The five deadly sins of science publishing

The five deadly sins of science publishing

Science cannot progress without scientists reporting their findings. And yet researchers have given control of this central pillar of the scientific process to science publishers, who are in the business of serving the interests of their journals; these are not always the same as the interests of science. This editorial describes the problems with the process of preparing and publishing researc...

The seven deadly sins of comparative analysis.

Phylogenetic comparative methods are extremely commonly used in evolutionary biology. In this paper, I highlight some of the problems that are frequently encountered in comparative analyses and review how they can be fixed. In broad terms, the problems boil down to a lack of appreciation of the underlying assumptions of comparative methods, as well as problems with implementing methods in a man...

The seven deadly sins of DNA barcoding.

Despite the broad benefits that DNA barcoding can bring to a diverse range of biological disciplines, a number of shortcomings still exist in terms of the experimental design of studies incorporating this approach. One underlying reason for this lies in the confusion that often exists between species discovery and specimen identification, and this is reflected in the way that hypotheses are gen...

Eight Deadly Sins of GRL

The Nine Deadly sins of Project Planning

1. Not planning at all By far the most common planning problem is simply not planning at all, and this sin is easily avoided. A person need not be an expert planner to plan effectively. I’ve seen numerous instances of projects planned by rank amateurs that have run well simply because the people in charge had carefully considered their project’s specific needs. Forced to choose between an exper...