1. This summer I've been thinking a lot about "cognitive load" which is term that has multiple definitions but for me means something like "the amount of processing, analysing, thinking, & deciding I can do in a day before my brain stops working" here's a short thread about that 2. I've been thinking about this because of the words of Field Medalist June Huh (where he describes how he can only do ~3 hours of focused work a day). Also, I've come to realise that as I age my ability to sustain focused work has decreased but demands on my attention increased

1. Yesterday in lab meeting we discussed the proper etiquette for how to ask for reagents. Obviously if a reagent is published it should (& in my lab will) be sent no matter how the request is made. BUT its professional courtesy to do so in collegial manner. Here's a rough guide: 2. In my opinion these are the components that a reagent request should have (in order, detailed explanation for each component further down the thread). Who you are, exactly what you need, Why you need it (this one is controversial so more soon), how to get it to you.

1. I wish we did a better job explaining to the public just how efficient investing in small scale lab focused science is. 80% of the $ is put back into the local economy as spending on salaries. Of that most of it is paying stipends to help people obtain advanced STEM training 2. Of remaining 20% lots of $s are put into the economy as spending on local services (animal care) or companies w/ regional representation. Overall, of the $ most labs receive almost all of it is put into the local economy. What do we get in return for this investment?

1. This thread will detail why I think that the basic economic model we use in science, a form of something called "tournament economy/theory", is inappropriate & how it leads to all kinds of bad outcomes, inequities, & behaviours that are destructive to the practice of science. 2. In a tournament economy what determines how much a person is rewarded (in science this can take the form of jobs, grants, awards etc) is not the absolute output & accomplishment of a person but rather their relative ranking compared to other people. Sounds familiar doesnt it?

1. Listen science twitter we need to have a serious talk about what "mechanism" means because it's now basically a meaningless word that is mostly used to reject papers people don't like. But we have a chance to change/improve how we talk about this. Here is how that could happen 2.Typically when people say "mechanism" they mean something like "protein A modifies protein Y that transcribes gene X turning cell A into cell B". So "to have mechanism" we need to describe a complex but VERY SPECIFIC sequence of events. But this IS NOT how biology usually works

OMG twitter do I have a great publication story for you. We finally heard about our presubmission enquiry after 3.5 weeks. This is in one of the top journals in the field that makes or breaks careers. A story in 3 acts. To follow up: a) The handling editor was the editor in chief (!!!) of this journal. b) People asking which journal this is: am waiting to see if they apologise & provide explanation before naming & shaming (so far crickets). Can say it's a Cell family journal.

1. Over my career I learned that the senior people in a field have an enormous influence over how well everyone else in the field treats each other. If they are collegial, helpful, open minded, fair then the field will be that way too, if they aren't it wont be. They set the tone 2. If the senior people share reagents & protocols others will follow. If they welcome new people to the field instead of treating them as interlopers, everyone will welcome new people. If they review papers fairly, then generally speaking other reviewers will tend to be fair.

1. When you ask scientists why they became scientists you usually get a complicated answer listing many factors but over the years I noticed that one answer comes up more than any other. At some point they were lucky enough to have an amazing science teacher that inspired them. 2. For me it was my biology teacher Mr. Staines in the last year of high school. Though close to retirement after decades of teaching, he had a deep & infectious sense of wonder at the natural world & its mysteries. Also, he had the ability to convince us we were good at science.

1. One of the most delightful surprising things I learned as I progressed through my scientific training was realising that storytelling was a major & essential part of being a scientist. Whether writing papers, grants, or presenting a poster/talk, storytelling was a core skill. 2. Of course no one told me this explicitly but looking around at the PIs & postdocs made it clear that arguably the most powerful skill they had was taking data & magically transforming it into a cohesive clear narrative w/ a point a view, something new to say, & an agenda.

1. Science is a forward looking discipline, we spend most of our time thinking about where things will be in a few years. Papers that are even a few years old seem like quaint artefacts from a bygone era. But the past is all around us, it shapes the future, we must not neglect it 2. maybe part of the reason many scientists neglect the past is that it's presented badly during undergrad classes, we hear the same musty tales, built on a cult of personality of old men in funny moustaches. But the past of science is a living breathing thing, it's all around us

As a bright bright eyed batch of graduate students are set to start, here are the top 11 pieces of advice NO ONE gave me when i started grad school that I wished they did: 1. ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS. No one will think any less of you, I've never regretted asking too many questions. 2. Be friendly, grateful, courteous, professional w/ the support stuff. The heart of science is the janitorial staff, secretaries, admin staff, stores & the workshop, building ops, media cooks, bldg. security. I cannot begin to tell you how many times they bailed me out of jams.

1. One of the most frustrating things about being a scientist right now is that on the one hand we spend our entire careers learning how to be rational & logical & transparent in how we do our science. Yet our granting, publishing & hiring system is often none of those things. 2. I was thinking about this looking at the previous reviews for my CIHR grant. The reviewers gave me an avg. score of 4.52 which would have put me very close to the funding range but mysteriously my score ended up as 4.38 (not fundable). How did this happen? I will never know.

1. I trained in North America & the UK & was very fortunate to experience 2 completely different styles of doing science. I wanted to discuss briefly why, as a scientist, it's useful, though challenging, to experience ways of doing science that are very different from each other 2. Broadly speaking, what I saw drive the science in North America were the tools & techniques available to answer a particular question. We would do a bunch of experiments to try probe & generate data about the underlying biology. We we would screen, make constructs, do stuff!

1. Since we can't go to international meetings right now I was thinking about the 1st meeting I ever want to, which had a profound impact on my career. However, it wasn't so much the meeting (which was really great) that mattered but how I got to the meeting. So here goes. 2. My 1st science meeting was the 11th international worm meeting in 1997. I was 9months into grad school. As a 1st gen I knew nothing about how academia worked but one msg I got loud & clear was that going to meetings & networking was VERY important if I wanted to be a scientist

1. Usually the ECM is thought of as a structural element, a scaffold to hold cells in place or provide tracks for cells to move along. Our newest paper, now online @CurrentBiology, explores a different role for the ECM: an organiser of cell signalling cell.com/current-biolog… 2. Our new paper, the work of @RohanKhadilkarr (who recently left our lab to set up his own lab), shows that modulating the organization & density of the ECM in the fly hematopoietic organ, the lymph gland, provides a mechanism to control the behaviour of blood progenitor cells.

1. Some of the key turning points in my career have come when someone stepped in & helped me without being obliged to or me having to ask: People like the grad student who hardly knew me but sat w/ me, gave advice, & taught me how to clone when my undergrad project was failing. 2. Or the editor who sent a rejected paper to an editor friend in another journal. There are literally dozens of stories like that I can tell. These moments of kindness were always important but at certain low points they basically kept me going. Even small gestures meant so much

1. Embryogenesis requires cells to move great distances across diverse landscapes. Cell migration relies on the regulated assembly & disassembly of adhesive contacts w/ the ECM. What happens if cells are too sticky? This is explored in our latest work now online @Dev_journal 2. This manuscript is the product of the heroic efforts of @mandy_ridd (who is now an independent PI) w/ key contributions from our collaborators, the labs of @CRaamsdonk & Louis Lefebvre at the UBC. A brief thread about our findings & what they mean. dev.biologists.org/content/early/…

1. When people ask why I became a scientist they expect me to say that I love the thrill of discovery or learning new things about nature, & I obviously love those things, but I tell them that the main reason I became a scientist is because I love being around scientists so much 2. One of my favourite things about scientists is how despite being so very different they can unite together & work beautifully as a team towards a common goal, each contributing their own unique experience, talent, perspective, temperament, skills, knowledge, neuroses, humour.

1. Guide to the taxonomy of collaborators: The disappointment - "I know I promised you the data three months ago & three months before that I promised you the data 3 months before that but I swear we are doing the experiment RIGHT now so you will have the data in three months." 2. The hustler -"we started doing the experiments we agreed that we would do & they turned out really great so some people in my lab started doing more experiments on this & they were even MORE AWSOME & we are basically going to be pursuing this full time now, thanks for the tip"

1. The world now is such a horrible depressing dumpster fire that today I really needed to go for a run w/ & the wife & kids for a pick me up. We set off & ~10 into it my shoe hit a snag & I fell down stopping my fall w/ my face. I could tell right away I broke some teeth badly 2. The kids were there & they were upset at the sight of me. It was to put it mildly a scene. Now where do you find an emergency dentist on a sunday night during COVID? Turns out that this was not so easy. But we called a neighbour who is a retired dentist & she made some calls.

1. How to decide if you are going to abandon a project/experiment & move on. A short thread w/ basic guidelines. First, have a plan B (...& C...& D) much harder to move on if you don't have an alternative. Discuss & have these alternatives ready at the outset just in case.

https://twitter.com/deneke_v/status/1264120734978322432

2. Know you are susceptible to sunk cost fallacy & escalation of commitment. It is helpful to expect yourself to be irrational about such decisions. This means setting up a plan & timelines at the outset when you are MORE rational. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalatio… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost