Explanipedia

Response to the Free Speech Union’s article on my letter to the Royal Society Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2025

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has published an article about my open letter to the Royal Society regarding the evident contraventions of its code of conduct by one of their Fellows, Elon Musk FRS. Unfortunately, Frederick Attenborough’s piec…

Abandon the REF? Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2024

On Tuesday evening I was asked by Research Professional News for my views on a new report from think tank UKDayOne, which is calling for the abolition of the Research Excellence Framework, unlovingly known as the REF. The report is provoca…

Kenya: Where the Wild Things Are Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2023

Everyone we knew who had been on safari told us they’d had such an amazing experience that I was worried our expectations for our trip to Kenya were being set too high. Elephants trekking across Amboseli National Park I needn’t have been c…

Effect of Composition and Size on Surface Properties of Anti-Cancer Nanoparticles Open

Ina Mishra, Meredith Garrett, Stephen H. Curry, Jeffrey Taylor Jameson, Michail Kastellorizios · 2023

Liposomal formulations offer significant advantages as anticancer drug carriers for targeted drug delivery; however, due to their complexity, clinical translation has been challenging. In addition, liposomal product manufacturing has been …

The separation of life and death Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2023

Who is that stranger in my father’s bed? Those sunken eyes The concave cheeks Salted with stubble The thinned grey hair Plastered to a narrow skull. I have lost the man I loved. In truth it had been a long journey To this resting place. A …

What’s the easiest way to become a less lazy photographer? Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2023

I’m thinking of becoming a less lazy photographer. Can you help? Brussels window. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I enjoy a bit of photography from time to time, since I have an annual tradition of posting my favourite photog…

Referee report. For: Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles: Statistically flawed or not? [version 2; peer review: 2 approved] Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2021

Teaching online: how to use an iPad as a whiteboard Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2020

Last week I gave my first online tutorials in which I needed to scribble on a whiteboard and show the students their exam scripts from last term, which had been posted to my home. To solve both of these problems, I spent a bit of time figu…

Augmented reality: me and my hearing aids Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2020

My new best buds… When I started out on this blog back in ’08 I made a passing observation about my age, having noticed I was increasingly lifting my glasses to read the date on my watch. Not long afterwards I upgraded to varifocals. Now I…

2019 in 31 photographs Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2019

My computer tells me I took over 3,700 photographs in 2019. Yikes! However, I have winnowed them down to just 31, should you care to take a look. I have been fortunate this year to travel far and wide – or should I say reckless? Eithe…

Ready-made citation distributions are a boost for responsible research assessment Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2018

Though a long-time critic of journal impact factors (JIFs), I was delighted when the latest batch was released by Clarivate last week. It’s not the JIFs themselves that I was glad to see (still alas quoted to a ridiculous level of precisio…

List of contributors Open

Jan Balon, Mark B. Brown, Amy Chambers, Stephen H. Curry · 2018

Appendix 4: Pharmacokinetic Simulations Open

Stephen H. Curry, Robin Whelpton · 2016

Appendix 3: Curve Fitting Open

Stephen H. Curry, Robin Whelpton · 2016

Appendix 2: Dye Models to Teach Pharmacokinetics Open

Stephen H. Curry, Robin Whelpton · 2016

Appendix 2 A2.1 Introduction to the dye modelSingle-compartment pharmacokinetic models can be illustrated by pumping water into and out of a suitable vessel, such as a beaker, or an even simpler system, which is to run tap water into a Büc…

Higher Education and Research Bill – Letter to my MP Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2016

Science is Vital this week launched a campaign to seek amendments to the Higher Education and Research Bill 2016. The bill is a rather dry and procedural piece of legislation but hidden amongst its many sections and schedules are real thre…

Benzoic acid is not the only important product of accelerated metabolism of cocaine Open

Stephen H. Curry, Susan E. Coombs · 2016

Xiabin Chen et al. (1) describe pioneering work with a modified drug-metabolizing enzyme, a butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) analog, intended to prolong BChE activity in humans, hoping that the result would be accelerated cocaine metabolism. T…

ICYMI No. 2: Time for positive action on negative results Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2016

Today I had a short opinion piece in Chemical and Engineering News on publishing negative results, a topic that I covered about this time last year in the Guardian on the occasion of the publication my lab’s first pap…

ORCIDs set to bloom in 2016 Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2016

Have you got an ORCID identifier yet? You should. They’re on the rise – and for good reason. An ORCID iD is a number (mine is 0000-0002-0552-8870) that unambiguously and persistently identifies you in the digital world of academia. It…

Jolly good fellows: Royal Society publishes journal citation distributions Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2015

Full marks and a side order of brownie points for the Royal Society: they have started publishing the citation distributions for all their journals. This might seem like an unusual and rather technical move to celebrate but it matters. It …

Data not shown: time to distribute some common sense about impact factors Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2015

It’s that time of year when all clear-thinking people die a little inside: the latest set of journal impact factors has just been released. Although there was an initial flurry of activity on Twitter last week when the 2015 Journal Citatio…

Open access: a national licence is not the answer Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2015

“Open Access: Is a national licence the answer?” is a proposal by David Price and Sarah Chaytor of University College London for a mechanism to provide full access to everyone within the UK to all published research.

Being mortal and being Crick Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2015

Two more book reviews from my reading list for this year. On several occasions while reading Being Mortal , surgeon Atul Gawande’s book about end-of-life care, I could feel a lump swelling in my throat and tears behind my eyes p…

Open access and the humanities Open

Stephen H. Curry · 2015

At the end of 2013 and 2014 I wrote blog posts on Occam’s Corner (over at the Guardian ) to list and briefly review the books I read in each of those years. I want to develop this practice into a good habit because it …

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