Arete

Whilst dealing with the reviewer who says "change something trivial and redo ALL THE ANALYSIS!" Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine. If you like things that sound similar to what Mike Patton does, you'll like them too.

I'm sorry - but given the recent posts you've made in the biology section I feel it's necessary to call you on this one. For example in this thread: http://www.sciencefo...tween-bacteria/ You've challenged current scientific theory based on a complete misinterpretation of a popular science article - which you didn't reference leaving us to dig and assume we found the right one. You've then gone on to completely misunderstand the definition of many very basic biological terms in order to try and argue a point e.g. I mean absolutely no disrespect, but I've worked with year 9 high school students who can tell me without hesitation the difference between an organelle, a bacteria, a prokaryote and a microorganism. They are fundamental building blocks of knowledge, essential to the understanding of cellular biology. Despite being furnished with wikipedia links to explain the key differences you argued the point that in your opinion they were one and the same for over a page. It's not our or any scientist's fault that your basic scientific knowledge is this lacking - you need to do a bit more reading. This brings me to three major points: a) Scientific illiteracy is a problem, sure. Its got roots in science, in education systems and in the media. However - ALL of the scientific literature is internet based these days. With the advent of FOS journals like PLoS and BMC, the literature is more accessible to the general public than EVER before. b) If you're going to assert changes to a well supported scientific theory (i.e. evolution by natural selection - http://www.sciencefo...prey-mechanism/), you need to pose a legitimate problem with the theory and pose legitimate alternatives. If your problems with the theory stem from a poor or incomplete understanding of what the theory actually states, people politely and comprehensively try to explain how the theory doesn't work the way you're proposing it does and you react with snippy, sarcastic responses, it inevitably elicits frustration in the people trying to help you. c) Scientific language, terminology and nomenclature exists purely for clarification purposes. In the above thread you deliberately refused to acknowledge fundamental, learned in high school biology scientific definitions when presented with them because it didn't suit the point you were making. (i.e. you stated: mitochondrion = microorganism, I corrected: mitochondrion=organelle, you cited: that's your opinion) It's again, not science's fault that you refuse to acknowledge differences in definitions pointed out to you reflective of important biological differences because it doesn't suit you. It also makes it near impossible to have a meaningful discussion on a topic of science when you refuse to acknowledge these definitions. Again I mean no disrespect or dismissal of you or your posts, but please don't blame a lack of knowledge and education on science/scientists/this forum if you're capable of picking up a biology textbook and reading it.

Hi, I'm currently in the latter stages of my PhD, alternating between procrastination/avoidance (hence my presence here), writing up and looking for postdocs. I work primarily in genetics/evolutionary biology on a range of things such as species tree reconstruction, adaptive diversification/species processes and population genetics.