7.55  Case Studies Experimental Des

Paper for 11 May...

...is posted in the published version at the end of the reading list in Materials, in case you prefer that format.

Announced on 06 May 2012  3:59  p.m. by Frank Solomon

Review

By now, you will have received your peer reviewed manuscript from your colleague. If you have any concerns or issues, now or as you write the final version, please let us know.
Sincerely, Frank

Announced on 27 April 2012  6:14  p.m. by Frank Solomon

The Next Deadlines and Advice For Readers

The next deadlines:
As we discussed in class this week, your draft proposal should be submitted to your colleague/reader by April 20. We will draw up the matches and let you know to whom you should send your proposal as soon as is possible. In your role as reader, please return comments to your colleague by April 27. The final proposal is due May 11.

Advice for readers:
Remember to be fair but firm, critical but helpful in your critiques. Writing effective evaluations of grants and manuscripts is a skill that is almost as important as writing good grants. With this in mind, evaluate your colleague’s proposal with using these criteria:

1. Has the PI justified this proposal in terms of scientific interest, public significance, or both?
2. Do the specific questions posed in the proposal align with that justification?
3. Are the proposed experiments appropriate, feasible, and likely to give interpretable results?
4. Are the appropriate controls proposed? Are the potential pitfalls sufficiently described?
5. Will the science, if performed, move the field forward?
6. Are there any elements of the proposal that should be revised for clarity and to guarantee inclusion of scientists outside the PI’s field?

-Paul and Frank

Announced on 07 April 2012  1:03  a.m. by Frank Solomon

Background and Significance sections due Friday 6 April

The first draft of the Background and Significance sections are due this Friday. Your write-up will differ somewhat from the example of Paul's grant, primarily because you're not writing the supporting material for an entire grant but rather just for one aim. That said, I recommend that you concisely introduce and justify the entire problem, and then turn to present the science that underlies the experiments in your one aim. For some of you, this may mean borrowing from material you included in the Aims and Experimental Procedures sections. One good approach is to present such material in full in the Background and Significance sections, and then cite it in much shorter form in Aims and Experimental Procedures, in order to support the reviewer who reads things out of order or who has a short memory.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Frank

Announced on 02 April 2012  12:17  p.m. by Frank Solomon

How many authors?

Dear colleague,
In class today, we again touched on the publishable unit and the number of authors per paper. We thought you might want to read this remark from David Baltimore. He published the work for which he won the Nobel Prize in a paper with one author.
"There are scientific endeavors that require large groups of people to work together, like sequencing, for example. But at the heart of every great discovery are usually one or two people. They may have collaborated with others, but I believe that great discoveries come from the minds of individuals. The only counterexample I can think of is where there are really close collaborators like Watson and Crick, or Brown and Goldstein. But we treat them as one individual anyway!"

Announced on 23 March 2012  11:23  p.m. by Frank Solomon