Promotion and tenure review at universities

There is an interesting thread on promotion and tenure by @phylogenomics on twitter using the hashtag #publishperish14. He is tweeting comments from @lindakateh, the chancellor at UC Davis. All the tweets from the conference have been archived here. Some of the discussion was related to whether everyone should have tenure since very few actually don't get it. I also like the comments about the tenure process reducing creativity and risk-taking. She also discussed the idea of rewarding faculty for other forms of expression including blogs.

P-values, the 'gold standard' of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume

This piece in Nature about the limitations of p-values is a must read. It is very relevant to genetics, epidemiology and, especially, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that have put so much emphasis on p-values. We have also written about the limitations of p-values in a short editorial.