Janet D. Stemwedel
Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry.
jstemwedel
Posts by this author
April 11, 2008
The Free-Ride offspring have been considering careers. This past week, they both got excited about the prospect of becoming veterinarians.
Elder offspring: I think I might want to be a veterinarian when I grow up.
Dr. Free-Ride: You could do that. You like science, you like animals, you like…
April 10, 2008
I haven't given up yet. You know I'm still looking for more clarity on the basic premises of framing. I tried to work out what does and does not fall within the framing strategy in a flowcharted example and (again) came away with a bunch of unanswered questions.
This round, I'm going to look at…
April 10, 2008
There is a rather vigorous exchange (although one that fails my test for a "dialogue" in a number of ways) going on in the comments on my post about Kay Weber's efforts to keep going forward with her lawsuit against Fermilab. Since this particular ethics blog is my ethics blog, I'm taking this…
April 8, 2008
One of the key requirements that researchers conducting studies with human subjects must meet is that they obtain the informed consent of the participating subjects (or of a parent or guardian, if the subject is not able to give informed consent himself or herself). However, there are particular…
April 8, 2008
In case those readers trained in analytic philosophy managed to miss it, this comment at A Philosophy Job Market Blog gave me the giggles while striking me as an entirely appropriate response (given the audience) to a lazy reliance on speculative evolutionary psychology to justify the status quo (…
April 7, 2008
You may already have seen this at Absinthe or Zuska's -- if so, consider this post a friendly nudge to move beyond your good intentions toward action.
Kay Weber, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fermilab for (the details of which sound pretty horrific), has come to a point where the expense of…
April 7, 2008
Over at DrugMonkey, PhysioProf has written a post on the relative merits of "correct" and "interesting", at least as far as science is concerned. Quoth PhysioProf:
It is essential that one's experiments be "correct" in the sense that performing the same experiment in the same way leads to the…
April 5, 2008
Some screechy monkey or other tagged me on the song chart meme. The idea seems to be to come up with a visual/graphical representation of a song or some lyrical subset of it.
In other words, you can get your music-geek and your math-geek on at the same time.
I came very close to going through our…
April 5, 2008
You'll remember that I tried to work out precisely what was being claimed in the premises behind framing set out by Chris Mooney. At the end of this exercise, I was left with the hunch that one's optimal communication strategy -- and how much scientific detail it will require -- might depend an…
April 4, 2008
The Free-Ride offspring were on spring break last week. Since their mother was digging herself out of a pit of grading, they got to visit the Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment. Apparently it wasn't all playing bucking broncos with the cat -- they also visited an aquarium:
Dr. Free-Ride:…
April 2, 2008
Chris Mooney lays out the argument behind "framing". I give my thoughts, item by item.
1. We have long-running politicized science controversies on subjects like evolution and climate change, with separate polarized camps and the repeated use and misuse of complex scientific information in the…
March 31, 2008
It's time to unplug from the ScienceBorg.
I've had enough of the oppressive editorial control, constraining my voice as a blogger. That "voice of reason" script I'm known for was assigned to me by our editors. And it's the same story for the personae of other Sb bloggers. PZ Myers as fire-…
March 30, 2008
In light of all the recent discussion about the "framing" of the Expelled! expulsion, it occurs to me that maybe part of the reason that the argument seems so unproductive is that the parties involved haven't really agreed on what, exactly, they're trying to communicate to the public at large.
Here…
March 28, 2008
Of all the Looney Tunes characters, I was never a fan of the Roadrunner. (I liked Wile E. Coyote well enough, and wish him well in his lawsuit against the Acme Company.) However, there was one Roadrunner cartoon where the focus pulls back from the eternal struggle between coyote and prospective…
March 26, 2008
For those who have been following the activities of "animal rights" activists, including their attacks of the homes of researchers -- and the reticence of the public in the face of such violent attacks -- a recent Commentary in Biological Psychiatry [1] will be of interest. In it, a number of…
March 24, 2008
Given that in my last post I identified myself as playing for Team Science, this seems to be as good a time as any to note that not everyone on the team agrees about every little thing. Indeed, there are some big disagreements -- but I don't think these undermine our shared commitment to…
March 24, 2008
Maybe you heard the news that PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins went to a screening of the documentary Expelled! in Minneapolis, except that, because he was recognized, PZ Myers was barred from the screening (despite having signed up ahead of time like the other attendees). Here's the New York Times…
March 22, 2008
Having recently posted on professors who challenged (and frequently scared) me, I was struck by a post at the Reality-Based Community suggesting that being the cool prof is not the path to effectiveness:
I want to make students uncomfortable-- challenging them to question their own ideas, take…
March 21, 2008
Do you ever suspect that kids save their best questions for just before "goodnight" as a delaying tactic? Or is there some other plausible explanation for a kid regularly entering into deeply interesting territory on the way to dream time?
Dr. Free-Ride: Sweet dreams.
Elder offspring: Why are feet…
March 20, 2008
Well, light can still escape the gravitational pull of my world, but it does feel like it's getting noticeably smaller.
Three recent data points:
At a soccer game the other weekend, the team I coach was playing a team some of whose players I coached last Spring season. The parent of one of those…
March 20, 2008
Since March is Women's History Month, I thought it might be appropriate to recognize some women who were a part of my history -- namely, the women who taught me chemistry and physics. (This shouldn't be interpreted as a slight against the women who taught me biology -- I simply don't remember them…
March 17, 2008
Following up on an earlier post, I wanted to say a little about the Synopsis Championship that took place last week. It's sort of a judge's-eye view of the fair -- from a very enthusiastic and impressed judge.
I walked over to the convention center from campus, and it actually took my awhile to…
March 14, 2008
This week, the sprogs came home from school with the annual read-the-local-paper- and-complete-activities -for-free-stuff- from-local-merchants assignments. While this program has the unfortunate effect of doubling the amount of newspaper spread out on the living room floor, I think it's a…
March 13, 2008
They're both by men, but sometimes it happens that way.
Mark Chu-Carroll ridicules Vox Day's ridiculous claim that women are too dumb to do long division, let alone program computers. While Day's claim was silly from the get-go, Mark's take-down in really nice.
A friend from the three-dimensional…
March 12, 2008
A bunch of other bloggers are discussing the recent statement A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk (PDF). I thought I'd say something about the complexities of the situation, and about why non-scientists (whose tax dollars support scientific research…
March 11, 2008
Since Alice and Sciencewoman and DrugMonkey and Razib are discussing it (and because Zuska has discussed it before, including in real life), I wanted to say something about my reaction to the observation that science blogosphere in general, and ScienceBlogs in particular, seems pretty white:
I'd…
March 7, 2008
Last weekend the weather got sunny and warm here, so the Free-Ride parental units decided it was appropriate to lead the Free-Ride offspring on a forced march along the creek.
Somehow, the sprogs didn't get the memo that it was a forced march, since in the course of 2.5 hours neither of them…
March 6, 2008
Speaking of science fairs, if you know of kids (grades 5-12) in the San Francisco Bay Area who are looking for a challenge, this one might be of interest:
It is not too late to participate in this year's Tech Challenge. The Tech Museum of Innovation's 21st annual Tech Challenge is designed to get…
March 6, 2008
For readers in the greater San Jose (California) region, I wanted to pass along a call for judges for the Synopsis Championship, scheduled to take place next Wednesday, March 12. Judges will be doing their thing from noon to 4:30 PM at the McEnery Convention Center in downtown San Jose. (Judges…