By dating two newly discovered Conrad drawings, Chapter 3 connects Conrad’s unfinished novel about a painter – The Sisters – to his interest in drawing. The Sisters is a much more complicated fragment than hitherto acknowledged. The text relates to contemporary debates, Conrad’s life and many of his works, both visual and verbal. Written during the advent of modern visual art, The Sisters is of further interest in its portrayal of Stephen as a modern artist. The metaphors on painting Conrad used in the Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ relate to this discussion: they contextualize and oppose Stephen’s thoughts about what it means to be an artist, and delimit the extent to which Conrad embraced all notions of modernity and the so-called “end of art.”

The chapter explores why there are symbolic depictions of space from above – maps of the fictional environment – in many of Conrad’s manuscripts. I suggest that Conrad constructed and used hand-drawn maps as part of his creative writing process, as if he needed a map to navigate his own fictional world. Three of Conrad’s manuscript maps are linked to passages in his fiction that contain factual mistakes; it is unclear whether the maps led him astray or whether he produced the maps because of the complicated geography. The maps’ existence can be attributed to more than attempts at understanding the coordinates of the fictional environment. Among twentieth-century writers, Conrad was one of the artists most involved with maps and charts, both in his literary and especially in his professional life. However, although Conrad needed maps to write, it is not apparent that we need them to read – unless we seek to better understand the genealogy of the text and the creative process.

Interpreting results correctly and communicating them honestly are vital parts of what scientists do. Incorrect interpretation of data often results from avoidable statistical mistakes. Common pitfalls arise from abuse of significance testing, misunderstanding of correlations and overgeneralisation of findings. Publishing peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals is the primary means by which researchers communicate their findings to other scientists. A scientific paper has an established basic format comprising title, abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion. Open Science practices are an important part of the modern publication process. Non-technical (lay) summaries and press releases are tools for communicating behavioural research to journalists and the public. All science involves potential conflicts of interest, and their influence on scientific communication is an unresolved cause for concern. Several organisations oversee the integrity of science, but ultimately it is the personal responsibility of each individual researcher to behave with openness and integrity.