Something very interesting happened to fall on my hands lately. It's a 60s book called "The psychology of perception". I know it's probably very outdated and cannot have any clue as to its scientific importance, but I'm enjoying every page.
Visualization and perception is something that draws my attention every time. What is the process in our brain when we see data represented in graphs and pictures. All our knowledge and previous experiences pop up from the subconscious and contribute to this process of interpretation.
It also happens that visualization is very trendy lately. I saw a related article on the latest issue of physics today about an exhibition of visualization of data from bygone eras like John Snow's recording of cholera spread. And even the winner of this year's Computational Modelling Group meeting in our University was doing visualization of the atmospheric pollution from data drawn by Google satellites.
I believe that we have gone into a phase in science where we are looking to make things prettier so as to attract people (and maybe funding) like an engaging ad. Computational sciences like chemistry, molecular dynamics, biomechanics are all candidates of creating alluring pictures and there is even computational art for those who want to combine their artistic with their scientific side.
I am a huge fun of all! I don't believe however that acquiring funding should be subject to making our work prettier. Research proposals are not marketing pitches.
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