39: Academic hipsters

We all know hipsters. You know, like the guy that rides his Penny-farthing to the local cafe to write his memoirs on a typewriter - just because its more ‘authentic’. In this episode, James and Dan discuss academic hipsters. These are people who insist you need to use specific tools in your science like R, python, and LaTeX. So should you start using these trendy tools despite the steep learning curve?

Other stuff they cover:

• Why James finally jumped onto Twitter
• A new segment: 2-minutes hate
• The senior academic that blamed an uncredited co-author for data anomalies
• An infographic ranking science journalism quality that’s mostly wrong
• When to learn new tools, and when to stick with what you know
• Authorea as a good example of a compromise between "easy" and "reproducible"

Links

The science journalism infographic

http://www.nature.com/news/science-journalism-can-be-evidence-based-compelling-and-wrong-1.21591

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Twitter account

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Music credits: Lee Rosevere http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

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