The Node at 15 – Then and now with Joachim Goedhart

The Node is 15 years old this year! We thought it’d be fun to get in touch with prolific authors of the Node over the past 15 years, revisit the posts they wrote for us and see what they’re up to now.

In this post, we caught up with Joachim Goedhart, whose “Data Visualization with Flying Colors” post remains the most viewed on the Node. You can check out all his other posts, mostly about data visualization and statistics.

What were you doing when you first started writing for the Node?

I wrote my first blog in 2017 and at that time I was an assistant professor at Molecular Cytology (part of the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

I was – and I still am – developing fluorescent protein-based tools to study cellular processes. We are engineering fluorescent proteins and new biosensors based on fluorescent proteins. Since we have a strong focus on quantitative imaging technologies, the image processing, data analysis, and data visualization are important parts of our activities. Therefore, I also have a strong interest in data visualization and statistical analyses.

What motivated you to write for the Node?

Around 2017 I got interested in using R and ggplot2 for data analysis and making graphs and plots. This was totally new for me, so I was learning how to use this software and exploring its potential for data visualization. So, I thought that it would perhaps be helpful for others to share what I learned about R/ggplot2. I was looking for an online platform to post blogs and it turned out that the Node has a very nice infrastructure where it is super easy to write and post pieces. In addition, the audience of the Node aligns well with the audience that (I think) could be interested in the stuff that I write about. At first it was a bit scary that there is no moderation. At the same time this also provides freedom and gives the writer full control over the process which is cool. It took me a couple of posts to become comfortable with this situation, and I really appreciate that the Node provides this platform.

Choose a favourite/most memorable piece you’ve written for us and tell us why you’ve picked it.

It’s difficult to choose one, so I will choose two, a favourite and a memorable piece. The most memorable is a piece about “p-value parroting” as I called it. It’s the practice of mindless repeating what others do, and examples for statistical analysis – especially calculating p-values – are abundantly present in the scientific literature. To share my annoyance, I wrote a small correspondence that was published in Nature, but in the publication process the title was redacted. So, the piece on the Node was also meant to be able to share the original title that I had in mind.

My favourite piece is on “Data Visualization with Flying Colors” which discusses the use of colorblind friendly colors. This is something close to my heart as I’m red-colorblind, and it also seems to resonate with the community as it is often re-shared on social media.

Where are you now? What are you currently working on?

I’m still where I was in 2017 and I’m still roughly working on the same topics, although there’s a stronger focus on biosensors for quantitative imaging with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy. In general, it’s becoming easier to acquire multidimensional data (multiple timepoints, colors, stage-positions) with microscopes by automating the acquisition. Therefore, the datasets have become larger and there’s a lot of effort needed for processing, analysis and visualization of the data. It’s exciting to see that also the newest generation of students that we educate have an interest in data analysis and are motivated to learn coding and spending time on this important aspect of research.

Do you have any writing advice?

Write about something that you care about. I think that even if a blog is read by only a few people, it can be valuable (and it will actually be incredibly hard to write something that no one cares about). When I started posting pieces, I was also active on twitter, which helped a lot to find out what other people are interested in, and it was also a great platform to advertise the blogs and get reactions. Currently I’m using Bluesky to interact with people and share blogs, but I guess that other social media platforms can also be used for that.

What have you been reading/listening to lately? Any book or podcast recommendations?

I only recently discovered the Night Science podcast by Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher and I really enjoyed it. There are currently over 70 episodes and I only listened to a couple so there is still plenty to explore. As for books, I recently read the book “I can’t stop thinking about VAR” by Daisy Christodoulou. It discusses the introduction of the video assisted referee as a technology to support referees in soccer with their decisions. It is a nice example where a technology can solve some problems, but at the cost of creating new problems. In addition, it explains how difficult it is to make a binary decision (yellow card, offside), for a continuum of situations. These issues are also relevant for the scientific process and therefore I enjoyed the book a lot.

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