Academia
clock | August 1, 2008The new blog carnival, covering the way science is changing (or not changing enough) in the 21st century - Praxis, is about to start. The call for submissions is now open - send them to me at Coturnix AT gmail dot com by August 14th at midnight Eastern.
The business of science - from getting into grad school, succeeding in it, getting a postdoc, getting a job, getting funded, getting published, getting tenure and surviving it all with some semblance of sanity - those are kinds of topics that are appropriate for this carnival, more in analytic way than personal, if possible (i.e., not "I will…
drorzel | August 1, 2008You know, my opinion of "No Child Left Behind" style attempts to measure "failing" schools is as low as anybody's, but even I think this new Ohio State study sounds ridiculous:
Up to three-quarters of U.S. schools deemed failing based on achievement test scores would receive passing grades if evaluated using a less biased measure, a new study suggests.
Ohio State University researchers developed a new method of measuring school quality based on schools' actual impact on learning - how much faster students learned during the academic year than during summer vacation when they weren't in class…
drorzel | July 31, 2008The other day, the Dean Dad remarked on one of the quirks of academic technology:
Last week I saw another iteration of something I still don't really understand. People who are perfectly civil in person are often capable of firing off incredibly nasty and hateful emails. Sometimes they'll do that with cc's all the way up the chain, as a way of spreading the manure over the most ground with the least effort. Yet, when confronted, they're surprised that anybody would take offense, and they revert to their perfectly civil selves.
It is, indeed, mystifying, and seems to be more common in…
scientificactivist | July 31, 2008Below is the second part of my interview with planetary geologist Bethany Ehlmann. In the first part, she discussed two of her recent papers on Martian geology (see citations below). In this segment, she discusses water on Mars more generally.
Bethany Ehlmann Nick Anthis: Would it be possible to briefly take our readers through the history of the discovery of water (or traces of past water) on Mars? I know that this is an important area, but it seems like there's so much work on it coming out now that it's hard for someone not in the field to put it all into context. Maybe you could just…
catdynamics | July 30, 2008"Crush your employees, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations at their paycheques..."
Oh, I wish I had thought of that title.
UPDATE: a check or a headfake?
The order is out.
The clause on Student Assistants could have interesting repercussions.
terrasig | July 30, 2008Unlike the blogosphere and some unhinged stakeholders, I've been quietly watching the PZ Myers crackergate episode unfold. My concerns have been less theological than educational, primarily because I am the beneficiary of an arm of the University of Florida public higher education system.
I've been beating my head against the wall as to why the leadership and student government of the University of Central Florida in Orlando would be taking such drastic action against Webster Cook. Cook is the student who took a consecrated communion wafer uneaten from a Sunday 29 June Catholic service at…
scientificactivist | July 30, 2008Planetary geology is a fascinating area--particularly when it pertains to the search for extraterrestrial life. I wrote about it once during my brief stint as a student science writer, but it's not an area that I've really covered on my blog. However, a former colleague of mine from Oxford, Bethany Ehlmann, was recently involved with a couple of papers on geological formations left by ancient Martian water, so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity. Ehlmann is currently a PhD student in the geological sciences at Brown University and part of the CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance…
drorzel | July 29, 2008Because I am a Bad Person who thinks and types relatively slowly, I have been lax about following up to the many excellent posts that have been written in response to this weekend's two cultures posts. Let me attempt to address that in a small way by linking a whole bunch of them now:
My rant was actually anticipated by this post at "It's The Thought That Counts,", which was pointed out to me in comments.
Janet had the first direct response, with a later follow-up speculating about the reasons for the divide. As I said in one of my own comment threads, I think a lot of it has to do with…
drorzel | July 28, 2008The New York Times front page yesterday sported an article with the oh-so-hip headline "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?." This turned out to be impressively stupid even by the standards of articles with clumsy slang in the headlines:
Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
As teenagers' scores on…
jstemwedel | July 27, 2008Reading the comments on my post and Chad's post about the different societal attitudes towards humanities and arts and math and science (especially in terms of what "basic" knowledge a well-educated person ought to have), I get the feeling that some interesting assumptions are at play. Since I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, I'm just going to lay out some of the hypotheses that have occurred to me as I've read through these discussions:
Math and science are objectively harder (and/or require greater intelligence to learn) than humanities and arts.
While math and science do not…
drorzel | July 27, 2008A question raised in comments to yesterday's rant about humanities types looking down on people who don't know the basics of their fields, while casually dismissing math and science:
[I]t occurs to me that it would be useful if someone could determine, honestly, whether the humanities professors feel the same sense of condescension among science and engineering professors.
This is obviously not a question I can answer, but I agree that it would be good to know. So, how about it?
clock | July 26, 2008Chad: Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos
Tom: What Does the Public Really Need To Know?: Science/Math edition.
Chad: The Innumeracy of Intellectuals
Janet: Fear and loathing in the academy.
Join in the fray....
clock | July 26, 2008Here is just a brief excerpt from Why I am Not a Professor OR The Decline and Fall of the British University:
The more prosaic truth emerges when you scan the titles of these epics. First, the author rarely appears alone, sharing space with two or three others. Often the collaborators are Ph.D. students who are routinely doing most of the spade work on some low grant in the hope of climbing the greasy pole. Dividing the number of titles by the author's actual contribution probably reduces those hundred papers to twenty-five. Then looking at the titles themselves, you'll see that many of the…
jstemwedel | July 26, 2008Today Chad has an interesting post about attitudes among academics toward math and science versus the humanities and arts. The general attitude Chad sees on display in his academic milieu is that a gappy knowledge of art history or music or literature is something to be embarrassed about, but when it comes to innumeracy or scientific ignorance, intellectuals have no shame.
Chad writes:
Intellectuals and academics are just assumed to have some background knowledge of the arts, and not knowing those things can count against you. Ignorance of math and science is no obstacle, though. I have…
drorzel | July 26, 2008I know nothing about art or music.
OK, that's not entirely true-- I know a little bit here and there. I just have no systematic knowledge of art or music (by which I mean fine art and classical music). I don't know Beethoven from Bach, Renaissance from Romantics. I'm not even sure those are both art terms.
Despite the sterling reputation of the department, I never took an Art History class when I was at Williams, nor did I take any music classes. They weren't specifically required, and I was a physics major-- my schedule was full of math and science classes, and between that and the boozing,…
clock | July 25, 2008Bjoern Brembs is on a roll! Check all of these out:
Incentivizing open scientific discussion:
Apart from the question of whether the perfect scientist is the one who only spends his time writing papers and doing experiments, what incentives can one think of to provide for blogging, commenting, sharing? I think because all of science relies on creativity, information and debate, the overall value of blogging, commenting and sharing can hardly be overestimated, so what incentives can there be for the individual scientist?
Journals - the dinosaurs of scientific communication:
Today's system of…
terrasig | July 25, 2008Yes, I know that my science blogging has been light as of late but I couldn't resist putting up this article I found in today's local fishwrapper.
Two of the most polarizing names in American politics and US collegiate athletics, respectively, come together as Rudy Giuliani's son sues Duke University for being booted from their NCAA men's golf team.
DURHAM - Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and a rising senior at Duke University, is the latest in a wave of Blue Devil students to take grievances from the playing fields or classrooms to the courthouse.
Giuliani, no…
clock | July 25, 2008Now this is a title of a paper in a scientific journal that will make one's eyebrows go up: The importance of stupidity in scientific research (by Schwartz J Cell Sci.2008; 121: 1771) :
I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We
had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science,
although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school,
went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major
environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned
to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she
said it was…
catdynamics | July 25, 2008The California "minumum wage" standoff moves closer to the edge.
Universities "requested to co-operate" and cut wages.
Next week, probably on monday, the California governor intends to use executive authority to "request" a cut in salary for state employees to the federal minimum wage, until the California budget issue is solved
Hah.
In the meantime, as noted previously, the universities have to deal with this, and the UC President has sent out the following employee morale booster...
"An important message from President Yudof to UC employees regarding potential state pay cuts"
July 24, 2008…
drorzel | July 25, 2008There's a piece at Inside Higher Ed today about everybody's favorite topic, gender bias in science, that opens with an anecdote about a student who showed up to every office hour, and brought her friends. This is familiar to every faculty member, though the author apparently thinks it isn't:
I wonder if Tahnee, as much as she was a leader, would have parked outside my office if she attended a co-ed college. In the single-sex environment, women (students, faculty and staff) have high expectations for each other and help each other live up to those expectations.
I can answer the question in…