Academia
jstemwedel | June 23, 2007Zuska reminded me that today is the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Denice Denton, an accomplished electrical engineer, tireless advocate for the inclusion and advancement of women in science and, at the time of her death, the chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz.
I never met Denton, and a year ago my feelings about her were complicated. On one side was her clear public voice against unexamined acceptance of longstanding assumptions about gender difference; from an article dated 26 June, 2006 in Inside Higher Ed:
She was in the audience when Lawrence H. Summers made the controversial comments…
jstemwedel | June 22, 2007Another article from Inside Higher Ed that caught my eye:
The chancellor of the City University of New York [Matthew Goldstein] floated a unique approach this week to dealing with the long lamented problem of low enrollments in the sciences: Offer promising students conditional acceptances to top Ph.D. programs in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) as they start college. ...
In a speech Monday, Goldstein envisioned a national effort in which students identified for their aptitude in middle school would subsequently benefit from academic enrichment programs…
jstemwedel | June 22, 2007Recently Inside Higher Ed had an article about a study (PDF here) coming out of the University of California on the predictive power of the SAT with respect to grades in college courses. The study, by Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica Santelices at the UC-Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, followed the performance (which is to say, grades) of students at all UC campuses for four years and found that "high school grades are consistently the strongest predictor of any factor of success through four years in college". Indeed, the study found high school grades a stronger predictor…
drorzel | June 22, 2007The great media relations debate is starting to wind down, but there's still a bit of life in it. In particular, I want to comment on something that Bora said, that was amplified on by Melinda Barton. Here's Bora's comment:
Everyone is afraid to use the F word, but the underlying tension is, at its core, the same as in the discussion of Framing Science:
The scientists want to educate.
The journalists want to inform (if not outright entertain, or at least use entertaining hooks in order to inform).
There is a difference between the two goals. The former demands accuracy. The latter demands…
drorzel | June 22, 2007Here's my achievement for the week:
OK, that may not seem like much, but this is what it looked like before I started:
OK, that's not really my only accomplishment for the week-- I have three students for the first half of the summer (two of them for the whole summer), and all three got off to good starts on their summer projects this week. That's why it's taken me a whole week to clean my office-- I've been run ragged getting them all going, and keeping on top of their progress.
Still, the important papers have been filed, the unimportant ones recycled, and the trash taken away. Time to…
tsmith | June 22, 2007Seems like this discussion is starting to wind down, but I did see a few additional posts that I haven't linked yet: Janet, Josh, Bora, doc-in-training, and Melinda Barton. As with the previous posts, lots of good ideas (from both the scientist and the journalist points of view).
[Edited to add yet another one I found today from Nobel Intent.
jstemwedel | June 21, 2007Zuska sent me an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education (behind a paywall, I'm afraid) that's more than a little connected to the thought experiment I posed earlier in the week.
The article was written (under a pseudonym) by an assistant professor whose nomination for a university award was torpedoed. By a member of his own department. Who was blocking the nomination of the author not out of any particular animus toward the author, but as a way to attack the department chair who had made the nomination.
What fun things must be in that department!
Anyhow, someone on the committee…
tfk | June 21, 2007The ScienceBlogs are abuzz with discussion of how scientists should handle the media. The concern from scientists seems to focus on the fear of being misquoted, and the journalists are responding by pointing out that misquotations are rare, and that when they occur, they rarely are substantive. The problem is that what the journalists mean by a misquotation is different from what a scientist means.
Consider the case of Jack Balkin. He describes how he tried to explain to a reporter for the AP why Arnold Schwarzenegger would not be able to run for President or VP without a…
drorzel | June 21, 2007That's shocking mostly in a Claude-Rains-in-Casablanca sort of sense ("I am shocked--shocked!"), but there are a couple of stories in Inside Higher Ed this morning presenting new findings that seem like they ought to be really obvious.
The first is a new study of the University of California system that finds that different majors are different:
Among the 58,000 undergraduates on eight campuses who participated in the survey, students who majored in the social sciences and humanities reported higher levels of satisfaction with their undergraduate education over all as well as better skills in…
tsmith | June 20, 2007Really, one of these times I'll get onto a new topic, but every time I turn around, new posts pop up in the scientists and journalists conversation. The most recent updates:
Chris Mooney, part II. I want to emphasize a resource he linked: the report from a 2005 workshop on "Science Communications and the News Media." I haven't had time to do more than skim it yet, but it's interesting reading.
Chris also notes:
The real upshot of all this is that scientists--at least those planning on doing interviews--need to study the media, at least in enough detail to get a sense of some of these…
jstemwedel | June 20, 2007You've probably seen the posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here.) responding to the University of Florida study claiming that women's names affect the social support or discouragement they'll get for pursuing technical subjects. (Those with the more "feminine" names will tend to be discouraged from "manly" activities like math, although apparently a frilly name won't hurt their performance in those activities.) Since the above-linked posts give the reasonable critiques of the research, I'm going to veer immediately to personal anecdata:
Is "Janet" a feminine name? It's not one of…
drorzel | June 20, 2007Today's Inside Higher Ed has a story about growing resistance to the US News rankings:
In the wake of meetings this week of the Annapolis Group -- an organization of liberal arts colleges -- critics of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are expecting a significant increase in the number of institutions where presidents pledge not to participate in the "reputational" portion of the rankings or to use scores in their own promotional materials.
A majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational…
tsmith | June 20, 2007Check out new posts on the scientist/journalist (mis?)communication topic at Evolving Thoughts, The Loom, and The Post-Normal Times.
sb admin | June 19, 2007In this post at the blog "This Week in Evolution", R. Ford Denison hits the nail squarely on the head.
Why should you go to grad school? Because you want to do grad school.
If you are viewing grad school as something you have to grind through in order to get the faculty job you covet, don't go. Your chances of getting that faculty job are too low.
If you want the faculty job, you have to go to grad school. But you should believe that when you come out the other side, you will find grad school to have been a worthwhile experience even if you don't get the faculty job, and end up doing…
tsmith | June 19, 2007In addition to comments by Mike, Jennifer, and Astroprof, Chris Mooney added his thoughts to the scientist-journalist communication discussion in a post here--so perhaps a few more journalists will pop out of the woodwork there and elaborate.
I see a common theme here. Scientists have often had issues with misquotation, and it tends to sour them on science journalists. Journalists know that misquotation is bound to happen now and then, and it bothers them less. Chris notes:
I also second Jennifer Ouellette that sometimes scientists get too miffed about being misquoted. Don't get me wrong…
jstemwedel | June 19, 2007Because not every ethical matter involves serious misconduct, or even conscious efforts to grab someone else's credit, I thought I'd describe an utterly mundane scenario and canvass your reactions.
Let's say you've worked very hard on a project. You've been part of the organizing from the outset. You've done a lot of thinking and writing and rewriting. You've worked hard to build consensus. You've done loads of personal outreach to try to build a community around the project (including "cold-emailing" people you don't know personally). You've been the dependable facilitator. You've even…
tsmith | June 19, 2007I've had a busy week (and an especially busy weekend--more on that in a later post), so today's activity will again be sparse, but I have a lot on tap (now just to get it all typed up!) I do, however, want to highlight a few other posts you should read if you were interested in my post on the collision of scientists and journalists:
First, Mike's post on the topic. As he notes, part of his job is to "deal with journalists," so he has lots of good advice for those on both sides of the aisle.
Astroprof left a comment here on the article, and also elaborated on the topic in a post of his…
drorzel | June 18, 2007In response to a question about "Other aspects of the instructor's teaching," one student in my recently completed E&M class wrote:
Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics and the course was taught in that slightly utilitarian approach.
I've been looking for something to replace "Ramblings about life as a physicist on the tenure track at a small liberal arts college" in the left sidebar (now that I have tenure), and "[A]n everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics" might be just…
omnibrain | June 18, 2007This is a wonderful idea!
Swizzle sticks and carbon nanotubes don't usually share the same room, but they're both on the menu for Eugene's first Science Pub.
Part of an international phenomenon that's been going on almost 10 years, Science Pub brings top researchers out of their labs and into bars and coffee shops to give people a street-level look at cutting-edge research. It makes its Eugene debut at 7 tonight at downtown night spot Luna with a talk by University of Oregon chemistry professor and nanoscience researcher Jim Hutchison.
The idea is that the big ideas in science are a little…
drorzel | June 17, 2007Today is, at long last, Commencement at Union. At around the time this is posted, I'll be parading around in academic robes, or possibly listening to a variety of boring speeches.
Of course, I can't really claim that I don't enjoy this. After all, Kate and I drove back here from Boston last night after a weeding down there, specifically so I could make it to this morning's ceremonies, bad knee and all. Some faculty complain about having to attend commencement, but I get a kick out of it. Not so much the speeches, but seeing the students go through the ceremony-- the dazed look they get when…