Brittania sail away!

I sympathise with our former fellow Europeans, the British. But whether we like it or not, their electorate wants to leave the EU, no matter how stupid it's going to be. A short post on non-representative democracies.

Would you like to have your own edited paper collection?

One of the biggest problems in peer-reviewed science is editor-bias. So, my answer to Frontiers in Plant Science's nice invitation, even if I would still be in professional science, can only be no!

When dating is futile – plastome-based chronograms for oaks

With most-versatile programmes like BEAST at hand, everyone can do a molecular dating. Which makes it even more important that editors and peers check the priors and reasoning behind it. And always should make sure a palaeobotanist (or at least, a palaeogeographer) is one of the peers.

Soft phishing, and why anyone should know GoogleScholar

I still have a university e-mail address, for fiscal reasons. Hence, I still get what we call in German Initiativbewerbungen, not solicited applications for joining my working group (I never had one) from people in countries not as happy as Austria. And the one or other phishing mail.