10 years of Blog writing

It was 10 years ago that I wrote my first blog post (see here). The original idea was to use the blog to record things I had to report on at the end of the year as they happened. At the end of 2014, I had to report on all the things that I had done in my (then) new position at the CIB. I found it really hard to remember and so vowed that I would make a record as they happened in 2015. Around the same time, I was reading blogs from other labs and thought that a new blog would be a good vehicle to act as an aide memoire. And that's how the MeaseyLab blog was born. Now, nearly 400 blog posts and 10 years later, it is a good time to reflect on that original aim and see what else has happened along the way.

First, I should note that this was a really good way to track what happened at the lab through the year. In subsequent years, I was able to flick back through the pages of the blog and check to see what had happened and when. This made reporting a lot easier! But other opportunities also began to arise. I was able to track milestones in particular projects by having different tags for each project. Tags meant that visitors could quickly find the content that they required, but it also made it easier for me to report on those projects quickly and efficiently. 

I also started some longer blog posts aimed at supporting my students in their writing endevours. These posts on writing became rambling and diverse until mid-2019 when I realised that I had covered most aspects of writing issues that students in my lab faced, and that if I filled in the gaps, it should be able to publish them as a Fool's Guide to writing a thesis. I approached a few publishers, and eventually found one who would permit me to keep the online material free to all, while at the same time producing two printed books.

Most of all though, it turned out that the blog was mostly about people. People that worked with me as students and post-docs, and those that I collaborate with around the world. It was a way in which I was able to thank and celebrate all of the people that have made the last ten years an amazing experience. Looking back through ten years of the blog, I am most impressed at the number of happy faces of people enjoying conducting reearch. Perhaps those posts, above all others, are the ones that have become most valuable and help me to remember that everything the lab has acheived in the last ten years has really been the result of lots of different people working together.

I also need to make a special mention to my brother, Richard, who maintains john.measey.com. It is only because he was able to set me up with the stub of the blog (within a few days of asking) that it started at all. Despite hackers and take-down attempts, Richard has kept the MeaseyLab blog up and running throughout. 

Many thanks to Richard and to everyone who has featured in the blog throughout the last 10 years. Here's to the next 10 years and may it be as full of diverse smiling faces as the first ten.

What is the MeaseyLab blog?

The MeaseyLab blog focuses on research in ecology, evolution, and conservation, particularly concerning amphibians and reptiles. The blog features updates on recent publications, fieldwork experiences, and discussions on various herpetological topics. It also highlights the lab's involvement in outreach activities and collaborations with other researchers. While the blog primarily centers on African herpetofauna, it provides valuable insights into global amphibian and reptile research. The MeaseyLab blog also offers several resources to assist students in improving their writing skills including articles on structuring scientific papers, emphasizing clarity and coherence, and tips for effective communication with practical advice to help students convey their research findings succinctly and effectively. These resources aim to support students in developing their writing abilities, particularly in the context of scientific research.

Insights from marking a peer review assignment

As part of my course on writing and publishing, my postgraduate students do a workshop on conducting peer review (here), attend a lecture (here), and they are set a peer review assignment for their course mark. They are told to follow the workshop on a specific unpublished manuscript selected by me from bioRxiv. This gives them the opportunity to write, putting in place some of the writing skills that they are taught during the course, and lets them put into practice what they are taught about the spirit of peer review.

During the lecture on peer review, I emphasise how peer review should always be about helping authors to improve their manuscript. How to avoid making judgements and instead place an emphasis on critiquing the manuscript – including positive comments where they are warranted.

It should be stressed that the manuscript did not fall into the specialist subject of any of the students. Some of them may have had more insight into the molecular methods used than others, but for most of them their review fell firmly within science, and the biological sciences, but outside of anything familiar.

Before I start marking the assignments, I re-read the manuscript (having already read it once when I selected it) and carry out my own peer review exercise. This gives me familiarity with the manuscript and some ideas of the merits and problems therein. It also means that when I read the student reviews, I am able to assess them compared to my viewpoints and comments. 

The points that are well addressed, common mistakes and insights that follow are illustrative of general problems when dealing with peer review:

Well addressed

Many students spotted some very minor typos and errors made by the authors. For example, a single missing % sign was spotted by about a third of students, and those same students also saw that one figure was incorrectly referred to in the text. Similarly, a poorly labelled figure and colours that were too close together to distinguish were also regularly picked up.

Some students noticed that the authors failed to discuss any caveats relating to their study in the discussion. This had been a part of the coursework on writing a discussion, which is gratifying. However, no students noticed the failure of the authors to suggest new fruitful directions for their research.

Common mistakes

When summing up the manuscript contents, many of the students repeated a claim of novelty made by the authors even though this was false. This was interesting as there was no real need to repeat the claim, but the prominent claim of novelty in the abstract and the introduction was clearly very attractive and picked out by many students in the class to be repeated. I couldn’t have expected the students to know whether or not the claim was correct (it wasn’t), but very interesting that they were prepared to repeat it even though the claim was not substantiated and they had no knowledge to contribute themselves. This may go partway to explaining why claims of novelty are regularly published in many journals even though they are false. This is more common in high-ranking journals where editors are looking for novelty.

Although the manuscript clearly stated that it aimed to study one species, most students suggested that the study should be widened to increase the number of species studied. This mistake in review, expecting authors to go beyond the scope of their stated aims, was common in the class last year. The importance of the aims of a study was repeated continually throughout the writing course, yet students failed to recognise how the stated aims in a manuscript set the bounds of the manuscript contents. No students suggested that the idea of widening the experiment to further taxa, and which taxa to prioritise, should be a discussion point.

Students called for more citations to be made in the introduction and discussion. They did this without any making reference to specific statements that lacked citations.

  

Insights

Many of the students asked for experiments to be repeated, often adding that more replicates must be made. This request came regardless of the results or size effect, but they regularly drew attention to a lack of significance and high variance. Many implied a Type II error adding that no reporting should be made unless significant results could be achieved by repeating experiments. This was also interesting as a good part of the course stressed the importance of transparency and the realities of publication bias. Nonetheless, the idea of rejecting publication based on data that did not show significance was very strong, suggesting that this is a deeply held belief and not one that can be swayed by a course that stresses how this approach is bad science.

Students often requested experiments conducted in the field part of the study to be repeated with more controls on fluctuating environmental factors, although never stating which factors they wanted to be controlled. This lack of insight into the difficulty of field experimentation from a class of biology postgraduates was particularly disappointing. This may be because few of the students have sufficient experience in conducting field experiments. Nonetheless, the lack of empathy for authors who successfully carried out a field experiment and presented the results, limited though they may be, was surprising.

I had asked students to draw attention to the good in the manuscript for praise as well as negative aspects. However, those who wrote much of their review as praise did so without drawing attention to any specific points in the manuscript. Much in the same way that other students were highly critical without being able to say why. I think that this “arm-waving” approach to peer review is indicative of someone who really doesn’t understand what they are reading but feels the need to write something (in this case because they had to for an assignment). Again, this felt familiar to many reviews received where reviewers try to set a tone of their impression, but then fail to find any specifics that can back up that feeling.

Although these students were not experts on the contents of the manuscript, and are unlikely ever to be called upon to review something similar, many of the comments that they made felt familiar and could even be considered generic of a bad review. This despite being coached immediately prior to the assignment in how to conduct a good review.

In conclusion

I think post-graduate students conducting peer review is a great learning exercise, but that it is also very insightful for me when reading what they decide to pull out. Peer review is difficult. It appears to bring out prejudices even when we know that these should be suppressed. These insights should be useful for editors when assessing manuscripts on the basis of peer review.

A new chapter on the student-advisor relationship

A couple of weeks back, I read a review of "How to write a PhD in Biological Sciences: a guide for the uninitiated", where the author was critical of the book for not having any information on how to navigate the "tricky topic of the student-supervisor relationship". I had never really thought that this was part of the book, but on reflection, the book has advice on how to write emails, and the other book ("How to publish in Biological Sciences") has a chapter on bullying, so perhaps it is a good topic for a new chapter in Part 1 of "How to write a PhD in Biological Sciences: a guide for the uninitiated". 

It turns out that there is quite a lot of literature on this topic. 

Usually, I paste the entire new chapter into this Blog, but it turns out that this chapter is quite large, and of course all you have to do is click on the above image and you can read it in situ. 

Instead, here I will provide some highlights:

4.1 Expectations

4.1.1 Keep your expectations real

4.1.2 Student-advisor agreements

4.1.3 Other students and postdocs in the group

4.2 Power imbalance

4.2.1 Relationships between advisors and their students

4.2.2 Conflicts of interest

4.3 Communication

4.4 Meetings

4.5 Responsibilities

4.5.1 Time-management

4.6 Respect and Professionalism

4.6.1 Take advice

4.6.2 Personal problems

4.7 When things do go wrong

4.8 Having more than one advisor

4.9 Celebrations

4.9.1 Share the down times

As ever, if you spot that there is something missing or something wrong, please get in touch and let me know. 

There are other updates to other chapters too, including:

• a section on instant messaging in: Communicating by email and messanger
• an update about plagiarism and AI in both: Plagiarism and AI
• a rewrite of the chapter on: Reconciling yourself to doing things you've been avoiding
• a new chapter about selecting postgraduate courses

On reflection, it seems I've been quite busy with the book and that there is quite a lot of new content. Of course, this is the real advantage to bookdown and having the book as a living project. 

Now a Zoology Section Editor at PeerJ

I've been an academic editor with PeerJ for 10 years, and I've handled over 70 papers in that time. Last month I was contacted by the PeerJ staff to ask whether I would join the team of Section Editors for Zoology at PeerJ. Each subject section has a small group of section editors who oversee the decisions made by the editorial board members. This ensures that there is some consistency and accountability for the decisions made by lots of independent editors. 

Far from being a passive role, the Section Editors engage in regular discussions about individual papers. It's a great opportunity to support the editorial board and authors alike. 

Now read the blog post or PeerJ.

How to Start your PhD

In some parts of the world the time-line is just getting started for new PhD students. This will be a very busy time for those involved, but it also needs to be a time to take stock and consider the bigger questions. In this video I provide some pointers to key issues for you to think about when starting your PhD.