2024-04-22 07:36
I recently published a new paper (Decomposition of Fomes fomentatius fruiting bodies – transition of healthy living fungus into a decayed bacteria-rich habitat is primarily driven by A… Read More
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Evidence & Reason | My Thoughts About The World, Science, Evidence And Reason. Blog
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My thoughts about the world, science, evidence and reason.
2024-04-02 17:55
I like seeing stories about science, but they need to be clear and accurate. Trying to understand the world is complicated; scientific studies have limitations and often address very specifi… Read More
2024-02-01 20:30
If you remember my commentary to my short story, The Moralbiont, you’ll know that it talked about alternative uses for fungi, such as vegan leather. The German broadcaster, Deutsche We… Read More
2024-01-14 19:30
I managed to squeeze in one last book for 2023 between Christmas and the end of the year. That was roughly the pace that I used to read books during high school. Most of the year, I am now d… Read More
2023-12-27 09:34
The latest additions to my 2023 Book List concern Prague and its history. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (2020) by Franz Kafka Since I’ve been in Prague for almost two years, I fi… Read More
2023-10-15 16:03
Recently, I was trying to think of songs about specific scientists and I could only think of two! I know a few that are about science in general (both good and bad ones) and there are certai… Read More
2023-06-15 09:30
Flights of Fancy (2021) by Richard Dawkins This one is written by Richard Dawkins and illustrated by Slovakian artist Jana Lenzová. The book is absolutely beautiful with colourful ill… Read More
2023-03-27 20:00
Clearly this is quite a bit later than it was supposed to be but, since I had already picked out the links, I decided I would finish it. However, I’m giving up on the weekly quicklinks… Read More
2023-03-11 16:14
It’s, again, only March when I am writing my first blog post about reading for the year, does that mean I’ve been doing a bad job? Surprisingly, no! The Count of Monte Cristo (18… Read More
2023-03-08 18:34
Good news, Mexican wolf numbers are increasing! To be clear, that’s Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. They were reintroduced in 1998 and are now at 241 wolves! Unfortunately, n… Read More
2023-03-01 20:28
When I was a kid and visited rock pools, I’d always look carefully, hoping to see an octopus in the wild. It never happened. This would have been the dream! This article looks at conse… Read More
2023-02-21 12:55
This time we’re doing two weeks together. Why? I got infected with covid and so all my plans and normal activities have completely gone out the window. It was not a particularly severe… Read More
2023-02-07 19:20
I’ll start this set of links off with this beautiful 150-year-old tree from Japan. Imagine if you went walking in the forest and then encountered this fantastical creature! Tim Urban s… Read More
2023-01-31 19:30
Let’s start off with a pretty cool cat fact. AI tools like chatGPT are pretty cool. But they are not exactly reliable and, even worse, it’s difficult to know how reliable they ar… Read More
2023-01-24 08:16
Let’s start off with something cute; wolves playing in the snow. And here’s some good news for animals; New York became the 10th US state to ban the sale of cosmetics which were… Read More
2023-01-17 19:32
I did not forget! I’m just slow. This was a bit of a surprise for me! France’s longest land border is with… Brazil! This is all due to French Guiana. This is just a cool t… Read More
2023-01-09 06:37
In the early years of my blog, I occasionally did a “quicklinks” post which just included links to items of interest and a brief description. I didn’t do too many and that… Read More
2022-12-31 13:52
My last two books for the year. A rather disappointing year when measured by how much I read. In this case, although there are only two more books to add to the list, they each contain many… Read More
2022-11-06 12:34
After not doing much book reading for most of this year, I can finally extend my 2022 Book List. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (2020) by… Read More
2022-09-19 06:35
The essay below is my entry to the OeAW’s (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften/ Austrian Academy of Sciences) 2022 Preisfrage. The topic was “Fact or fiction: How to… Read More
2022-09-05 06:12
Earlier this year, I entered the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS) writing competition. The goal was to write a flash fiction story (not more than 700 words) for the pr… Read More
2022-09-05 06:12
This is the companion piece to my short story, The Moralbiont. It will discuss some of the references and science from the story. If you have not read the story yet, I would highly advise re… Read More
2022-06-28 12:39
For those that were not able to attend the Ecology of Soil Microorganisms 2022 conference (which ran from 19-23 July in Prague, Czech Republic) I got permission to upload the poster which I… Read More
2022-05-26 06:44
I’m ashamed at how little I have written this year, even though I have had several ideas for blog posts. To help assuage some of my guilt, I will share a few photographs I have taken… Read More
2022-03-19 15:05
We’re now in mid-March and I still haven’t written down my thoughts on the two books I read in January. A lot has been going on recently but, the longer I take to write these dow… Read More
2022-01-07 10:19
The first book I’m reading this year is Mark Rowland‘s memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf. For now, I will just say that it’s stories of having a wolf mixed with some phi… Read More
2021-12-31 18:56
I managed to finish off two more books for my 2021 Book List. It’s still fewer than I had hoped for this year but it’s better than nothing. The Sheltering Desert (1956, translate… Read More
2021-12-20 06:16
The blogroll is on the main page of my blog and links to various other sites that I consider worth reading. The sites which were on there were from many years ago and included several which… Read More
2021-12-14 07:10
Additions to my 2021 Book List. Life at Rock Surfaces (2021) edited by Burkhard Büdel and Thomas Friedl This is quite different to the other books I’ve been reading, both because… Read More
2021-12-10 06:04
I’ve seen some rather disturbing reports recently that New Zealand is aiming to insert indigenous Mātauranga Māori beliefs into science classes. While there are, no doubt, ma… Read More
2021-10-11 05:55
This is a short follow up to my previous post on the role of fire in the environment. I went back to the field about a month after the previous visit and after some good rainfall. While ther… Read More
2021-09-27 05:45
A recent newsletter from the Endangered Wildlife Trust mentioned a planned burn to help save the habitat of the rough moss frog. What I found interesting about the story, is that it is using… Read More
2021-09-05 07:41
This has been sitting around for so long. It has not been a good year for reading books and everything on here was actually read months ago. Due to the long time between reading and writing… Read More
2021-05-13 14:55
The Centre for Microbial and Ecological Genomics, where I currently work, has an annual trip to the Namib Desert for sampling purposes and, while it didn’t happen last year due to the… Read More
2021-02-15 16:48
It seems like I’m not done criticising poor reporting from South African news sites yet. We had City Press irresponsibly promoting psychics, News24 writing a headline that got almost e… Read More
2021-02-06 08:48
According to the headline of a recent article on News24, “Regular cannabis use puts young people at higher risk for self-harm and death, a new study finds.“ No! That headline is… Read More
2021-01-05 06:32
I was rather dismayed, though not entirely surprised, to see a South African publication uncritically promoting the views of psychics to describe the coming year. This was particularly frust… Read More
2020-12-28 07:37
I actually finished Darwin’s Ghosts two or three months ago but I didn’t want to write about it alone. Unfortunately my reading took a dip in the latter months of the year and it… Read More
2020-10-22 07:30
In my most recent publication, I was not happy with the use of the terms “higher” and “lower” when referring to various organisms but, despite my objections during dr… Read More
2020-09-19 13:28
Today is Software Freedom Day and I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about a software migration I am currently making. I started using Mendeley back in my honours year and was ha… Read More
2020-08-15 11:29
The newest additions to my 2020 Book List. Ecotopia (1975) by Ernest Callenbach The title and cover of this caught my eye in the bookshop and the blurb, stating that Northern California, Ore… Read More
2020-07-04 08:51
Additions to my 2020 Book List. The Unexpected Truth About Animals (2016) by Lucy Cooke Where most books just talk about what we know about a particular animal, Cooke tells us what we used t… Read More
2020-06-16 13:37
It’s a weird feeling when you find people questioning something you would’ve thought was both obvious and widely accepted. That’s something that happened to me recently reg… Read More
2020-05-29 07:09
Additions to the 2020 Book List. The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper (2020) by AJ Fitzwater This is a brand-new book by a New Zealand author about a dapper, lesbian, capybara pirate. Instead of… Read More
2020-04-28 09:50
Imagine that an architect were tasked with building a house, came up with a design, had a team of builders construct the house and then asked the prospective owner whether anything needed to… Read More
2020-04-02 07:00
Almost all of us carry phones with us, often smart phones that contain a lot of sensitive data. It can be very difficult to keep that data secure because phones often give up a lot of our in… Read More
2020-03-10 10:50
Additions to the 2020 Book List. No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference (2019) by Greta Thunberg This is barely a book; it is a short collection of Thunberg’s various speeches. They… Read More
2020-02-16 10:21
This is the fourth year I’m doing this (2019, 2018, 2017) and I’m hoping to read two books per month. It’s a challenge but certainly not impossible; I just need to make the… Read More
2020-01-30 11:53
I am happy to report that the last two papers from my PhD are now available for everyone to read! Two Is Better Than One: Studying Ustilago bromivora–Brachypodium Compatibility by Usin… Read More
2019-12-28 12:00
These are the last two books I’ve read this year and almost certainly the last I will read this year. I’m also happy to say that I have now read 13 books this year which is more… Read More
2019-10-26 09:22
I think it was in either 2017 or 2018 when I had lunch with a visiting speaker and mentioned that I was finding it hard to see any value in publishing in journals. With bioRxiv and similar p… Read More
2019-09-27 14:13
It’s been a while since I posted here. I better correct that by adding a short review of the last two books I read for my 2019 Book List. Dissident Signals (2018) edited by NightEyes D… Read More
2019-05-27 09:08
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve finished two political books. They are being added to my 2019 book list. And Yet… (2015) by Christopher Hitchens Published posthumously, this… Read More
2019-05-06 09:10
It has been a couple of weeks since I finished reading my most recent two books. I figured I had better add them to my 2019 Book List before I couldn’t remember enough to properly desc… Read More
2019-03-24 09:48
Two new books, one dealing with fantasy and the other with reality, added to my 2019 Book List. Black Leopard Red Wolf (2019) by Marlon James I originally heard of Black Leopard Red Wolf fro… Read More
2019-03-10 09:50
I recently read a profile of Alexandra Elbakyan and her pirate library, Sci-Hub. Sci-Hub provides free access to a huge number of scientific papers which would otherwise be locked away behin… Read More
2019-03-06 08:05
One of the highlights of my Mediterranean cruise at the end of last year was visiting the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. It was something I wanted to see because it always looked like… Read More
2019-02-16 15:59
A new year means a new set of books. As in 2017 and 2018, I am recording the books that I read; partly for my own record and partly that it might help someone else find a book that sounds &h&hell…Read More
2019-02-07 07:47
Several years back, I wrote about the UK’s plan to block all pornography by default and, before that, mentioned their past treatment of BDSM activities. I can now say something positiv… Read More
2019-02-01 13:01
There was an interesting article by Dan Kopf on Quartz recently about how popular music is shrinking. Popular music is shrinking. From 2013 to 2018, the average song on the Billboard Hot 100… Read More
2018-12-28 15:00
This will almost certainly list the last books I finish this year, although I may still start some before January. Overall, I read 12 books in 2018 (approximately) which is about one per mon… Read More
2018-09-24 06:55
One little side project I’ve been involved in since last year has been organising the Vienna BioCenter (VBC) PhD Symposium. I’ve attended and helped as a volunteer every year sin… Read More
2018-09-22 18:45
Two new editions to my 2018 book list. A Wasteful Death (2016) by Sylvain St-Pierre This is the first ebook I’ve read. I don’t really care for the concept of ebooks and much pref… Read More
2018-07-29 07:02
A long time and still no proper blog post, just a brief summary of a book for my 2018 reading list. The Fact of Evolution (2011) by Cameron M. Smith I finally finished this one! I started re… Read More
2018-07-07 17:40
To the list of books I’ve read in 2018. The Adventures of Peter Gray (2018) by Nathan Hopp This book tells us about a year in the life of Peter Gray, an anthropomorphic, orphaned wolf… Read More
2018-07-01 14:19
I have a blog post titled Assessing Scientists By Publications And Impact Factor Is One Of The Most Harmful Scientific Practices on the OpenUP Hub blog. OpenUP is a European Commission… Read More
2018-05-26 14:34
A new addition to my 2018 book list. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (2016) by Adam Rutherford I got this book from my family when I went back to South Africa. I can’t recal… Read More
2018-05-12 08:50
A new addition to my 2018 book list. The Conquest of Bread (1892, translation 1926) by Peter Kropotkin Despite some inconsistencies, what I do know is that Peter Kropotkin is the English ver… Read More
2018-04-15 08:52
Despite the rather portentous date of Friday the 13th, it was also the second time I was involved with the Lange Nacht der Forschung or Long Night of Research. My first was in May 2016. &hell…Read More
2018-03-18 11:45
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. -W. H. Auden When I visited my family in Cape Town a few weeks ago there was one topic which came up every day; water. Even before h… Read More
2018-03-04 13:39
One reason I can be glad of the two weeks I spent with my family in South Africa is because it gave me some time to catch up on some reading. It was also hot, so I didn’t actually writ… Read More
2018-01-14 11:19
One of the nice things about reading older scientists’ blogs and Twitter feeds is that you get reminded of things you should know and have your own views corrected from their years of… Read More
2018-01-07 08:47
This post is a bit late but I can finally finish up the list of books I read in 2017. Intimate Little Secrets (2017) by Rechan This one’s a little different from the others as it… Read More
2017-12-03 20:13
This is a very positive post where I can congratulate my friend and co-worker Angelika Czedik-Eysenberg for being one of five female scientists in Austria to receive a L’Oréal-U… Read More
2017-10-23 19:19
I saw this recently on Twitter. Great advice on balancing research w/prof. dev. at work Relevant for grads & postdocs but also broadly applicable. https://t.co/J8cqFgCjc3 — Erica S… Read More
2017-09-24 09:46
I finished The 120 Days of Sodom and Daring Do and the Eternal Flower and can now give short reviews here and add them to the list of books I’ve read in 2017. The 120 Days of Sodom (17… Read More
2017-09-16 15:31
On Thursday and Friday I was lucky enough to attend the Interscience symposium held at the University of Vienna and hosted by the Vienna Doctoral Schools. The idea was partly to show of… Read More
2017-08-12 16:07
There is a large and important debate in the scientific community at the moment which concerns access to research publications. Currently, a large amount of research is only available if a r… Read More
2017-07-25 18:14
This is a bit of a weird post because, in one sense, I’m actually criticising a journal publisher for making articles open access but, the bigger point, is that it is for a limited tim… Read More
2017-07-22 10:25
I published a new article in Bio-Protocol this week describing how to isolate strains of Ustilago bromivora from the spore material that forms on infected plants. It’s certainly n… Read More
2017-07-16 15:07
At the beginning of this month I was able to spend the whole week at a furry convention. In addition to seeing old friends, meeting some great new people, hiking and other fun things…… Read More
2017-07-15 07:15
People are very quick to make judgements, especially in our current society which seems to favour outrage as a response. This happens especially quickly when it comes to topics like sexism… Read More
2017-06-29 18:37
I have now created a Twitter account for Evidence & Reason. It will probably have a lot of links and things that are worth pointing attention to but which I do not have the energy to wri… Read More
2017-06-21 20:04
I can now update my 2017 Book List with two new entries (Neither of which is 120 Days of Sodom, although I am still reading that). One is a pretty cool science book, which you will hopefully… Read More
2017-06-04 09:49
One of the most frustrating things about hearing news about Donald Trump is the complete disconnect between the fantasy world in his head and the real world that we all live in. Most of the… Read More
2017-04-27 19:26
I was thinking it might be nice to have a record of the books that I have read over the year. It could help me to make sure that I am at least reading something. I do plenty of reading &hell&hell…Read More
2017-04-22 09:03
I get the contents from a number of journals emailed to me and I then browse through to see if there’s anything interesting or relevant to me. Some might wonder why I do it that way wh… Read More
2017-04-20 16:01
Remember when I wrote about the need for open access? I mentioned that some publishers have very high profit margins. Elsevier’s was 37%. Elsevier also has faced years of criticism for… Read More
2017-04-15 06:12
Some time ago, a friend of mine said that his girlfriend was interested in doing a short documentary on the furry fandom for a class of hers. I expressed interest but it didn’t go anyw… Read More
2017-03-22 20:06
A recent article, by Osita Nwanevu, published in Slate magazine, makes the, superficially, appealing claim that we should stamp out bigoted speech. However, in doing so, he makes a number of… Read More
2017-03-08 07:35
Scientists are supposed to be trained to examine and make conclusions based on evidence, however, this is widely ignored when it comes to themselves rather than their object of study. A 2016… Read More
2017-01-29 18:31
Magic in the Middle Ages is a Coursera course offered by the Universitat de Barcelona. It is actually the fifth course from Coursera that I have done and the third one done purely for m… Read More
2017-01-26 20:25
It was in November 2014 when I first wrote about Diego Gomez. Tomorrow will see a court, in Colombia, decide his fate. (Article in French) He is facing a fine of up to $327 000 and four to e… Read More
2016-11-28 21:14
At the beginning of this month, I had the pleasure of attending the VBC PhD Symposium. The symposium is a two-day scientific conference organised by a committee of students from the VBC PhD… Read More
2016-11-21 19:53
I finally have the first publication from my PhD out! It’s quite a nice paper too which took a lot longer than expected. And it’s also open access so everyone can read it! If you… Read More
2016-08-06 18:06
This was something I wrote about two months ago. It was meant to be published on the VBC website but it’s been delayed so much I figured I might as well just put it out here. It seems… Read More
2016-05-05 13:58
About two weeks ago I was involved in a public outreach programme, the Lange Nacht der Forschung (Long Night of Research). This was a series of events around Austria that had scientific… Read More
2016-02-27 07:10
Sometimes the smallest niggles can bug one the most. So it was when I saw an article on Slate that wanted to award Inside Out the discontinued Oscar for Best Original Story. The Best Or… Read More
2015-08-26 19:46
By this point, it’s probably fairly obvious that this blog is on hiatus. I’m afraid I just don’t have the time to create new posts at the moment. It’s not a shortage… Read More
2015-06-20 19:35
It’s not nearly as impressive as what I had back in Cape Town (Books were too big and heavy to take with me.) but it’s slowly growing. I got I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earli… Read More
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