ErrantScience

The author Arthur C. Clark did a great deal to advance the discussion of science and technology, and while he has many quotable quotes one that I think about a lot is: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination, Arthur C. Clark (1962) This is one of Arthur C. Clark’s three laws and has sparked quite a bit of discussion…

Writing is an unavoidable part of research. If you’re considering a career at the lab bench, be prepared: there’s a lot of it. From meticulously keeping lab notes to drafting detailed reports and journal papers, writing is written into every stage of the research process. But if its sheer volume sounds daunting, don’t worry; you’ll fit right in. Researchers are terrible at getting writing…

I am a biochemist, a vocation that (you may note from the title) has little to do with physics. I mean, granted, everything is based on some form of physics, but I mean that if you have a complex physics equation to solve, you aren’t going to be calling the biochemist. Not unless the answer you’re looking for is, “Have you tried a different pH?”. Which is strange because I’m a biochemist…

Like most young overenthusiastic naive academics, my first academic paper was rejected. It was a good paper (I thought), it covered the work well and was an important set of results to share with the wider community… the key components of an academic paper. Astonishingly, the reviewers actually agreed on all of those points, which I would have thought was enough to get my paper published (see…

It is hard to explain just how fast technology has developed and changed modern times compared to history. The pinnacle of warfare for the vast majority of human history has been bows and arrows. The first short bows and arrows appeared around 40,000 years ago. It then took until the 1300s for us to work out that longbow versions worked better. Not a particular big technological change for 38,700…

Science is not getting cheaper. It never really has, as new advancements often require new equipment, new techniques, and new computers (in research, a ‘new’ computer is any model made after 2010). And science budgets aren’t getting any bigger – gestures broadly at the state of the world. So, as researchers, what are we to do? Well, that’s simple: we campaign for more funding, vote for…

Now, it may be hard to imagine, but there was a world before Google and looking up literally everything on a search engine. There was a time when if you wanted to learn about the latest science products, you would need to either read a fantastic magazine like Lab News or attend something called a tradeshow. If you’ve not been to one, tradeshows are typically free events where tradespeople (the…

Lab work is a collaborative effort. Almost all research labs are made up of a team of people, all vying for space and resources and all working towards, sometimes shared, sometimes separate research goals. Be it a team of 2 or a building of 200 researchers, there is always the need to work with and around others in the lab and find a way to balance space, resources, and work between you all. A…

Earlier this month, I was introduced to the term ‘wishcycling’. Wishcycling is the act of putting something into recycling without checking to see if it can actually be recycled. It was coined in the early 2020s as a way of describing how people recycle their consumer waste when faced with increasingly complex recycling requirements. When I learnt this term, I felt pleased to finally have a name…

Hello It’s been a little while since I last updated the blog. In fact, I think it’s been a lot of a while since I spoke to the community at all! Sorry about that. Since my last update on what we’re going with ErrantScience things have been very, very busy. In the interest of keeping this update short and punchy, here are the highlights of what I’ve been up to: drew lots of cartoon commissions,…

With cartooned a bunch of our comments (with some help)! #Blog #Gallery #Cartoons

Last week we put up a post on Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon asking for some sciency ideas to cartoon. We asked because first off we wanted to draw the things you want to see and secondly it’s always important to make sure there are not areas that are missing some well-deserved cartoons. You all responded very enthusiastically and filled the comments sections (and replies) with a whole host of…

Water is the best liquid ever, here's an article we wrote for Laboratory News to prove it.

Research is in many ways a subject of debate. Ideas are presented with evidence and through repetition and discussion they are tested and examined. Every discovery or methodology in science is subject to inquiry, dissection and disagreement because that is at the very core, the point of the scientific method. There are few constants (even mathematical constants are the subject of much debate) and…

Talking about "How to Cartoon Geology" a blog article all about our time @GeolSoc

We love cartoons. I doubt that comes as a shock to you, what with us being an entirely cartoon-based blog. But not only do we love the cartoons we make but we love basically all science cartoons and nothing would make us happier than there being hundreds of other science cartoonists out there. As it turns out the wonderful people at The Geological Society share this cartoon-based feeling and…

In case you missed it the Barbie movie is a huge runaway meme-producing mega-hit of a movie. There’s a good reason why, it’s a great movie with some fantastic performances, a LOT of pink and even a cover of one of the best Barbie songs of all time ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua. Being a cartoonist of a certain age ‘Barbie Girl’ is burned deep into my brain by it being played far too much on radio…