Since it’s my first entry on this blog it seems traditional to say a little about myself. But to make it a little more interesting I thought I’d let the playlist of some easy-listening radio station interrogate me:
What’s new pussycat?
I guess what is new is this blog. I’ve done some blogging in the past some of which is still preserved on the internet. There might also be some fledgling anonymous blogs around that may or may not have been written by me. But I’m hoping that this blog is going to stick. As the name suggests it is going to cover a loosely connected series of subjects in which I happen to be interested. It is going to be a ‘scientific’ view because I’m a ‘scientist’ so all my views are ‘scientific’ using the same logic that ‘art’ is anything created by an ‘artist’.
Who are you?
I’m a 6 foot tall male ape descendent who has lived for somewhat less than half a century on a small green planet in the unfashionable region of the right spiral arm of the galaxy known colloquially as the Milky Way. Put another way – I’m Chris and I’m a scientist. I’m also the Chief Editor of Nature Protocols. I ring church bells, play the Bb tuba in a brass band, read comics and shout at the Today program. Pleased to meet you.
How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
Not sure about other people but these are the roads that got me here. I did an undergraduate degree in biophysics at Leeds University and then a PhD at Imperial College, London, where I shared an office with a young postdoc much beloved of Nature Networks. After a bit of postdocing myself I got a job as Assistant Editor on Nature Structural Biology (as it was then called). After 18 months of that I moved onto Nature and spent about 10 years tackling a wide variety of subjects from biophysics to plant biology. In 2005 I moved to the Public Library of Science (PLoS) to set up PLoS ONE which will doubtless get mentioned on this blog from time to time. Then in 2008 I returned to Nature to look after cognitive neuroscience for a year. And now I have just become Chief Editor of Nature Protocols.
What’s the story (morning glory)?
I guess the current story is Nature Protocols. The way I look at it one of the problems with science at the moment is that our current publication behaviours tend to undervalue methodologies. Replicating experiments from the information in the methods section of a paper is almost impossible. And without replication there is no validation and no way of telling whether a study is true. A collection of protocols, recipes for research, would go a long way to solving this problem. And that’s what Nature Protocols is aiming to provide.
What becomes of the broken hearted?
I don’t know. But I do know that all romantics have the same fate, they wind up cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe. That was almost the name of this blog, ‘Cynical, Drunk and Boring’, but I decided that I might regret it in the morning.
Who let the dogs out?
Not me. Though I did let the chickens out this morning, and fed the cat, and put the guinea pigs in their outdoor run for the day.
When will I be famous?
I’m probably about as famous as I’m ever likely to be; at least a google search on my name finds entries to do with me rather than some Canadian ice hockey player or porn star from Wisconsin. Fame is far more my friend Roland Denison’s business. He is currently with the UN in Maastricht but he’s also hard at work on his next novel ‘Murder on the PCR Xpress’, and the odd short story possibly even for Futures.
Who put the ‘Bop’ in the ‘Bop sh-wop sh-wop’?
Easy. The Big Bopper, ask me another.
When will I see you again?
Well with luck I should be dropping in posts here on a regular basis. So soon, really soon.
Who put the benzedrine in Mrs Murphy’s Ovaltine?
Does this bus go to the station?
Welcome to the NN blogs – great first post! Fantastic that you play the tuba. What kind of music does your band play?
I fear you thought up a better blog name than me.
I like gallimaufry – stir it in!
Chris – great to see you with a forum equal to your talent. Excellent title, indeed. I’m looking forward to reading your posts as they come in. And you are living proof that you don’t have to be at the bench to be a scientist, other opinions notwithstanding. ;-) Welcome onboard.
@ Henry: Harry (the Hipster) Gibson and ‘No’.
@ Alyssa: Don’t get me started on the band repertoire or I will never finish. In brief we play standard Brass Band stuff: marches, light classical overtures, selections from shows, rearranged swing standards. Personally I like the stuff that is specially written for Brass Bands. At the moment there is a lot of Christmas related cheese but we are also working up a modern piece called Roman Triptych by Leigh Baker, for a competition in January.
Christmas-related cheese? I didn’t know that the Magi brought Stilton. Had I known, I’d have made sure to attend.
@ Henry: Even Stilton doesn’t stink this much. ‘Santa Claus-trophobia’ anyone? (a medley of six songs all with Santa in the title)
Welcome Chris! Though I’m afraid you have underestimated my age – I too was still a PhD student when we overlapped at Imperial…
lol, this is so entertaining, it’s great how u have song titles as subheadings/q’s. Can’t wait till ur next post!
@ Stephen: But you were so knowledgeable and sophisticated, and you knew how all the equipment worked!
Hi Chris – Welcome to the Network! Nice introduction – I look forward to reading more of your posts :-)
Best first post ever. A few more questions.
Now you have a blog What difference does it make?
Are you lonesome tonight and do you know the way to San Jose?
And the one question we all want an answer to:
Life on Mars?
What’s on the dark side of the Moon? (Reminds me of that Cell minireview by Steve Block about motor proteins, with the title “Fifty ways to love your lever”.)
Great that you’ve started blogging on Nature Network (singular); I agree with you about methodology and look forward to reading more about Nature Protocols and the services it offers scientists in that area. There has been a lot written recently, in journals and reports, about the “sharing behaviour” of scientists, and it seems that it isn’t intrinsic (surprise surprise) when it comes to data-sharing. Let’s hope that methodology will be the stairway to heaven.
I noticed your tweet earlier about a novel way to avoid having your research misrepresented in the press – write the article yourself. Now of course, in a tweet, one can’t tell whether you were being ironic or whether you really meant it. That question might be fodder for another blog post, sometime!
Matt’s and my comments crossed. Funny that we both asked you astronomically interesting questions! Where’s the song entitled “How many legs on a millipede”?
@ Maxine & Matt: Thanks for the welcome, I’m feeling loved already. I’ll push back some of those questions for coming posts. As for others I’ll just refer you to Johnny Nash’s concise restatement of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.
Great first post. Looking forward to reading more. Welcome to The Network mate
Hi Chris and welcome to NN. I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Welcome! What a great start! I hope you pick the right answer to the question Should I stay or should I go now?
Hello there, Mr C.S.
A little known fact, but Dr Chris Surridge was actually playing the Bb tuba on Lily The Pink. I
Kid Rockkid you not:-@ Graham: How I wish that were true.