Academia
retrospectacle | October 9, 2006The IgNobel Awards are the humorous counterpart to the Nobel Prizes; each year the most bizarre (but real!) research is awarded the dubious honor of an 'IgNobel.'
"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," which sponsors the awards with the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.
All the research is real and has been published in often-prestigious…
drorzel | October 9, 2006It's college application season, and the New York Times style section ran a nice article Sunday about parents touring colleges with their children. It's mostly about the bonding that goes on on such trips, which is probably instantly recognizable if you're the sort of wealthy Northeasterner who is the target demographic of the Sunday New York Times.
I'm sort of on the fringes of that demographic, so what really resonates for me is a different part of the story:
Tom Likovich of Bronxville, N.Y., who was at Hamilton College with his wife, Ellen, and daughter, Alex, on a recent weekend morning,…
drorzel | October 7, 2006Sean Carroll comments on an item in the Atlantic Monthly on test scores compared across nations. There are two things that really bug me about this item, the most important of which is the deeply dishonest graphic the Atlantic did to illustrate the item.
Here's the honest version of the graph, redone using data from this table (the relevant figures don't appear in the report cited in the original piece). (Click on the graph for a larger version.)
I've plotted the normalized test score (the score for each country divided by the reported maximum score, because I'm a physicist and like…
evolgen | October 6, 2006Any department at a university will have tons of bureaucratic procedures one must complete in order to do anything from hang a message board in the hallway to purchase an expensive piece of equipment. My department is no different, although the bureaucracy is tolerable. That doesn't mean there aren't times when you need to thumb your nose at the whole system. For instance, when requesting that a purchase be paid for by grant money, we are required to provide both a description of the product purchased and the purpose of the product. Sometimes the description pretty much sums up the purpose.…
drorzel | October 5, 2006Last week, Mike Dunford was struggling with some teaching issues, relating to what level of effort he should expect from his students. His original decision drew some harsh criticism, both in his comments and from Sandra Porter, leading Mike to reconsider matters.
I meant to comment at the time, but I gave an exam last Thursday, which kept me kind of busy, and then there was the SAT Challenge to get ready.The issues Mike raises present some tough questions: on the one hand, you want students to learn to learn for themselves, and that occasionally runs counter to their immediate impulses,…
clock | October 4, 2006From John Dupuis via ACRLog, news of Academic Blog Portal wiki collecting (in a Chinese Classification of Animals kind of way) all the academic blogging goodness. It is currently heavy on humanities side, but you can add science blogs there if you want.
I wonder if something like this should be linked from somewhere there...
scientificactivist | October 4, 2006After Monday's announcement of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, followed yesterday by the announcement of the Prize in Physics, the Oscars of the sciences continue today with the awarding of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Roger Kornberg for his work on elucidating the molecular basis of transcription in eukaryotes. This decision is interesting for several reasons. First of all, Kornberg received the full Nobel Prize, not shared with any others, something that is fairly rare and further indicates the importance and breadth of the work he has done. Interestingly,…
jstemwedel | October 2, 2006I started out thinking I was writing this as an open letter to my students, but it turns out I'm talking to you all, too.
* * * * *
I have very strong feelings about what the point of a college education should be. Maybe you do, too. It's entirely possible that we would disagree about this issue, or that you are so happy with your own picture of the point of a college education that you really have no interests in anyone else's.
That's fine. But if you're my student, certain things I get worked up about may strike you as mysterious if you don't know what I think this whole thing is aiming…
jstemwedel | October 2, 2006Disclaimer: Plagiarism is bad. A quick search for "plagiarism" on this blog will demonstrate that I've taken a clear stand against plagiarism.
That said, if one were, hypothetically, planning a little online-copy-and-paste plagiarism, and if one's instructor has earned a Ph.D., in Philosophy, from Stanford, one might reconsider using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the source of several uncited sentences.
There is a better-than-average chance that the instructor is familiar with SEP -- indeed, even with the specific entry you (hypothetically) are tempted to plunder.
Even if she's…
jstemwedel | October 2, 2006It's Monday, it's cold and overcast, and I'm grading papers. As it turns out, these are perfect conditions to make me grumpy.
Rather than wallow in it, though, I've decided to be proactive about trying to head off future grumpiness. My philosophy of science classes are about to embark on some exercises about scientific theory choice, for which they will be considering Ptolemaic and Copernican accounts of planetary motions. Having done these kind of exercises for many semesters, I know that there's a good chance I'll end up with stacks of papers that may make me howl in despair if I don't…
scientificactivist | October 2, 2006The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced this morning, with one half going to Andrew Fire and the other half to Craig Mello, both for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). The discovery of RNAi added a new layer to our understanding of how cells regulate gene expression and protect themselves from unwanted invaders, and, even more significantly, equipped biomedical scientists with a powerful new tool for studying protein function. Using RNAi, scientists are now able to dissect the genome of an organism, knocking down mRNA (and hopefully protein) expression, gene by…
clock | October 1, 2006Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Teaching Carnival where we discuss all things academic, from teaching to college life, from HigherEd policy to graduate school research. Last time, I separated the Two Cultures in a way. This time I want to keep them mixed - both sides of campus often deal with the same issues anyway. There are tons of links, so let's start right away...
SATs and getting into college
Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles commented on the top SAT essays published by the NYTimes. He argued that writing a decent essay in 25 minutes with a prompt not known in advance is…
clock | September 30, 2006I will be posting the Teaching Carnival tonight.
Delicious tags look OK, but Technorati looks awful and I know it does not pick tagged posts with any predictability. So, if you want to make sure your post is included, you can still e-mail me the Permalink at: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com by 5pm Eastern today.
jstemwedel | September 29, 2006I want to commend to you a pair of posts that strike me as calls to action. Both relate to the oft-discussed "pipeline problem" in the sciences. And, I take it that both authors are interested in making science (and especially academic science) a less hostile environment not just for women, but for others who love science but, frankly, may not have much patience for current institutional or societal barriers to entry to the tribe of science.
Responding to the recent NAS panel's finding that institutional bias is responsible for the lower rates at which women in science departments are hired…
drorzel | September 29, 2006Inside Higher Ed had a story yesterday about the release of the new graduation rate data for college athletic programs. The data are summarized in the table at right.
The two columns in the table show the graduation rate under the federal standard, and the new "graduation success rate" which fixes some of the problems with the older standard. The older rate calculation counted students who transferred out of a program as not graduating, while not counting students who transferred in as graduates. The new calculation is a little more realistic, and counts students based on their academic…
evolgen | September 28, 2006There is a general disconnect between the people I know from blogging and the people I know in real life. I've only met a couple of my fellow SciBlings (ScienceBlogs siblings): John Lynch, Mad Mike, and Carl. I have only once had a real world friend or colleague overtly mention to me in real life that they read or know of my blog. That's probably to be expected given that I blog pseudo-pseudonymously (quite an appropriate title given my study species).
But there are people in the bloggy world who have figured out who I am in the real world. I don't mind, I just ask that they not broadcast it…
evolgen | September 26, 2006If it weren't for coffee, much of the research that gets done today wouldn't get done. Or so I am led to believe based on the reverence people seem to have for the sacred bean. Frankly, I'd trade a cup of coffee for a good night's sleep. Hell, I'd trade a cup of coffee for pretty much anything. That's because I don't drink coffee. That sound you hear is from all the coffee drinkers (yourself included, probably) letting out a gasp as they wonder how someone can function without a chugging liquid caffeine.
I don't really have a secret. I just never got addicted -- to coffee or caffeine. I've…
drorzel | September 24, 2006Following on the heels of my post on getting into graduate school, Jorge Chan offers some advice on how to stay in graduate school.
evolgen | September 23, 2006I saw him again at the supermarket today. This is the second time I've seen him at the supermarket -- and third time overall. But this is the first time I was stealth, without any identification of my alma mater.
In case you're late to the game, this guy is an emeritus professor at my current university, and he also graduated from my alma mater. I've run into him twice around town, both times I had something that gave away my former school (either a hat or a license plate holder). Like the last time I saw him in the supermarket, we were both in the produce section. However, today I was…