Academia
drorzel | February 14, 2008Over at Slaves of Academe, Oso Raro rants about student life professionals. The Dean Dad offers a defense of student life offices on procedural grounds (which is how I found the original piece).
It's hard to judge how much of the original rant is humorous exaggeration. There are some reasonable elements to his critique of student life programs, but there's a lot of dumb stuff in there, from the classic "back in my day" lament to the suggestion that what we really need is for faculty to do the things that student life people do now. As much as my eyes roll at the thought of mandatory diversity…
clock | February 13, 2008Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers by Sara Robinson
Scientific Careerism 101: Yes, grad students and postdocs it IS your fault by DrugMonkey
The project of being a grown-up scientist (part 2) by Janet D. Stemwedel
The Well Dressed Professor... by Thomas Levenson
Your massive credit card debt means you're doing great! by Amanda Marcotte
Barack Obama's Achilles Heel by Jon Swift
The Cult of Obama by Sara Robinson
jstemwedel | February 11, 2008Today was the last day of the semester for students to add courses, and the last day to drop a course without it showing up on one's transcript was a week ago. (The order of these two dates, it seems to me, should be switched, but I don't make the rules around here.) In any event, enrollments for classes have more or less stabilized.
Which means that I'm poring over iPhoto trying to learn each of my student's names.
See, my students all know who I am, although there is the occasional confusion about the right way to address me, not to mention the panoply of variant (mis-)spellings of my…
revere | February 11, 2008In the 1960s, as the US biomedical research establishment was starting to rev its engines, bioethicists called attention to a dark side to research, the abuse of human beings as subjects of research studies. The poster child for this was the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," a study to see what happens to people when you don't treat them for a treatable disease. Like many such things, it started off with reasonable intentions. At its outset syphilis treatments were toxic with many adverse side effects. It wasn't obvious patients wouldn't be better off, on average,…
jstemwedel | February 11, 2008I'm passing on information about a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation for graduate students. The program, organized by the University of Montana Center for Ethics, is called Debating Science 2008, and here's how it's described on the announcement:
We are looking for graduate students who are inspired by their own research, but who are also interested in exploring the social, political, and philosophical context of that work, and who are committed to sharing science with nonscientists, in a genuine hope for a better world...
To solve the toughest problems of the modern…
drorzel | February 11, 2008Via Inside Higher Ed, the Boston Globe reports that the Pentagon opposes increasing GI Bill funding. Why? Because if they gave them full tuition, eligible soldiers might not re-enlist:
Now, five years into the Iraq conflict, a movement is gathering steam in Washington to boost the payout of the GI Bill, to provide a true war-time benefit for war- time service. But the effort has run headlong into another reality of an unpopular war: the struggle to sustain an all-volunteer force.
The Pentagon and White House have so far resisted a new GI Bill out of fear that too many will use it - choosing…
evolgen | February 10, 2008Not Jim or Sam or Sally or Jane. Or Dr. Acula. But how do you refer to your advisor when you're talking to someone else? Do you call him/her "my advisor"? Do you call him/her "my boss"? Do you call him/her "that person I see once every two weeks who provides the money for me to get my PhD"?
This is a Sunday unScientific Survey. Leave your answer in the comments.
jstemwedel | February 9, 2008I hold in my hand a letter from our Provost informing me that my sabbatical leave for academic year 2008-2009 is awarded.
Of course, this is contingent on:
My actually getting tenure (something which will not be official, one way or another, until May 23).
My filing a promissory note (basically, allowing the university to come after me for financial losses should I not return to my position after my sabbatical).
"Budget availability." Which ... have you heard that California's budget situation is not so good?
So, probably I have next academic year to do some serious writing, assuming none…
revere | February 9, 2008Late yesterday afternoon, a Friday and classic time to release news you don't want anyone to read, I got the following email [excerpted] from David Schwartz, on leave as Director of the National Institute of Health Sciences (NIEHS), the main public health-oriented NIH institute and the subject of several previous posts (here, here, here, here, here):
Dear friends and colleagues,
I have decided to resign as director of the NIEHS and NTP, effective immediately. My reasons for this decision are simple. I believe that our institute would be more successful with new leadership, and that I would…
drorzel | February 8, 2008I'm currently serving as one of the faculty members involved with a new-ish residential life initiative aimed at raising the intellectual tone around campus. A big part of this is trying to get faculty members to do things in the campus housing spaces. This has all the logistical hassles you would expect, as so we're always in the market for low-key options.
After a conversation with a colleague, I've been kicking around the idea of a low-key sort of film festival-- asking individual faculty members to come to the house one night, and show one of their favorite movies. The idea here would not…
neurotopia | February 7, 2008Actually this is completely anticlimactic. The Regents rarely take a differing view on tenure decisions from the tenure committee itself. So sorry Tara, you got it wrong... the decision is already out:
The Iowa Board of Regents has denied Guillermo Gonzales', associate professor of physics and astronomy, appeal for tenure. After a private deliberation, the Board voted down the appeal which has already been denied by Iowa State University and ISU President Gregory Geoffroy.
No details at this point. But look for the Discovery Institute Spin Room to start kvetching at any moment, if they…
tsmith | February 7, 2008It's not certain there will be a decision immediately, though:
From the Iowa State Daily:
The Iowa Board of Regents will meet Thursday to discuss the tenure denial appeal of Guillermo Gonzalez, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State, at its regional meeting on the ISU campus.
The meeting is at 8:30 a.m., with a one-hour closed session dedicated to discussing the appeal beginning at 8:35 a.m. The regents will emerge with either a decision on the case or a decision to postpone it.
"The board does not have to decide within the hour time slot given for the meeting, and…
clock | February 6, 2008....Scienceblogs.com
Busy today. What are the others writing about?
Abel Pharmboy and DrugMonkey discuss the causes of death of Heath Ledger.
Nature had some articles about ScienceDebate 2008 and got it all wrong. I agree with what John Lynch wrote.
PhysioProf explains the brave new world of NIH Grants - not what I remember from the times of plentiful funding.
Angry Toxicologist on animal testing.
Obligatory Reading of the Day: Janet on the project of being a grown-up scientist.
The awesomest movie of a gigantic shark.
Shelley and Steve are Of Two Minds...
jstemwedel | February 6, 2008In the latest issue of The Scientist, there's an article (free registration required) by C. Neal Stewart, Jr., and J. Lannett Edwards, two biologists at the University of Tennessee, about how they came to teach a graduate course on research ethics and what they learned from the experience:
Both of us, independently, have been "victims" of research misconduct - plagiarism as well as fabricated data. One day, while venting about these experiences, we agreed to co-teach a very practical graduate course on research ethics: "Research Ethics for the Life Sciences." The hope was that we could ward…
terrasig | February 6, 2008I received a special missive this morning from the Foundation for Biomedical Research that reported the home of UCLA nicotine researcher, Dr Edie London, was vandalized/terrorized by a fire set to a "device" on her front porch. The story now appears at the Los Angeles Times:
London, a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences and of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, uses lab monkeys in her research on nicotine addiction.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed that officials with the Joint Terrorism Task Force were investigating the…
tsmith | February 5, 2008 Joshua Lederberg passed away on Saturday.
Joshua Lederberg, Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist who shaped the field of bacterial genetics, and served as chair of The Scientist's advisory board since 1986, died on Saturday (February 2). He was 82.
Lederberg shared a Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1958 for the discovery that certain strains of bacteria reproduce by mating, thereby exchanging their genetic material. This overturned the idea held at the time that bacteria did not warrant genetic study and set the field of bacterial genetics into motion.
Lederberg truly was a…
clock | January 31, 2008Aetosaurs. No, I have not heard of them until now. But that does not matter - the big story about them today is the possibility - not 100% demonstrated yet, to be fair - that some unethical things surround their discovery and naming. And not just Aetosaurs. Some other fossils as well.
As I am not on the inside loop of the story, you need to first read the background story on Aetosaurs by Darren Naish - Part 1 and Part 2.
Then, carefully read Darren's today's post and responses by Laelaps, Cryptomundo and Paleochick.
For the ethical side of the story, read Janet's take.
For the gory…
drorzel | January 31, 2008What's the difference between a "seminar" and a "colloquium"? Is there a difference?
catdynamics | January 28, 2008Which is a better metric of faculty research performance, H or G?
I already pontificated about the Hirsch index - where you rank your published papers by citation rank, and the H-index is the largest number such that you have k papers with the number of cites greater than or equal to k.
It is an interesting measure, grows monotonically with time, gives some weight to number of "pretty good" papers, rather than small number of very highly cited papers.
I now learn there is also a "G index" proposed by Leo Egghe, apparently, to fix the problems with the H-index. See here though it appears the…
catdynamics | January 28, 2008Physics bloggers are quite taken with the recent financial market turmoil.
Hsu considers propagator effects and asymmetries of time averaged risk, while the Incoherent Ponderer seizes upon my comment about the root cause between the Superconducting SuperCollider cancellation and current financial shenanigans
What brought the original comment I made to mind, is that I recognized a name or two in a list of major players in the east coast financial and mortgage markets... er, Hey Guys!
It was very clear when I was graduating that the academic job market in the physical sciences was in a bad…