I’ve recently caught myself acting irrationally about denture cleaning tablets. Let me explain. I’ve decided to have my teeth straightened. This involves wearing a brace (but as it’s a high-tech one, only for a few weeks). Said brace requires a daily dunking in what the BBC would no doubt call ‘a proprietary denture cleaning solution’ […]
Category: Liz Wager
Liz Wager on Einstein, David Nutt, and academic freedom
I’m just back from Washington DC, where we held the first US meeting of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics). Engraved onto the building housing part of the National Academy of Sciences is a quote from Einstein which could serve as the COPE motto if we had one. It reads: “The right to search for […]
Liz Wager: Are men more dishonest than women?
Frank Wells, who is probably the UK’s first professional fraud buster, says he has “yet to meet a female research fraudster.” All the 26 cases of proven villainy he has dealt with have been men. That’s interesting, but not quite enough to fill a blog and perhaps says more about the sex ratio of senior […]
Liz Wager: It’ll only take 5 minutes …
I’ve reached an age where various bits of my body don’t seeem to work as well as they used to (you’ll be able to find out which ones if you read on). I am also an avid believer that prevention is better than cure, and I actually believe some of the health advice I receive […]
Liz Wager: Spreading the word
A journal editor told me he was once asked to act as an expert witness defending a doctor accused of negligence for failing to diagnose a rare condition. The defence hinged on how soon a doctor could reasonably be expected to be aware of a medical development after it had been reported in a journal. […]
Liz Wager asks: Anyone for an algorithm?
I have a fondness for flowcharts. I also attempt to teach doctors to prefer short words when they are writing. So, when I found myself exchanging emails with an American doctor who insisted on referring to the COPE flowcharts as algorithms, I was determined to teach him the error of his ways. But first, I […]
Liz Wager: If comment is cheap why is peer review so expensive?
As you know (since you are reading this), I blog, albeit sporadically. I do not Tweet (yet) but I’m fascinated by the frenzy of twittering and the explosion of opportunities to launch one’s opinions into cyberspace. […]
“Just doing my job,” by Liz Wager
Determining the appropriate authorship of publications causes all sorts of problems (in part, I believe, because none of the available guidelines apply in all situations, and many journals offer little help – but I’ve written about that elsewhere, so I’ll try not to rant about it here). What I wanted to write about was the […]
Liz Wager on the definite article
I’ve been editing papers written by speakers of languages, such as Russian and Chinese, that don’t use definite and indefinite articles (“the” or “an”) in the same way as English and mulling over the somewhat mysterious use of articles in medical terms. Some colloquial expressions award illnesses a definite article, so you might hear “He’s […]
Liz Wager’s 15th century wisdom on PowerPoint
I use PowerPoint when I’m giving a presentation, and still believe that it’s a helpful tool if used carefully. I agree with other critics such as Trisha Greenhalgh, that slides packed with verbiage are ghastly and sleep-inducing but strong images can help make your message stick. […]