With Mendeley, researchers have an increased incentive to post their articles online, because it enables them track the evolution of their readership in real-time!

One of the audience members who came up to us after the presentation was Anders Norgaard, a Ph.D. student from Denmark who had some cool suggestions for future features. We also talked about open sourcing Mendeley Desktop, and I mentioned to him that we had three KDE developers on our team. This is the dialog that ensued:

Anders: Oh, really? What are their names?

Me: Well, there’s Mike Arthur…

Anders: Mike Arthur? I know him, he’s quite famous in the KDE scene!

Me: …and Fred Emmott…

Anders: Fred Emmott? The guy who’s doing Slamd64?!

Me: …yes, and Robert Knight will be starting next Monday…

Anders: Robert Knight?! He’s famous, too! How did you manage to get those guys?

Well, the credit goes to Mike. I knew that we had brilliant engineers on our team, but I was clueless that they were actually famous… Mike, Fred, Robert - I tip my hat to you guys!

I wanted to write up Part II of our EuroScience Adventures today, but unfortunately, I didn’t manage to - look out for them tomorrow! However, I came across a very interesting (and, at the risk of sounding pompous, important) video today.

It describes how Chris Boulton’s thesis was repeatedly turned down for publication because its data contained copyrighted material (excerpts from fashion ads), the use of which should have fallen under the “fair use” doctrine.

For scholars who study media, the internet has broadened research horizons and expanded the reach of teaching and publications. But powerful gatekeepers remain. From academic journals seeking to control our intellectual property to lawyers crying foul when we quote from copyrighted material, we are bombarded with a myriad of confusing and dubious restrictions. In short, the implied threat of legal action creates a chilling effect that impacts us all. Some have pushed back, arguing that our educational activities are protected under the “fair use” statute. But this is a risky game to play. The rules aren’t always clear. And when it comes to fair use, we either use it, or lose it.

Via Open Students via A Blog Around the Clock.

Well, what can I say! The EuroScience Open Forum 2008 in Barcelona has turned out great so far. Due to its considerable greatitude and excellent greatishness, Jan decided not to let me have all the fun by myself and joined me yesterday.

On the downside, the heat and travel stress didn’t exactly help me get rid of my still-persisting cough/throat inflammation. I was barely able to sleep again for the first two nights in Barcelona, and I will need some more days rest at home when I return to London. Nonetheless, we attended some very inspiring sessions and received enthusiastic feedback on our presentation today (more on that in a later post) - let me recapitulate.

Saturday, the most interesting session was on “Open Science” or “Open Notebook Science”, on which Prof. Peter Murray-Rust from Cambridge gave a very spirited talk…

…followed by a not-so-spirited talk given by he-who-shall-not-be-named and in which every slide looked like this:

Anyhow, “Open Notebook Science” is a fairly recent idea which has gained more and more exposure in the past few months. The basic premise is that researchers should not only share their publications through Open Access outlets, but also freely publish their raw data alongside it so that it can be validated, re-purposed and aggregated.

This, of course, entails some problems: Academic careers and tenure decisions depend on publications, so how can you incentivise researchers to lay open their data before they’re certain that they have “wrung” all possible publications out of it? I believe that our “Last.fm for research” model, i.e. the chart-like tracking of which papers are being widely read, which authors are up-and-coming etc., could also be extended to raw data - thus giving credit to people who have created the raw data that others are successfully using.

Two other highlights yesterday and today were the keynote speeches by Prof. Marcus du Sautoy from Oxford and by Physiology/Medicine Nobel laureate Dr. Richard J. Roberts. Both described how they had discovered their love of science and the fields they wanted to dedicate themselves to. Little known facts:

Prof. du Sautoy originally wanted to become a spy (to get a nice black gun like his mum, who had worked for the foreign office) and thus tried to learn many different languages. By his own admission, he failed miserably because he did not find languages to be logical enough. Fortunately for him, Mathematics - and especially Symmetry, his field of expertise - offered him a way of describing and understanding the world in more logical terms. Finally, despite his obsession with symmetry, he had this wonderful quote from the 14th-century Japanese Essays in Idleness:

In everything [...] uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth… Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished.

This reminded me strikingly of the Law of Closure in Gestalt psychology which describes how the mind will try to complete figures if they are unfinished - hence deliberately leaving something incomplete will engage the mind’s creativity.

Today, then, Dr. Roberts spoke about his way from unruly, almost-expelled-from-school teenager to molecular biologist and Nobel laureate.

Dr. Roberts had actually wanted to become a professional snooker player - back in the 1960s, he was West England snooker champion. That was also when he received what he described as one of his most profound life lessons:

During a snooker tournament, he had sunk an incredible “lucky shot” - but then failed to make the next one. After the game, an old man came down from the audience and said to him:

Listen, if you sink a lucky shot like that, you have to concentrate twice as hard on your next shot. Everyone can be lucky, but if you get lucky - don’t feel bad, instead work extra hard to take advantage of it.

Seems to have worked out alright for him! After the talk, I hopped onto the stage to give Dr. Roberts a brief pitch of Mendeley, since he’s now actively involved in the Open Access movement. I’m sure that he gets loads of requests like these, but if we’re lucky, who knows - he might just find our idea interesting enough to give us some feedback.

Finally, here are two pictures of me wearing a brain helmet, looking at my brain activity (and oddly, not seeing any?!):

Phew. I should stop writing now. Must sleep. Will tell more of our exploits later. Adios!

My favourite neuroscience/psychology blog Mind Hacks ran a wonderful quote by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert (whose TED talk I linked to earlier). The quote echoes one of the themes of my Ph.D. thesis (trying to account for the effects of emotions on decision making) and illustrates what has always drawn me to social psychology: Its balanced all-around view incorporating cognition, emotion, neurobiology and social influences.

So here goes:

Psychologists have a penchant for irrational exuberances, and whenever we discover something new we feel the need to discard everything old. Social psychology is the exception. We kept cognition alive during the behaviourist revolution that denied it, we kept emotion alive during the cognitive revolution that ignored it, and today we are keeping behaviour alive as the neuroscience revolution steams on and threatens to make it irrelevant. But psychological revolutions inevitably collapse under their own weight and psychologists start hunting for all the babies they tossed out with the bathwater. Social psychology is where they typically go to find them. So the challenge for social psychologists watching yet another revolution that promises to leave them in the dustbin of history is to remember that we’ve outlived every revolutionary who has ever pronounced us obsolete.

Amen, brother! Via Mind Hacks.

Last week, I mentioned an idea that Michael, Felix and I had discussed a while ago: The Journal of Failed Studies. We felt that this journal was to have a bright and shining future… if we ever got around to launching it.

Then Prof. Duchier kindly pointed me to The Journal of Interesting Negative Results, which in turn linked to The Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis. Especially the latter contains a number of fascinating articles on my favourite research subjects: Mood and subliminal influences on decision-making… all refusing to show a significant effect, unfortunately.

And so it appears that The Journal of Failed Studies already exists in several academic disciplines. Admittedly, they all found nicer ways of saying “fail”, too. To paraphrase Thomas Alva Edison: “My study hasn’t failed. I have just found 1000 ways of supporting the null hypothesis!”