Barf-and-buff writing, and cherry-picking citations

I’m a big fan of a writing strategy that, in The Scientist’s Guide to Writing, I call “storming the beach” – but that’s sometimes more vividly termed “barf and buff”.  The idea is simple: early in a writing project, don’t stop to make things perfect. Instead, charge ahead with getting something – anything – on the page. Rough, awkward, incomplete – it doesn’t matter, you can fix it later. Did you write some crap? That’s OK: you can fix crap much more easily than you can fix a blank page. So barf out something terrible, and buff it later.

Like most good advice, “barf and buff” has a few dangers lurking in it.

Tweeting to the Science Community: Audience, Content, and Voice

Image: The #CSEETweetShop team.  Left to right: Shoshanah Jacobs, Morgan Jackson, Dawn Bazely, your truly, Cylita Guy, and Alex Smith.  What a great group!

 

At the 2018 conference of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, I was part of a lunchtime workshop, “The How and Why of Tweeting Science” – along with 5 friends.  Here I’ll share my slides and commentary.  I hope the other presenters will do the same, and I’ll link to them here as they become available.

 

Negative-news bias and “the disaster that is peer review”

One reviewer is “concerned” that our hypothesis might not be true.

So were we. That’s why we did a study to *test* it.
#Sigh.

— Stephen Heard (@StephenBHeard) September 17, 2017

Peer review is a dumpster fire, right?  At least, that’s what I hear – and there’s a reason for that.

Last month, I got reviews back on my latest paper.  Opening that particular email always makes me both excited and depressed, and this one ran true to form: a nicely complimentary opening from the editor and Reviewer 1 – followed by several pages of detailed critiques from Reviewer 2 – and Reviewer 3 – and, believe it or not, Reviewer 4.