Education
nisbetmc | December 1, 2006This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on "Communication and Society," we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature of community, civic engagement, and social relationships.
For many college students, having grown up "online," it's easy to take for granted the "virtual" society we live in, seldom pausing to consider how it might be different from more traditional forms of community life. One of the goals of the course was to encourage students to think systematically and rigorously about the many changes introduced by…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Three NYC High School Students were invited to attend the 2006 Nobel Prize Ceremony Honoring Six American Nobel Prize Winners. The students, known as The Laureates of Tomorrow, were chosen on the basis of an essay contest.
Three New York City high school juniors will join the six American Nobel Prize winners in Stockholm, Sweden, during the Nobel Week Festivities from December 5 - 12, 2006.
Natasha Plotkin, Avishai Don, and Gena Rozenberg are the 2006 winners of The Laureates of Tomorrow - Nobel Essay Contest (tm), which is a partnership between the Consulate General of Sweden in New…
sb admin | November 30, 2006 by Susan F. Wood
Much has been written about the antibiotic drug, telithromycin, otherwise known as Ketek. It seems to combine a host of concerns all in one place (see also Matthews, AW, WSJ, May 19, 2006:B1). Critically, concerns about safety, from visual effects to fatal liver toxicity, are paired with questions about lack of relative efficacy. These very basic concerns are then confounded with problems in particular safety studies that were carried out fraudulently and the faulty data derived from it provided to the FDA. But FDA leadership/management apparently discounted these problems…
cortex | November 28, 2006There's a thorough article in the Times Magazine on the persistence of the "achievment gap" in public education. The conclusion of the article is rather simple: the "achievment gap" persists due to a series of entrenched inequalities, but very good schools (and I mean very good) can actually compensate for a lot of these disadvantages. The problem, of course, is creating very good schools.
So read the whole article, if you're interested in why only 13 percent of black eighth-grade students are "proficient" in reading. I was most interested in the parts of the article that dealt with the…
razib | November 23, 2006Shelley Batts has a post, Whites-Only Scholarship as "Reverse Affirmative Action". Shelley sayeth:
...In order to ensure that universities, and students, benefit from a diverse education, often pro-active techniques are utilized to recruit minorities.
When the race war comes all of us colored folk will be marked by our skin or our countenance as The Enemy. But, today the reality is that various People of Color have rather different interests in some areas, and that within each group there are schisms of interest due to class (e.g., what does the Indian doctor have to do with the Indian…
pharyngula | November 23, 2006That guy, Larry Moran…he seems to have been the final straw to tip a whole lot of people into twitterpated consternation. In particular, Ed Brayton, that sad panjandrum of the self-satisfied mean, medium, middle, moderate, and mediocre, has declared Moran (and all those who dare to profess their atheism without compromise) to be anathema, and John Lynch, Pat Hayes, and Nick Matzke have drawn up sides to put themselves clearly against wicked "evangelical atheists" like Dawkins and Moran and even PZ Maiieghrs.
What could have prompted such vociferous contempt? What awful thing could Moran have…
clock | November 22, 2006Brian says that College Leaders should blog, commenting on this NYT article.
Sure, there are pros and cons, a steep learning curve and the potentially huge benefits along with the risk. But in the 21st century, it just has to be done. A leader who does not embrace online technology to foster a two-way communication is irrelevant and will go the way of the dinosaurs. A leader who does will evolve wings and learn to fly, adapted to the new environment.
Brian offers to help any University President set up a blog and get started, gratis. Take him up on his offer if you are a Top Dog at your…
retrospectacle | November 22, 2006In an effort to "encourage discussion" on race-based scholarships, a student group called the Boston University College Republicans (BUCR) has instituted a controversial $250 "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship". Applicants must be at least 25% Caucasian, have a 3.2 GPA, and submit an essay on what it means to be a Caucasian-American in today's society. BUCR argues that scholarships that are preferentially given to members of a certain race, and excluding others, are a form of bigotry no matter which way the discrimination swings. By their own definition, this scholarship is…
thusspakezuska | November 21, 2006Jokerine wrote in respone to Let Her Eat the Oppressor's Cake:
had a discussion in my group today about affirmative action. One of the guys comented that if we promoted women in male fields soon all groups on the fringes of society would ask for prefferential treatment. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me for a while, but wait a minute since when are women a fringe group. And this from a man that considers himself liberal and progressive. Poor Rachel, one day her eyes will open and she will see how much worse she is off as a woman. I'll be there for her to come crying to.
No indeedy,…
oracknows | November 20, 2006I don't know about you, but I was getting a little tired of writing so often about the same topic last week, namely the insinuation of unscientific and unproven "alternative medicine" into the medical school curriculum and its promotion by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). I had planned on giving the topic a rest for a while, but then on a mailing list to which I subscribe, an example came up of something so outrageously egregious that I had to post just one more time. (Dr. R. W., as usual, has beaten me to it, but I plan on going into it in a little more detail.) It's a…
terrasig | November 17, 2006"It's shameless," says David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London. "Medicines work or don't work, and they should be labelled accordingly," he says.
Professor Colquhoun is quoted in today's New Scientist in response to the first registration of an herbal product (arnica gel) in the UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Mind you, this effort aims only to provide a registry of a product's name and purity, not efficacy:
For a herbal medicine to be allowed on the register, its maker must show that it is safe and manufactured to a…
terrasig | November 16, 2006Over the last several days, Dr. RW, Orac, and Joseph (Corpus Callosum) have been discussing the virtues, or lack thereof, of a national medical student association espousing the coverage of integrative, complementary and alternative medicine (ICAM) modalities in the medical curriculum.
Our SciBling, Joseph, raised the interesting point that CAM education might improve the one aspect of medicine that administrators and health insurance companies are trying to drive from medicine: the doctor-patient relationship. I would say that none of the MD bloggers disagree that time constraints in the…
oracknows | November 16, 2006My recent post (coupled with similar posts by Dr. R. W. and Abel Pharmboy) about the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and its credulous promotion of non-evidence-based alternative medicine while posing as being "skeptical" of big pharma brought this rejoinder from Joseph of Corpus Callosum, in which he took issue with one aspect of my suspicion of the promotion of woo in medical schools by AMSA. I have to strenuously disagree with nearly all of his points. Here's the first, and most easily dismissed:
They [Dr. R.W., Abel, and I] raise some valid points, although I would not be…
pharyngula | November 15, 2006John G. West of the Discovery Institute wants all you conservatives to know that the Debate Over Evolution Not Going Away, and that you need to join up with his side and question "Darwinism", because of all those intolerant nasty dogmatists who want to suppress the truth. You know, people like me.
Biology professor P. Z. Myers at the University of Minnesota, Morris, has demanded "the public firing and humiliation of some teachers" who express their doubts about Darwin. He further says, "It's time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer…
purepedantry | November 14, 2006We're mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore:
In recent years, women's health has been a national priority. Pink ribbons warn of breast cancer. Pins shaped like red dresses raise awareness about heart disease. Offices of women's health have sprung up at every level of government to offer information and free screenings, and one of the largest government studies on hormones and diet in aging focused entirely on older women.
Yet statistics show that men are more likely than women to suffer an early death.
Now some advocates and medical scientists are beginning to ask a question…
oracknows | November 13, 2006If you're a physician, there comes a certain point in your career when you start caring a lot more than you did about the next generations of physicians in the training pipeline. While you're in the middle of training, you are the next generation; besides, you're too worried about just getting through medical school, residency, and Board certification to be all that concerned about those behind you in the pipeline, anyway. Then, when you're early faculty, you're concerned about establishing yourself, getting your career on track, and, if you're in academics, getting promoted. True, physicians…
thusspakezuska | November 7, 2006Back on October 6, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a column titled The X-Gals Alliance and I missed the chance to blog about it at that time. The second in the ongoing series of columns from these fabulous women is now out, Balance It Out.
From the original column:
"We" are the X-Gals, a group of nine female biologists who began meeting weekly over a few beers in 2000, as several of us wrote up our dissertations. (Our name is a double-pun on the X-Men superheroes and on X-Gal, a laboratory chemical sometimes used in biology.)
Back then, we read one another's dissertation…
pharyngula | November 6, 2006
A while back, I mentioned this new group that had formed here in Minnesota to sponsor better science teaching, the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education. Our first big public meeting is happening this Saturday at the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, at Science Education Saturday:
Some of the most popular and dynamic professors involved with evolutionary biology at the University of Minnesota - Mark Borrello, Randy Moore, PZ Myers and others - will join a panel of public school K-12 educators to present practical suggestions for the classroom, useful resources for teachers and ideas for…
stcynic | November 6, 2006John McAdams is a Marquette University professor who has commented here from time to time. We probably don't agree on a whole lot, but I've always found him to be a reasonable guy. But I came across this post on his blog and I must object. He's responding to an ad he saw for a clinic that provides egg donors and surrogates for gays who want to have children. He writes:
We understand the desire of people, gay or straight, to have children, and even to have children who are their biological offspring.
But should children really be thought of as just another consumer purchase?
But I don't see…
sarahdasher | November 3, 2006
This time around, we're talking to Craig Hildreth of The Cheerful Oncologist.
What's your name?
Craig Hildreth
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I enjoy assassinating cancer cells that have taken nice people hostage. I also read, lift weights, hang out with the family, walk the dog, peruse restaurant menus with a skeptical eye, eat dark chocolate, listen to old songs, drive my boat on the river, shoot skeet, listen for whip-poor-wills, and try to make myself part of the solution, not the problem. (Note the Oxford comma there).
What is your blog called?
The Cheerful Oncologist
What's…