Academia
drorzel | July 20, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Dr. Patricia Crotwell of the Sanford Cytogenetics Laboratory.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I am the director of a clinical cytogenetics laboratory. In the lab, we
culture prenatal (amniocytes, chorionic…
drorzel | July 20, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Dr. Bruce Fowler, a former scientist (now retired) at one of the research labs run by the Army.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I am going to reply in the context of the position I held prior to retirement,…
drorzel | July 20, 2009Last week's call for non-academic scientists produced a much larger response than I was expecting-- more than 30 people volunteered. Thanks to all who volunteered, and if you're interested, please feel free to contact me-- it's not too late to get involved.
As I said in that post, I plan to post a series of short interviews with people who have science degrees, but are not working in academia. The idea here is to provide information on career options for scientists and science majors beyond the "go to grad school, do a post-doc, get a faculty position" track that is too often assumed to be…
drorzel | July 19, 2009The New York Times has a habit of publishing these loathsome little profile articles that either belie the paper's liberal reputation, or are a stealthy attempt to bring about the Red Revolution by stoking class hatred. These generally take the form of profile stories about wealthy suburbanites in Westchester County or Connecticut, who have more money than taste, and whose sense of entitlement can be detected from distant stars through its gravitational pull on the sun.
These typically turn up in the Style section or the Magazine, but today's made the front page of the print edition: Before…
jdupuis | July 17, 2009Those of you with long memories may recall that I gave a presentation at the Ontario Library Association conference in 2008 based on the My Job in 10 years blog posts.
Shortly after that presentation, I was approached by Cecile Farnum, the OCULA divisional editor for the OLA magazine Access about writing the presentation as an article. To make a long story short, it's just been published in the Summer 2009 issue!
Of course, I've deposited a scanned version of the article in our IR here, with the scanned version here and my slightly longer original here. I came in a little longer than the…
scientificactivist | July 16, 2009Yesterday, Americans for Medical Progress revealed the three recipients of its 2009 Hayre Fellowship in Public Outreach. Applicants submitted proposals for programs aimed at spreading awareness about the role of animal research in medicine, and the three fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend each, plus an addition $2,000 to fund their proposals. This year's fellows are Gillian Braden-Weiss and Breanna Caltagarone, who are veterinary students at the University of Pennsylvania, and Megan Wyeth, a graduate student at UCLA. Here's a summary of the projects they are going to be working on:
As…
terrasig | July 16, 2009If so, could you please e-mail it to me or put the URL in the comments section?
I realize that this request might have gotten all caught up in my lengthy post the other day where I spoke about the case of Dr. Doug Bremner at Emory University.
Bora Zivkovic noted that a reader had sent him a draft proposal from a "Big Research Institution" in April 2009 and they had a nice discussion on his blog. Among the unrealistic provisions of that policy was that the institution reserved the right to the intellectual property of faculty blog content.
However, I've not received any other input from the…
drorzel | July 16, 2009Having spent the last couple of posts talking (in part) about the need to change academic culture, and de-stigmatize non-academic science jobs, here's an attempt to step up and do something direct and productive. No, this won't cost you anything.
One of the difficulties with trying to broaden the usual definition of scientists is that there's not a lot of press for non-academic science. Academic culture is so strongly focused on academic careers that people don't hear a lot about careers outside the usual Ph.D-postdoc-tenure-track-job track. Which helps feed the stress and angst regarding the…
drorzel | July 16, 2009This isn't actually about a literal or metaphorical smackdown-- it's more about a distinction in language, related to a number of the comments that have been made regarding Unscientific America. (Yeah, I know. I'll find something else to talk about soon.)
The issue is most clearly laid out by Janet, who writes:
In addition to the research, the grant writing, the manuscript drafting, the student training, the classroom teaching, the paper and grant refereeing, and the always rewarding committee work, academic scientists should be working hard to communicate with the public, to generate their…
drorzel | July 16, 2009The most unfortunate thing about the furor over Unscientific America is that the vast majority of the shouting concerns a relatively small portion of the actual argument of the book. Far too much attention is being spent on the question of whether Chris and Sheril are fair to Myers and Dawkins, and not nearly enough is spent on the (to my mind more important) sections about political and media culture. Which is a shame, because unlike most bloggers, they make some fairly concrete suggestions about what ought to be done to address the problems they describe.
In particular, they make a fairly…
j7uy5 | July 16, 2009A friend sent me a link to an article about the upcoming fifth edition
of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual. The article speaks of flaws in the process, and warning
of dire "unintended consequences."
href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/print/article/10168/1425378?printable=true">
href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/print/article/10168/1425378?printable=true">A
Warning Sign on the Road to DSM-V: Beware of Its Unintended Consequences
Allen Frances, MD
June 26, 2009
Psychiatric Times
...I believe that the work on DSM-V has displayed the most…
terrasig | July 14, 2009Addendum published 14 July 2009 - I began this post in the spirit of revisiting the recent case of Emory University professor of psychiatry and radiology, Dr Douglas Bremner, who write the blog (and authored the book) Before You Take That Pill. Inside Higher Ed has the story behind the request by university administration for Bremner to remove from the blog his academic affiliation after publishing a satirical but serious post on the need for a bipolar patient to continue smoking in his residence.
One may also care to note that Dr Bremner is critical of the pharmaceutical industry and Emory…
sciencewoman | July 13, 2009A few weeks ago, I blogged a self-assessment of my progress towards tenure. It seemed like an apt time to reflect in the hours before my annual review meeting with the department chair(s) and in the months before my packet for reappointment is submitted. Reappointment is the first and only gatekeeping between me and submitting that tenure dossier in three years. I feel OK about reappointment, but less so about tenure. So that's the focus of the navel-gazing. (I suspect such gazing will only get worse as the next few years wend on.)
In my self-assessment, I identified a number of areas where…
catdynamics | July 10, 2009"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."
Well, Penn State has a budget.
Or, actually it has two budgets, with the possibility of creating a linearly interpolated hybrid budget between the two budgets.
It depends, you see, on whether the Governor Rendell's budget proposal passes, or that of…
drorzel | July 9, 2009I'm sitting here finding new and inventive ways to not write the pedagogical paper I'm working on at the moment. This seems like a good excuse for a poll!
The hardest part of writing a paper is:(survey)
As you can tell from the list of elements, I have scientific papers in mind, here, but other sorts of scholarly work are also fair game. The question is really what you find to be the absolute worst part to write when you're working on some sort of scholarly publication.
I'm talking specifically about the writing of the text, here. There are a whole host of headaches associated with…
drorzel | July 9, 2009I got a weirdly hostile comment to my popularization post last night:
You have some chutzpah. You are being paid, probably quite well, to do research! Journalists are paid, not nearly so well, to popularize research. It takes some nerve to take an extra year's salary, and to take time away from your real job---and then to complain about not being well-enough rewarded. If you want something to complain about, become a science journalist and see how well you are rewarded then. I'm sure you think that is beneath you, and that you do so much better a job---but the general audience you aim to…
khannula | July 8, 2009Five students (three from the US, two from Brazil) were arrested last month while doing paleoclimate research in Brazil. They were collecting sediment cores from lakes and wetlands, in order to understand past climate change in western Brazil. The charges were based on Brazilian laws dealing with unauthorized extraction of mineral resources. (The group had research permits which they believed to be valid, but apparently they did not cover all members of the group.) The students have been released on bail, but the American students have to stay in Brazil until the legal process is complete -…
catdynamics | July 7, 2009``The King with half the East at heel is marched from land of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.''
Full text of letter with signatures and footnotes (PDF)
July 6, 2009
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:
The three hundred signers of this letter write to you as members of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and as professors at the University…
jdupuis | July 7, 2009Yes, as promised I'm going to start workshopping the book I'm working on: My Job in 10 Years: The Future of Academic Librarianship. (Note title tweak.)
First of all, this is all just provisional; I'm at a point where I need to stop tinkering if I just going to get something out the door. Some parts are over-developed for an outline, others are under-developed.
I'm still thinking bout the book structurally. I'm also still thinking about what kinds of topic areas belong in or out. I've been picking nits with the TOC for a while now, moving bits here and there, and that probably won't stop,…
drorzel | July 7, 2009One of the most interesting suggestions made by Chris and Sheril in Unscientific America is the idea that science needs to play political hardball (page 158, in the endnotes):
Why not form a nonpartisan science political action committee, or PAC, devoted to funding candidates who are either scientists themselves or who make science a strong priority and have good records on science issues? With adequate fundind, the PAC might select, say, five or ten members or candidates to support each election cycle. If there's a desire to be really aggressive (and we have mixed feelings about this…