Amidst all this, my team members are generating large amounts of data and seek me out for ideas, advice, and my blessing – some days are so intense that I return home with an aching, over-exercised ...

It was for a concert of Handel’s Messiah and I’m pretty sure that I sang in it.  It was memorable as both the first concert I ...

This means that I don’t have much time to write this blog, in particular to update my list of books read in the preceding ...

This means that I don’t have much time to write this blog, in particular to update my list of books read in the preceding month, which is becoming every two months. So here is what I read (or, mostly, ...

I’m having a big clearout at home and have been discarding most of my collection of old concert programmes. These are a mix of concerts that I’ve sung in and concerts that I’ve attended, going back to ...

Just before Christmas I was asked to talk to our molecular biologists about multivariate analyses. I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon, when I saw that I had to talk to them on Friday. “Ah, ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

My annual selection of favourites from the photographs I took in the past year is now available on Flickr. Do people still use Flickr? I have broken my usual rule of not including family photos ...

The preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same I cannot point to a moment when I knew I was called to serve God like this. The image is more like a watercolour, built up in layers, or a ...

Today in the United States, researchers are marching in Washington DC and across the country in a Stand Up for Science National Day of Action. Their problems are admittedly a lot heavier than ours ...

William Boyd Stars and Bars A rare mis-step by a usually reliable author who ventures into slapstick comedy of the uptight-Englishman-in-America variety. If it’s satire about America you’re after, ...