Tuesday, April 17, 2007

I am a peer

Occasionally, even we lowly graduate students are called upon for the noblest of scientific activities: the peer review. I just finished reviewing a paper by a post-doc and two heavy-weight professors. The verdict? Utter garbage. Sloppy math, incomplete numerical analysis, and meaningless conclusions. I may not be able to publish papers myself, but I can at least try to keep everyone else from doing so. It's like I have my finger in a leaky dyke.
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A very, very leaky dyke.
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I'm drowning, here.
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Does anyone have a pair of water-wings I could borrow?


Also: Pet Peeve #115 - People who fail to correct their statistics for multiple tests. If you have 100 data points, and you evaluate them all separately for significance, and you find that 5 of them are significant for p < class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Bonferroni is your friend. Don't leave him standing out in the cold. Invite him in for a beer and some nachos.

Also also: The new Virgin Black album has finally hit the internets. I haven't had a chance to listen to it carefully yet, but repeated plays today while reading and such indicate that it is pretty sweet.

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