You deserve better
A candid reflection on leaving academia. From silence and sacrifice to freedom, trust, and a life beyond the lab.
Science 26
By
Personalized cancer therapy
The BC Cancer Personalized OncoGenomics (POG) program is a world-leading research program that is using intensive genomic data collection and analysis to identify and better understand the genomic alterations that drive cancer growth, metastasis, and the biological evolution and responsiveness to therapies.
Organic food is a lie
Walking into a supermarket has become a bombardment on your senses. A barrage of words and terms that sound somewhere between science-fiction and extreme farming.
Eggs come with terms with “caged” or “barn-raised” to “free-range” or “grain-fed”. Some …
The problem with reading about cancer
Cancer. The scariest word in the world. For many people, cancer is the last word that they ever want to hear. In living memory, cancer was not a word that was dared to be spoken aloud. In this modern world, most people still read cancer as a death …
Drug delivery
When you’re sick with headache or flu, you likely reach for the aspirin and the Tylenol. At your lowest point. When you feel like things can’t get any worse. With your head pounding. Your nose running a marathon. You reach for pills.
You …
The dangers of positivity, or "Why we shouldn't ignore bad news"
Everywhere you go. Everything you read. All that you see. Everything is positive results. “Science finds this new thing!” they exclaim. Lives will be changed! What a breakthrough!
What no press release tells you is the blood, the sweat, the tears. No …
Antibiotic Armageddon
Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. this will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we …
Personalized medicine
It seems that the latest buzz phrase to be going around the medical world is the notion of “personalized medicine”. Which sounds like a bit of a joke, because isn’t all medicine personal? I mean, I’m the only sick person here, and I’m the only one …
What is Big Data?
The world is being reshaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is …
Hot drinks cool you faster - fact or fiction?
Imagine you’re sat on a tropical beach. The sort of beach they only have in magazines and nature documentaries. The sun beating down on paradise. The humidity and cooling sea breeze is just enough to make anything other than another cocktail …
10 steps to making your graphs not suck
Recently I wrote about how your graphs suck. It even generated a little bit of a stir over on LinkedIn. I am not however, the kind of person that points at a problem and walks away. I taught lab classes full of trainee chemists, biochemists and …
Your graphs suck!
Your graphs suck! Bold statement huh? I don’t even know you, Mr or Ms Anonyomous Internet Reader. Yet I know that your graphs suck. I know that when things get tough, and you really need a graph, you’ll suck the air between your teeth, quietly swear …
3x deadlier than ISIS
The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.
– Buffalo Bill
We are in the middle of a global pandemic. In one small country, population 10 million, 4000 dead. Another 200,000 infected. All in under 3 months. …
Vaccination doesn't cure fear
Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.
– Gary Hamel
The year is …
Eugenics – From designer babies to the Holocaust
You can tell when something’s not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don’t go away.
– Jeffrey Eugenides
18,000 children die every day from starvation.1 The fact of the matter is the world is only so big. We …
Pluto - the planet of surprises
We explore because we are human
– Prof. Stephen Hawking
Pluto is in the news this week and with good reason. Pluto, as most people are aware, is more than just a beloved Disney character or Roman God of the underworld. However, most people …
The rise of artificial intelligence
The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race
– Prof. Stephan Hawking
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, founder of a solar power company, founder of an electric car company, founder of a company with a …
Vitamin pills and the hard to swallow truth
There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma, but they love Big Placebo.
– Michael Specter
Study after study show vitamins do not lower cancer or …
You, pot, and politics
Winners don’t use drugs – William S. Sessions, Director, FBI
Ever noticed how a bad hangover feels like your body is dying? The truth is, it sort of is. What you did the night before was knowingly load your body full of a poison. Anyone …
Bacteria are going to kill you
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
– Voltaire (1694-1778)
Bacteria ancestors were the first organisms on the planet. Bacteria have survived around 4 billion years on this lump of rock, flying …
The world is going to university
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
– Kofi Annan
In the last few years I have experienced many universities, all of them are building. New campuses, new …
Why trust is vital to science
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved. – George MacDonald
This week in America we have once again seen how difficult it is to build trust and how quickly it can be taken away. Four of the largest cancer charities in the US …
Why I'm choosing to give up academic science
I have held off writing this blog post for some time now. It has been a long time in the making. A very long time. Part of my reason to hold off for so long is due to the very public nature of the medium and part of it has been that sitting down to …
PyMOL visualising binding interfaces
Today I’ve been trying to come up with a nice way of visualising the binding interface between protein-protein or protein-DNA complexes. What follows is a quick little walk-through mostly for my own purposes so that I can remember what …
Copenhagen: who do we believe?
As a scientist I am trained nay indoctrinated to find the truth, whatever that may be. Right or wrong. And no matter what the out come ultimately the job requires a certain amount of starring at nature, observing what happens and trying to make …
A future in science?
Approximately 2 months ago the first knock-ons from the Government’s spending decisions was announced to the research community. Whilst the Government as a response to the Science is Vital campaign acknowledged not to cut science research …