Among the disruptions and pain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are dealing with a sudden halt in in-person interactions.

By Steven Wiley Down with Reviews Review articles simply don’t deserve all the citations they receive. Cited discoveries & hypotheses should always refer to the original literature. There has been a proliferation of review articles and review journals over the last decade, and it is easy to see why. Biologists find them useful to keep up with increasingly complex science, and publishers find them an easy way to increase the im

By Steven Wiley To Join or Not to Join The benefits of membership to a scientific society are decreasing every year. Lately, I’m asking: Why bother? At about this time every year, I renew my memberships to several scientific societies, and every year I ask myself the same question: “Should I bother?” In years past, the answer was easy because being a member came with tangible benefits, such as inexpensive journals and the ability to sub

By Steven Wiley Why I Love Vendors Talks and posters are about where biology has been—but the booths with the sales pitches and freebies tell you where science is going. I have found that creating a new, useful tool for scientists can be just as gratifying as discovering a new protein. In December, I attended the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology, as I have done regularly for the last several decades. It is always a good w

By Steven Wiley Mind Your Manners We need to treat each other with respect, or all of science will suffer. Being dismissive and emotional during public discussions makes you look bad to other people and erodes your credibility. There has been a lot of talk in the media about the loss of courtesy in modern society. By many criteria, it seems that people in general have lost a degree of politeness. Reading some of the online comments after several rec

By Steven Wiley Speak Your Mind You don’t like my ideas? Tell me to my face, please. Disagree- ments among scientists do not go away simply because people are reluctant to argue in public. I am frequently struck by the paradoxical behavior of biologists. Recently, I attended a conference on biofuel development that included a discussion of the feasibility of deriving fuels from algae. In the open meeting, only a few biologists voi

By Steven Wiley Give Young Scientists a Break I don’t know if I could have even started my career in today’s funding environment. There is only a rough correlation between the quality of the science in an application and the priority score. There has been much concern about the impact of tight funding on the careers of young scientists. When only a small percentage of grants are approved, even the smallest problem or error w

By Steven Wiley Collaborations: Challenging, but Key Like any relationship, collaborations take energy, but nothing is better for your research. I learned about the difficulty in starting a collaboration when I began searching for one early in my career. Collaborations are becoming increasingly important in biology because of the need to apply multiple technologies to tackle the most complex current problems. The U.S. National Institutes

By Steven Wiley Bring Back Reprint Requests I miss the instant feedback from the larger scientific community on my papers. I remember my delight at receiving hundreds of reprint requests for individual papers that I fought long and hard with reviewers to get published. The Internet has changed scientific publishing in many ways, some good and some bad. No one would deny that it is easier to find papers on a particular subject than ever before. Looking

By Steven Wiley Timing is Everything You want to be ahead of the curve, but not so far ahead that no one can see you. It was hard to accept the thought that my research ideas were too innovative to be funded. One of the most difficult questions a scientist must resolve is which problem to investigate. An especially critical aspect of this process is getting the timing right. When you start working on a new problem, it al

By Steven Wiley Quitters Sometimes Win Not everybody who likes independent research is suited for it. The best students see connections between everything; a prodigious memory does little good if you cannot spot these relationships. Scientists are a persistent group. We all have the experience of doing experiments that refuse to work as planned, or favoring a hypothesis that seems contradicted by the latest data. If we accepte

By Steven Wiley Stimulus Application? Not Me Just because there's extra money, doesn't mean it's easier to get. If you are a biologist in the United States, you are likely to be acutely aware of the new funding for biology from the economic stimulus program of President Barack Obama's administration. The extra funds going into both the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation are likely to have a very positive effect on g