HEIDI's NEWSLETTER

Does using machine learning solve our problem of p-hacking and HARKing or do we have the same problems as with statistical tests and models? As a statistician I have been trained early on in understanding statistical tests and with that the meaning, history and problems of the p-value. Every researcher who works with data has seen a p-value and most have even printed one in their own papers. Most researchers, including statisticians, struggle understanding the p-value. Not only do we struggle...

Can creativity and science go together? I am reading the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and I can’t help but wonder: How does creativtiy relate to and fit into my work? Can people who care about evidence and scientific rigor make creativity part of their work? This post is citable: Seibold, H. (2025, May 22). Creativity in our work. https://doi.org/10.59350/xpb9d-t2t45 TL;DR In this post I share four take-aways I had about creativity in relation to our work 1: Innovation requires...

Fraud and Incompetence: The scales that lead to questionable research practices. HOW TO CITE Seibold, H. (2025, April 4). Fraud or Incompetence. Heidi Seibold. https://doi.org/10.59350/rphzw-axx30 See all citable posts on Rogue Scholar Last week I listened to a talk by Leo Held on the topic “Are questionable research practices ever OK?” at the German statisticians conference DAGStat. As part of the talk he described fraud as something we cannot ignore any longer as it happens too much, but...

What are other people doing and what can you do to secure funding for software projects? This post is citable: Heidi Seibold (2025) "How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software (II)", https://doi.org/10.59350/akg14-18f97 In a previous post I wrote about: Recent developments on the status of software in research and funding. Today’s post is all about: Case studies and practical strategies for securing funding. Did I miss anything in this post? Let me know and I will happily add it!...

More and more funders are recognizing the vital role of software in research. How can you leverage your software skills to aquire funding? In this post I want to share: Recent developments on the status of software in research and funding. Stay tuned also for an upcoming post on: Case studies and practical strategies for securing funding. Did I miss anything in this post? I will use this information in future courses and any other info would be appreciated. Send missing info This will be one...

New frameworks for course websites are popping up all the time. In this post, I'll review some of them. Today I want to talk about three interesting frameworks for building course websites: Quarto, the Carpentries Workbench, and Nebula. All of them rely on the use of Markdown and are thus easy to version control, reproducible, and reusable. They’re all pretty handy when teaching software skills, as they allow incorporating code in a straight-forward way. Quarto Websites / Books Website Docs /...

Taking notes and drawing little images helps me think, but they are also helpful to others. Would sketchnoting also be for you? I started sketchnoting by taking notes about scientific presentations and meetings. They help me think and keep me focused on what is said. If used to find it very hard to concentrate during presentations and I found a couple of ways to focus on what is said and trying to really understand it. One of them is making myself come up with questions about the talk (a...

Too many code projects in research are done by a single person. Keep reading on why that's bad and how to do better. It’s been a while since my last post. Founding the Digital Research Academy, holidays and LOTS AND LOTS of workshops and events have taken all my time. But it’s time to start writing again. One of the workshops I taught since my last post was on collaborative coding at the wonderful RSE summer school at KIT (click through the timetable to find all kinds of cool materials)....

I am excited to share that the Digital Research Academy incorporation is almost done. We had our notary appointment last week, set up the bank account and are now waiting for the official registration of the DRA Digital Research Academy GmbH. I published my first post about the initial idea for the Digital Research Academy in May 2023. Now, just a year and a few months later, the Digital Research Academy is becoming not only an initiative but a company. Last week Joyce Kao, Melanie Imming and...