education & careers teaching, learning, and doing science
From Flickr, by Matt Seppings
May 22, 2008
The Intersection
With Honors. Without Options? Fact: According to the National Postdoc Association, between 1972 and 2003, the percent of recent Ph.D. holders hired into full-time faculty positions fell from 74% to 44%. Fact: During the same period, the number of post docs in science and...
See Jane Compute
Intention/Reality Things I should be working on vs. things I've actually been working on this morning:...
DrugMonkey
Paper or President, Paper or President....hmmmm. As Steinn recently noted, Uncertain Chad is really good at "lazy blog polls". However that was meant, a recent question is of unusual interest to scientists. Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential...
Uncertain Principles
Publish or President? Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential election, or having a first-author paper in Science. Which would you pick?
The Intersection
Don't Make Fun Of Grad Students... Today I begin a series of posts on the tremendous challenges facing graduate students--with some illuminating data that sheds light on what's really going on in the ivory towers during the 21st century. To get started, here's The Simpsons perspective...
May 21, 2008
Adventures in Ethics and Science
Strategies for grading fairly. As you get grumpier from grading, do you grade harsher?
DrugMonkey
A dead PI is a transition opportunity! ERV was recently musing on the fate of trainees following the death of a lab head (Principal Investigator; PI). As part of this she wondered about the fate of the grant funding: Who would take over his research? You cant...
evolgen
The Evils of Open-Access in the Developing World Who pays the author charges of contributors who require fee waivers?
Sciencewomen
Winding down the first year, but am I really up to speed? I've just come out of a general positive annual review meeting with my departmental chair and it seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the year and think about where I am heading. At the end of my...
The Intersection
A Science of Literature? My latest Science Progress column just went up--it's a reaction to this intriguing proposal, by scholar Jonathan Gottschall, to remake the ailing field of literary studies with a scientific foundation. An excerpt: Writing in the Boston Globe ideas section, Gottschall...
Uncertain Principles
Thank You for Listening The Female Science Professor is musing about thank-yous at thesis defenses: When I was in grad school, a prominent faculty member (who was department chair near the end of my grad years) made it known that he hated the "thank...
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
1 in 8 Teaching Creationism in Science Class Here's an absolutely frightening study by researchers at Penn State that finds that 1 in 8 public school science teachers in the US are teaching creationism as a valid alternative to evolution in their classrooms. Here's the problem: we only...
Respectful Insolence
ERV asks: What happens when a PI dies? ERV asks: What happens when a PI holding an NIH grant dies, given that PIs support post-docs, graduate students, and technicians in his or her lab? In other words: Or what would happen to me if Bossman got hit by...
May 20, 2008
erv
What happens when a PI dies? I always joke to summer students and rotating grad students: Your lab notebook. Keep it up to date. If you get hit by a bus tomorrow, I expect to be able to pick up exactly where you left off. Heart...
Thoughts from Kansas
New video from NCSE Enjoy....
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
Two More Avian Anatomy Books -- Free Downloads Two more avian anatomy books to download, for FREE! But act quickly, or you might miss out on these particular downloads.
Mike the Mad Biologist
Teacher Certification: How to Keep Evolution in the High School Classroom Make teachers take an evolutionary biology course in college.
The Daily Transcript
SciLink - the LinkedIn for Scientists I've been receiving requests from the newest networking program. And I've scummed.
The World's Fair
Women Aren't Interested in Engineering, They Just Aren't "In the long run men hit only what they aim at." H.D. Thoreau, Walden This post's title is the poorly reasoned conclusion to a poorly reported and poorly conducted study. I couldn't tell if it was simply bad reporting at...
Deep Sea News
Famous lady pirate quote If you'd have fought like a man, you needn't hang like a dog- Anne Bonny Anne Bonny is one of two famous lady pirates from the Caribbean. She was born of a lawyer and his maid in Ireland, was disowned...
Terra Sigillata
Chemist, musician, entrepreneur named chancellor of major state university What can't this guy do?
Good Math, Bad Math
Stupid Grading Tricks A bunch of people have been mailing me links to an article from USA today about schools and grading systems. I think that most of the people who've been sending it to me want me to flame it as...
Pharyngula
Creationists in the American classroom Here's the most depressing thing I've seen all week (and I'm grading genetics exams): it's the result of a national survey of high school biology teachers. At least 16% of our high school teachers are young earth creationists. Furthermore, 12%...
Pure Pedantry
Contrasting Views on the Gender Disparity in Science Daniel Drezner links to two articles with alternative interpretations to the gender gap in science. Both are looking at a female exodus from hard sciences, but explain it in different ways. First, Lisa Belkin in the NYTimes takes the angle...
Deep Sea News
One day course in reef ecology Deep coral biologists like myself are continually looking to shallow reefs for applicable paradigms. A new online seminar on coral reef futures sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies provides about 100 examples in a set...
“I'm completely certain that participating in high school science fairs is the #1 reason I'm a Ph.D. student in the sciences today.” Emily on ISEF 2008: Nobel Laureates Panel
