flynn002

I’ve had a few spa experiences, though I’m hardly a connoisseur. I've found  a spa is a good place to chill out and gossip with friends, and on the rare occasions when I stay at a fancy hotel, I’ve come to enjoy the process of whiling away the period between lunch and cocktails in a hot bubbly tub. At the same time, I’ve become fascinated by the language used to advertise the available activities. I suspect most people who go to a spa don’t have any specific ailments, but they want to come away feeling more relaxed and vibrant, and the talk of 'therapies' and 'treatments' manages to create the comforting illusion that health can be shifted from suboptimal to optimal by various potions and practices. Particularly intriguing is the focus on foodstuffs. In a spa, you don’t ingest food: you rub it on the skin, sniff it, or slather yourself with it. I’ve always suspected there is an element of sublimation in this: most women who wish to remain slender have to suppress th...

Back in 2012, I wrote a blogpost offering advice to parents who were trying to navigate their way through the jungle of alternative interventions for children with dyslexia. I suggested a set of questions that should be asked of any new intervention, and identified a set of 'red flags', i.e., things that should make people think twice before embracing a new treatment. The need for an update came to mind as I reflected on the Arrowsmith program, an educational approach that has been around in Canada since the 1980s, but has recently taken Australia and New Zealand by storm. Despite credulous press coverage in the UK, Arrowsmith has not, as far as I know, taken off here. Australia, however, is a different story, with Arrowsmith being taken up by the Catholic Education Office in Sydney after they found 'dramatic results' in a pilot evaluation. For those who remember the Dore programme , this seems like an action replay. Dore was big in both the UK and Australia in the ...

I recently travelled to Lismore, Ireland, to speak at the annual Robert Boyle summer school. I had been intrigued by the invitation, as it was clear this was not the usual kind of scientific meeting. The theme of Robert Boyle, who was born in Lismore Castle, was approached from very different angles, and those attending included historians of science, scientists, journalists, as well as interested members of the public. We were treated to reconstructions of some of Boyle's livelier experiments, heard wonderful Irish music, and we celebrated the installation of a plaque at Lismore Castle to honour Katherine Jones , Boyle's remarkable sister, who was also a scientist. My talk was on the future of scientific scholarly publication, a topic that the Royal Society had explored in a series of meetings to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the publication of Philosophical Transactions. I'm particularly interested in the extent to which current publishing culture discourages good ...

 I had vowed not to blog about the Tim Hunt affair. I thought everything that could have been said had been said, and I'd made my own position clear in a comment on Athene Donald's blog , and in a comment in the Independent . But then I came across Stephen Ballentyne's petition to "Bring Back Tim Hunt", and I was transported back five years to my first ever blog post on " Academic Mobbing in Cyberspace ," a strange tale about sex, fruitbats and internet twittermobs. I started blogging in 2010 because I wanted to highlight how the internet encourages people to jump in to support causes without really examining the facts of the matter. The Ballentyne petition points to an uncannily similar conclusion. Let me start out by saying I am not arguing against people's right to take Tim Hunt's side. As many people have noted, he is a well-liked man who has done amazing science and there are many women as well as men who will speak up for him as a supporte...

Frontiers journals have become a conspicuous presence in academic publishing since they started in 2007 with the advent of Frontiers in Neuroscience. When they were first launched, I, like many people, was suspicious. This was an Open Access (OA) online journal where authors paid to publish, raising questions about the academic rigour of the process. However, it was clear that the publishers had a number of innovative ideas that were attractive to authors, with a nice online interface and a collaborative review process that made engagement with reviewers more of a discussion than a battle with anonymous critics. Like many other online OA journals, the editorial decision to publish was based purely on an objective appraisal of the soundness of the study, not on a subjective evaluation of importance, novelty or interest. As word got round that respectable scientists were acting as editors, reviewers and authors of paper in Frontiers, people started to view it as a good way of achieving...