Leal Oburoglu
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lealoburoglu.bsky.social
Leal Oburoglu
@lealoburoglu.bsky.social
Experimental hematologist

www.themodernpeer.com
Reposted by Leal Oburoglu
You can learn a lot from a bibliography.
And I don’t just mean the science.

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The politics of citing papers
There was another lab working on our “favorite” protein. Not in our building, and not even in our time zone but our questions and models were quite similar. We knew of them through the usual channels:...
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November 25, 2025 at 9:24 AM
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One decision that splits your life into the version of you that stays in science, and the one who writes herself out of it.

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Sliding labs
“With the rising competition for funding, securing a grant has become less about advancing science and more about staying in science.” ↪ Mentioned recently in a Nature News article.  As you may know...
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November 4, 2025 at 2:39 PM
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A lab isn’t a family, and it isn’t a kingdom.
Good mentorship dissolves the need to belong to either.

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Welcome to the family, call me Professor
When I first started my PhD in France, I couldn’t help but address my PI with the formal “you” in french (“vous”), instead of the informal “you” (“tu”). She was very quick to tell me to use the inform...
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October 7, 2025 at 9:02 AM
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“Are you winning?” is the wrong question.
If human knowledge is cumulative, then collaboration isn’t optional.

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Are you winning?
By the end of my PhD, I was somewhat disillusioned by the way scientific research worked and decided to pick a field that could open up a (small) door to industry, if I ever decided to take that route...
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August 26, 2025 at 9:52 AM
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There’s a part of science that doesn’t make it into the manuscript.
That’s the part that makes it worth doing.

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The split-screen mind of the researcher
“So, what experiment should we do next?” asks the student.  And two different tabs open up side to side in your mind.  Tab 1: Taking a stroll in your field In this tab, there are no real rules. Yo...
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September 16, 2025 at 8:05 AM
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Some treat every paper like their spotlight, forgetting the team writes the story. Others guide students to lead the next paper.

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Every rockstar scientist has an origin story
Six years ago, during a science communication session at a conference, we were given the task to explain “why we do what we do” to people unfamiliar with our research. While having this chat with a fe...
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July 15, 2025 at 8:01 AM
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Curiosity got you here, but strategy will keep you here.
Graduate from being a student.
It’s time to be a researcher.

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Spoiler: there is no end to this
Being a researcher implies a long stretch of studies at the university to specialize in a certain field. To me personally, it felt like I just kept studying and studying, year after year, and… here I ...
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June 24, 2025 at 8:01 AM
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In research, publishing isn’t the point.
And discovery doesn’t need a twist ending.

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Symptomatic treatment of a broken system
The “publish or perish” culture pushes researchers to publish papers (regardless of the state of their research) for career survival. Academic jobs are tied to people’s publication records; and althou...
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June 10, 2025 at 7:25 AM
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In academia, we sometimes trade permanence for possibility.
And each time, impostor syndrome tags along, telling us the same story.

It used to sound convincing. Not anymore.

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Academic nomadism and impostor syndrome
Two years ago at a conference, I was talking to a professor whom I deeply respect, telling him that I honestly do not know where my home is. I left the country I grew up in when I was 18, spent 11 yea...
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June 3, 2025 at 9:04 AM
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Authorship isn’t a gift, it’s earned.
It’s a record of truth.

Don’t wait for a mistake to learn the rules.

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The Ghost / Ghosted Authorship Dilemma
For my very first blog post on this platform, I got inspired by the name of the blog support system itself—Ghost. It made me reflect on a phenomenon that many early-career researchers quietly experien...
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May 27, 2025 at 8:18 AM
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Not every experiment is a breakthrough.
Some are bricks in the foundation.

Let’s stop pretending “novelty” is the only thing worth publishing.

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The cult of novelty
I know you are conditioned to think that what you are researching has to be novel.  But let’s think about it for a second.  Is the importance of novelty and the constant push for it in publications ...
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May 20, 2025 at 8:15 AM
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You just wanted to understand the unexplained.
No one warned you about the game.

But don’t forget, you are the one who writes the rules.

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You are a scientist: a play in three acts
Act I: Enchantment It usually starts early on.  You are looking at something. A couple of bugs on the ground. A star in the sky. The veins on a leaf. The stream of bubbles in your soda. You are just...
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May 13, 2025 at 6:49 AM
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We build the scaffolding of science in silence.
Unpaid, unaccredited, and unseen.

If authorship comes with recognition, why should reviewing be any different?

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Reviewer #2 Was... A PhD Student
In the 20th century, Tom Clancy’s espionage novels became so popular that his publisher started hiring ghostwriters to respond to the popular demand. But in science, such a thing would be unthinkable,...
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May 6, 2025 at 10:50 AM
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I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.
May 4, 2025 at 6:21 AM
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Anonymous peer review was meant to protect honesty, not to license hostility.

Accountability isn’t optional.
It’s the backbone of open science.

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The disinhibited reviewer
Just like the anonymous commenter on a reddit thread or a social media post, I think the anonymous reviewer suffers from the “disinhibition effect” that comes with knowing that they cannot be identifi...
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April 29, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Tech bros discovered peer review…

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April 22, 2025 at 7:16 PM
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Don’t shake the tree for a paper.
Climb it to chase the unknown.
That's the point.

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The perils of low hanging fruit
The first time I heard the expression "low hanging fruit" in science, I got excited. Simple projects that seem to be straightforward – seemingly untouched by other scientists. Projects you could pluck...
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April 22, 2025 at 10:04 AM
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When the system pays for papers, someone’s always selling shortcuts.
But predatory journals didn’t invent the problem, they saw the opportunity.

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Predatory journals mirror the flaws in academic publishing.
How to catch a predator in the academic publisher quagmire.  Dear esteemed Professor Waltho, I would like to take the privilege to invite you to contribute your research/discoveries to our overly op...
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April 15, 2025 at 3:10 PM
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"Impact factor."
It decides who gets grants, who gets tenure, who gets to stay.

But we are not the sum of skewed metrics.

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Law & disorder in academic publishing
Impact factor. The power of this term is unparalleled in academia. The word “impact” by itself is already so profoundly heavy. And second in line to it, would be tenure. I put it in second place, bec...
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April 8, 2025 at 11:27 AM
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We flatten ourselves to fit in, forgetting that passion is what made us start.
But conformity never sparked a breakthrough.

Read the new post by Andrea Fieschi, and subscribe if you like what you read.

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The Flattening Soul-Crushing Effect of Cradling Yourself in a Bubble
I was recently at a conference – the friends-and-family kind. International, sure, but mostly populated by academically 'related' researchers. A chance to get all together, talk about new projects, sh...
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April 1, 2025 at 12:31 PM
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Once again, reviewer #2 makes you wonder if they even read the paper. How do you stay (relatively) sane when addressing peer-reviewer comments?

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How to survive reviewers' comments. No, it's a question.
At times, critique could be mistaken as criticism, even though it’s not meant to be. Still, even critique is difficult to deal with.  With time, I learned to ask “What is the intention behind this co...
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March 25, 2025 at 9:07 AM
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Does anyone check citations on research papers? What happens if one is wrong? 🤔

Check out my latest piece for @themodernpeer.com ⬇️

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March 18, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Stand up for Science...and also for the way it's shared.

It's about more than funding, it’s about transparency in knowledge sharing.

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March 11, 2025 at 2:34 PM