{"id":3024,"date":"2014-01-07T10:56:54","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T18:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/?p=3024"},"modified":"2014-01-07T11:03:39","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T19:03:39","slug":"keep-it-simple-as-possible-but-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/archives\/3024","title":{"rendered":"Keep It Simple As Possible, But No More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Polar Vortext. Blah blah blah… Save the children, keep them inside, literal life-threatening\u00a0 cold — Literal<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Good grief. You’d think school children in Fairbanks<\/a> must be a different species altogether:<\/p>\n

Outdoor recess is only cancelled when the temperature reaches -20 \u00b0F.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Outdoor recess! Nevermind waiting to get on the bus to get to school in the first place.<\/p>\n

Buck up, mid-western kiddies, buck up.<\/p>\n

…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Working against a deadline to finish my book chapter to be published by Springer later this year. The likely audience of readers will be medical oncologists and researchers in human colorectal cancer (cheery, right?). I need to be careful to get the biology right, and to be as clear and as simple as possible, in keeping with an ideal often attributed to Einstein: “Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.<\/em>” This means avoid wandering explanations of mass spectrometry, gel electrophoresis, or worse, abstruse mathematics when I discuss the predictive value of our approach. Not that the latter is irrelevant; to the contrary, it’s the likely the reason I was invited to author the chapter, but you don’t want the novelty to get lost in its explanation.<\/p>\n

Another mistake to avoid is underestimating the knowledge of your readership, knowingly or not. Years ago, while I was still a grad student, I wrote a review of biomarkers in colorectal cancer, elements of which I expect I’ll be drawing on quite a bit as I write this chapter. I recall that the peer review of that paper was fair, but quite critical of several things I’d left out which the reviewers argued, correctly I agreed, belonged in any broad review of the field. It was as if I’d written a review of the auto industry and omitted any mention of Ford. Well, not that bad, but you get the idea. I revised the manuscript accordingly, made it a better paper, and it passed muster on the second review and was published<\/a>. Getting a paper published is very satisfying, but what’s more satisfying if you ask me is having the paper cited by others, and I see today this one has been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polar Vortext. Blah blah blah… Save the children, keep them inside, literal life-threatening\u00a0 cold — Literal! Good grief. You’d think school children in Fairbanks must be a different species altogether: Outdoor recess is only cancelled when the temperature reaches -20 \u00b0F. Outdoor recess! Nevermind waiting to get on the bus to get to school in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3024"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3031,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions\/3031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}