"Don’t just make your papers exist. Make them fly." - On the scientific literature as a "pull", not a "push", medium, and why a paper existing isn't enough. scientistseessquirre... 🧪

I have had this experience! (Also suffered through bad copyedits...) Good copyeditors are gold, and I think the best ones feel like they can show themselves this way.

"unfortunate typo" <snort> www.cbc.ca/news/cana...

I love a good rabbithole. The one I'm currently down: reading William Strachey's account of the wreck of the Sea Venture at Bermuda in 1610. 150 castaways.... what might they eat? How about a bird, which "there in the ground they have their burrows, like [rabbits] in a warren…" 1/3

I have just, for the first time*, written something (scientific) referring to a Shakespeare play. "The Tempest", and I'll let you wonder why. *Unless you count the best footnote of my academic career, in which case it's the *second* time:

Cheerful decorative detail on a streetcorner in Lisbon, Portugal. I would love to live in this house (although I guess I'd have to less than 2 inches tall, or about 6 feet shorter than I actually am...)

I see what you did there, Wikipedia. Nice work. (But: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" may be the single dumbest thing that was drummed into me as a grad student...)

Ever wonder why bogs and fens are simultaneously magical, mysterious, and spooky? Bogland is my ode to these paradoxical ecosystems, and a call to action. Barnes & Noble members will receive 25% off pre-orders made by TOMORROW Jun 26 (code PREORDER25. www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bogland-me...

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 21091: Leave your ego at the door. Your primary task is to engage; to make the reader feel something. You can be the cleverest person in the world, but if the reader's only takeway from your book is: "gosh, what a clever person," then you have failed.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

Currently amused by an Acknowledgements section that thanks "critics, invited and uninvited, who commented on earlier drafts". I feel you, brother. 🧪

Points 1-3 are definitely true of my books, my papers, and my blog posts. On good days, I believe point 4 and keep going!

Moss on the flagstones of my back yard patio. I love the little "caps" of the sporophytes (the brown stalk-and-cap bits growing from the tips of the main "gametophyte" plants)

From my walk this morning: this completely handsome dogwood leaf beetle, Calligrapha philadephica. Cleverly, he has found himself a dogwood leaf to beetle on.

25 June 1824: Edinburgh mineralogist Tom Allan visits Lyme Regis and goes fossil-hunting with Mary Anning. He was impressed by her knowledge and expertise and was amused by her stories of her arguments with Oxford professor William Buckland 'whose anatomical science she holds in great contempt'.

The third edition of "The Scientist's Guide to Writing" is nearly out. So - please stop buying the book (for a while)!

My house is full of books. My office is full of books. I have no room for new books. I do not care; the parcel I got today from Princeton University Press is wonderful!

Pena Castle, Sintra, Portugal. Usually I try for some kind of clever connection to science (because I am Very Much a Nerd) but you know what? It's just a beautiful building.

Streamside this morning.

Living in the 1760s in London, you may have asked yourself: Why not buy a "Remarkable Tame Panther" that you "may play with it as they may with a Dog"? Or a "SEA-MONSTER"? Or both? What could possibly go wrong with a panther and a sea-monster in your house? I have so many questions.

The third edition of "The Scientist's Guide to Writing" is nearly out. So - please stop buying the book (for a while)!

Marine biology comes to the art gallery! Two paintings by Colleen Wolstenholme, at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Left: "Holothurian" (free-swimming larva of a sea cucumber); right "Pelagic polychate" (free-swimming larva of a bristle worm).

Do you mentor students, postdocs, etc. in scientific writing? Or teach writing in the classroom? If you do, you know that it's HARD. We can help! This book can guide you to mentoring/teaching writing more easily AND more effectively. Check it out! 🧪

chasing these led me deep into the woods and I got a little lost and so basically I think these count as fairies

Today's writing challenge: spell the word "Emperor" correctly on the first try. So far, I am zero-for-eight.

Apropos of nothing, beautiful animals from my last (so far) field season of summer 2013 in the temporarily occupied #Crimea #Ukraine. All animals where photographed during fieldwork for my first phd, cut short by russian occupation in 2014. Species names in the alt text

Copper Age (~7000-3000 BP) limestone artifacts, Carmo Archaeological Museum, Lisbon. Labeled as "cylindrical idols", but I prefer to interpret them as strong evidence that Copper Age geologists had mastered rock drilling and were aiming for the Mohorovičić discontinuity.🧪 #VeryNiceGeologyJoke

Look, 17th century dudes, did you not stop to think what a PITA it would be to have to cite a "paper" that's a letter from Martin Lister to the Royal Society, that contains within it a postscript which is Lister's report of a letter he got from John Ray (I want to cite the postscript)? 1/2

In the 90 minutes after @theguardian.com article went live, BHL received more than US$2,500 in donations. Thank you to everyone helping keep biodiversity knowledge free and open. Please read, share, and help us build momentum.

Can you see the dragonfly-like insect in this rock? It’s a Mischoptera, a Paleozoic insect!! #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪

Gee, thanks, Wikipedia. I was indeed in danger of confusing Agricola's 1556 book on mining and metals with... the metal band Metallica. Disaster averted!

I can’t overstate how much I use BHL. I have an article in press that wouldn’t have been remotely possible without it.

Hail! Just the pea-sized sort, the kind that's fun, not dangerous 🙂

Concur. Bigly.

In one of my favourite children's picture books, a grandfather encourages a young girl to "do something to make the world more beautiful". So I thought: what have I done like that?

Cannot say strongly enough how marvelous it would be to do a postdoc with @jacquelyngill.bsky.social.

Linking to this not for its political/social content (although that's fairly delicious) but because of Paul Krugman's lovely little swipe at academic writing (and that of Thorstein Veblen in particular). open.substack.com/pu...

This week's blog post is a little bit saccharine. If that's not your (sugar-free) jam, sorry🤣. We should all make the world a bit more beautiful...

I will be in Reykjavik next year but I assure you that this fact is unrelated to my interest in this post🤣

There's something very satisfying about writing, and I'm nerdy enough to recognize it emerges in part from combinatorics. This morning I wrote about 500 words. And here's the thing: no human being has ever put THOSE 500 words in THAT order before (that's the combinatorics part). 1/2

I know R, thanks, but I'm trying.

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Your occasional reminder: I can help teach your students to write! My one-week intensive scientific writing course can happen at your institution. Details here:

My recent chat with @carlzimmer www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/s... 🧪

Lots of lovely thick-legged (swollen-thighed) beetles around today, feeding on buttercups 😊 #ukwildlife

Okay, I think I’m in love with this gorgeous new friend I met last night. This is an Eastern Spotted-winged Antlion (Dendroleon obsoletus), a member of the group whose larvae dig sand funnel pit traps (not this species, though.) It’s only the 16th record of this species from Florida on iNat! #bugsky

Um. It would not be possible for me to be more personally (and correctly) attacked. I'll go back to the chapter I'm revising now... <hangs head in shame>

My PhD advisor, Bob Ricklefs, passed away early this week. Bob took a chance on a very young and VERY green student, in me, and I owe him a lot. Brian McGill has written an excellent tribute: dynamicecology.wordp... 🧪🌎 Bob on the right; me (probably after my defence??) on the left.

Science journalists: how do you handle it when you need to discuss the work of a researcher who is genuinely intellectually significant but also did some Seriously Bad Stuff (e.g. associations with Epstein, known eugenics views, confirmed sexual harassment case, etc.)?

18th and 19th century biology: invents a zillion long words for fuzzily defined concepts. Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1929: "Hold my beer". 1/2