写科技论文时一条重要原则是，不要误导读者。大部分论文都能做到这一点，因为存在比较严格的审稿机制。不过我发现，很多科技新闻发布（press releases）就是很误导一般读者的，即使来自顶级的学术单位。为啥会这样呢！为啥不努力给公众准确的信息。这些写 public release 的，写完后难道不让相关的研究人员审阅么？

举个比较近的例子，这个新闻发布来自哈佛大学，In Tiny Supercooled Clouds, Physicists Exchange Light And Matter。题目说的是，物理学家交换光与物质。看到题目我就短路了。查阅自然杂志上的原文 Coherent control of optical information with matter wave dynamics，可以看到免费看第一段。原来，研究者做的是，把光脉冲转换成物质波，等物质波行进一段距离后，又把它转换成光脉冲。要点是，在这个过程中，光信息被相干传递了。

自然杂志上一个小随笔：A clash of two cultures。这里的两种 cultures 指的是物理和生物学术圈的文化。从我上大学时就听人讲，学物理的与学生物的思维方式有多大区别，看来直到现在依旧是个话题。如文中所述，这种区别已经存在至少一个世纪。

In the past, biologists have been little concerned about whether their findings might achieve the status of a law. And even when findings seem to be so general as to warrant thinking of them as a law, the discovery of limits to their generality has not been seen as a problem. Think, for example, of Mendel’s laws, the central dogma or even the ‘law’ of natural selection. Exceptions to these presumed laws are no cause for alarm; nor do they send biologists back to the drawing board in search of better, exception-free laws. They are simply reminders of how complex biology is in reality.

• 分类：科学 • 关键词： 物理，生物 || 7 个留言