Oxford University Press has produced new materials for primary schools aimed at encouraging boys to read. I’m not qualified even to start pondering the biosocial reasons why young boys apparently read less well than girls in British schools – but I was amused by the name of this initiative. It’s called Project X …. […]
Category: Liz Wager
Liz Wager’s vital statistics
One of my best presents this Christmas was a slim book called the Pocket World in Figures, published by The Economist. […]
Liz Wager on Newton and the history of fish
Delays in publication are not new and neither, it seems, are bureacratic hurdles which mean that institutions fail to recognise important things. According to Wikipedia the Royal Society had no money to print Newton’s Principia Mathematica because “the Society had just spent its book budget on a history of fish.” But, luckily, Edmund Halley realised the […]
Liz Wager: Was it worth missing a bus for?
Yesterday, I received some great feedback about a workshop I ran. Sorry if this sounds horribly self-congratulatory, but I’d like to share it with you. At the start of the workshop, one participant politely explained that she couldn’t stay for the whole session as she had a plane to catch. This struck me as a […]
Liz Wager on the Large Hadron Collider – a qualified success?
News of the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to smash its first atoms on 10 September, makes me wonder not about subatomic particles but about adjectives. When I teach researchers how to report their work, I generally advise them to be wary of qualifying adjectives as they seem out of place in scientific papers. […]
Liz Wager: Romanian ramblings
I’m just back from a week’s holiday in Romania. If your idea of a relaxing break is designer shopping, things that run on time and predictability, then I recommend you stick to Switzerland but for unspoilt mountain scenery, delicious milk still warm from the cow* and an even warmer welcome from spontaneously hospitable and generous […]
Liz Wager: Speechless with admiration
Losing your power of speech is the stuff of nightmares but is a reality to many people after a stroke. I’ve just been on a one-day workshop run by Connect, a charity that works for people with aphasia, and it was inspiring. […]
Liz Wager: Life in the fast lane
Has anyone ever studied why life speeds up the older you get? John Mortimer (in The Summer of a Dormouse – which should be required reading for any geriatrics rotation) puts it beautifully … “In childhood, the afternoons spread out for years. For the old, the years flicker past like the briefest of afternoons. The […]
Liz Wager: Would you review a paper by your ex-husband?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the revelation (from recently released official papers) that the UK Government wanted to suppress findings about the dangers of smoking because it was worried about the possible effect on tax revenues. It’s a great example of the fact that absolutely everybody has some sort of interest in research findings. […]
Liz Wager: Training and the placebo effect
I’ve been at the Vienna School of Clinical Research running a publication workshop for an enthusiastic bunch of doctors, researchers and drug company folk. Back home, catching up on my reading, Diana Wood’s BMJ editorial on problem based learning struck a chord. She argues that we don’t really know whether problem based learning works better than […]