On scientific censorship and ‘bitchiness’

My first paper was published in 1977, and despite many fights with referees they were mediated by committed and intellectually fair Editors (especially in the controversial field of bioenergetics); thus I suffered not a single rejection until ca 1995. This occurred when a paper we had submitted to the then European Journal of Biochemistry, following […]

David Broomhead: a brief ‘in memoriam’

I learned on Friday of the very sad and untimely death of my good friend David Broomhead. I first came upon Dave’s name when Roy Goodacre and I were working on neural networks in Aberystwyth, and discovered that the Radial Basis Function neural network method that Dave had co-invented [1] […]

Why I am boycotting the journal “Blood”

 

Most academics are used to the rough and tumble of the reviewing of their papers and grant applications, and recognise that it is not without a stochastic element (or worse). Consequently, we occasionally feel – and probably are – hard done by. We are certainly used to being rejected by some of the ‘generalist’ […]

A New Year with an Honour

This is my first blog since leaving the BBSRC (although my old blogs are archived there), but I cannot let the New Year pass without recording the exceptional (New Year's) Honour accorded me in the form of a CBE. Notwithstanding the slight anachronism of the name (and a Select Committee suggested changing 'Empire' to' Excellence'), the […]

New Blog Page for Prof Kell

My BBSRC term ended on October 20th and my BBSRC Blog will cease. I shall now but likely more rarely) be blogging from this page.