Progress in open research!

It’s been a while since my last post where I outlined ideas for how science may be done better. In the interim I’ve submitting my PhD thesis and am impatiently awaiting my viva (where one defends their thesis to experts, which you need to pass to be awarded your PhD!). I also started my new role as a Research Associate (the posh formal title for a Post-Doc) at the Dementia Research Institute at Cardiff University which has been a good mix of exciting and terrifying.

The Sovereign of Science

The earliest lesson I remember learning about science as a child, was that “if it’s not repeatable, it’s not science.” Fast forward many years, I find myself as a PhD student completely baffled as how there appears to be no real incentive for scientists to do their job well Instead, scientists are subject to a “publish or perish” system which compels scientists to purse publications at any cost. Some have talked about a “reproducibly crisis”, which often refers to the softer sciences such as psychology, but it’s just a prevalent in the life sciences, with many scientists, myself included, suspecting that over half of scientific literature is wrong.

By Gabriel Mateus Bernardo Harrington in Academia

May 10, 2021

First Publication!

Happy days! So I finally got my first proper publication! The paper is open access now as well! Proper here meaning I’m first author which, if you aren’t familiar with the fun(?) nuances of academia, is the only authorship that’s worth much (other than last author, which is also good). It’s not that middle authorships are worthless. It’s that they’re almost worthless. And to think, it only took just over a year (╥﹏╥)

By Gabriel Mateus Bernardo Harrington in Academia

July 27, 2020