Dear Thomas: I share with you all your concerns. I have been following the UK's situation quite close. I am working in an advocacy initative similar to Science is Vital here in Chile. We suffer almost the same problems here: low payments for scientists, long working hours (even receiving often the speech about "your life as a scientists must be 24/7"), a denialism for science in government and the citizenship, poor equipment, and a competitiveness performance falling fast when compared with Argentina, Brasil, Peru and other South American countries. I can understand this in countries less developed as mine (Chile), but I am scared of reading so often these claims about UK science. I have been looking forward to do a post-doctoral stay in your country, considering myself well trained and with good skills for science, but I am worried about the reality depicted by young scientists. I was thinking about writing here regarding this same topic, and I am glad nonetheless to see that this is an important issue for young researchers. Pablo

For start, one huge mistake that should be corrected soon for the main journals is this: supplemental methods should not exist. Many journals forget the main idea of a paper: an instrument to other scientist, in the most complete form in order to be independently replicated by other scientists. Today, a paper, more than an instrument, seems like a commercial product, and many scientists try to hide relevant information, and many journals try to hide the methods to give more space to ads and more papers in the printed version. A paper should include complete information about the methods, and references included in this section should be verified by the editors (for example, the classic "Microinjections were performed as previously described in reference 7", and then you go to reference 7 and find that you have to go now to the reference 9 in the paper cited in 7, and so on, until getting into the paper describing the method; that's annoying). About supplemental figures, yes, there should be a limit in the number, and precise rules about the content of them. For example, validation of siRNAs and knockouts, the set-up of a technique, and so on. Trying to demonstrate in a supplemental figure that a specific treatment, not fully discussed in the main article, has a given result just to ensure the novelty of a finding, is not enough and should be eliminated from the article.

I always wondered if someone kicked Jorge Cham for his jokes. Seriously, I would like to know how was being artist and scientist at the same time (I honestly believe that, in most places, grad students don't have enough time to do both). When and why he started with PhD Comics, and when he will come to some place in the South Hemisphere.