Academia
voltagegate | January 4, 2008I wrote this on nearly the same day last year, and since I've been reading some Asimov lately, thought I would repost. The dates have been changed for relevance.
On January 2, 2008, Isaac Asimov would have been 88 years old. Simultaneously, on the second, I turned 29 (edited).
Asimov died of AIDS from a tainted blood transfusion in 1983, a little known fact, even among his fans. It wasn't publicized until his wife, Dr. Janet Jeppson wrote a bit about it in the epilogue of Asimov's memoir It's Been a Good Life, published in 2002. Why wasn't it addressed until then? The following letter…
drorzel | January 4, 2008Over at the Whatever, Scalzi has some acid comments for Prof. Will Barrat's Social Class on Campus diagnostic tools, particularly the step forward exercise (I've linked the Web version-- John refers to the Word file):
[F]or the purposes of this exercise -- showing indicators of privilege and class -- this list is not actually useful, and indeed counter-productive. In this exercise, it's entirely possible for someone of a lower social class to appear more "privileged" than someone who is of the "rich and snooty" class. This doesn't create awareness of privilege; it does, however, create…
drorzel | January 2, 2008Over at Inside Higher Ed, they've posted a report on the job market in history, which finds that there are more jobs than new Ph.D.'s, but that American and European history are overrepresented in the candidate pool, relative to the number of jobs. It also includes this comment about the number of degreees awarded to women:
The decline for women -- to 40.9 percent from 41.6 percent -- is the third decline in the last 10 years, and comes a time that a majority of Ph.D.'s in the humanities are being awarded to women.
The other two declines, from their handy table, were from 40.3% to 40.0% in…
scientificactivist | December 31, 2007An individual cell inside the human body is in a dynamic environment: it not only has to anchor itself to its surroundings but also be able to communicate with them and respond as appropriate. One group of proteins--the integrins--play a central role in all of these tasks. The integrins are large (about 200,000 Da) membrane-spanning proteins, and each integrin consists of two subunits (alpha and beta). The vast majority of the integrin is located on the exterior of the cell, where it anchors the cell to the extracellular matrix. Each subunit has a short tail inside of the cell, and the…
jstemwedel | December 31, 2007Over at Bioethics Forum, Carl Elliott has an essay questioning the wisdom of the "convention interview" in the academic hiring process. As he notes, it is a fairly standard practice for philosophy departments to schedule a round of preliminary interviews for job candidates -- those who make the "long list" of applicants still in the running for the position -- at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting. Among other things, scheduling interviews at the APA means that the job candidates are getting themselves to the conference on their own dime, and that there's some…
neurophilosophy | December 29, 2007The editors of the journal Neuron are now publishing readers' comments on the journal's website. Comments can be made online for any paper published in the journal, including all of those in the online back archive.
Neuron is owned by Elsevier, and the decision to publish online readers' comments is an interesting one. This is because although Elsevier is one of several publishing giants who have been vehemently opposed to the open access movement, it is now following in the footsteps of the open access Public Library of Science journals, which began publishing readers' comments earlier this…
clock | December 28, 2007In the wake of the signed omnibus bill that funds NIH and ensures open deposition of NIH-funded research, here are some thoughtful questions:
Why the NIH bill does not require copyright violation:
The great advantage of the requirement to deposit in Pubmed (rather than simply to expose on a publisher or other website) is that the act is clear. You can't "half-deposit" in Pubmed. They have the resources to decide whether any copyright statement allows the appropriate use of the information or is suffiently restrrictive that it does not meet the NIH rules.
At some stage the community will get…
terrasig | December 27, 2007After hearing this morning of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, I had wondered if any science bloggers might weigh in since Bhutto had attended Oxford and earned a BA at Harvard's Radcliffe College.
Fellow ScienceBlogger, Greg Laden, relates a story from when Bhutto returned to Harvard to give the commencement address.
Beyond the chaos among the general population, I cannot imagine trying to conduct scientific research in the current climate of Pakistan. The University of Karachi, in particular, maintains an excellent Department of Pharmacognosy in the School of Pharmacy - we…
catdynamics | December 26, 2007Miracles Do Still Happen.
It all began with the Incident of the Broken Leg.
No, not mine, and No, it was not That Sort of Miracle.
The problem was that I was now the family taxi driver. Doc visits, school, doc visits, pre-school, doc visits, playdates doc visits, grocery shopping, doc visits...
I have not had a campus parking permit since my first semester here.
One of the best advice I got as a postdoc, about faculty positions in the US, was from Richard Ellis, who handed me a carefully hoarded copy of an old Times article explaining the hierarchy on US campuses.
On top, of course, are the…
clock | December 20, 2007I buried this among a bunch of other cool links yesterday, but there was a study the other day, in the Journal of Cell Biology, that seriously calls in question the methodology used by Thompson Scientific to calculate the sacred Impact Factor, the magic number that makes and breaks lives and careers of scientists.
Apparently, it is really a magic number calculated in a mysterious way, not in the way that Thompson Scientific claims they do it. Who knows what subjective factors they include that they do not tell us about?
When we examined the data in the Thomson Scientific database, two…
jstemwedel | December 19, 2007In the 20/27 December 2007 issue of Nature, there's a fascinating commentary by Cambridge University neuroscientists Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir. Entitled "Professor's little helper," this commentary explores, among other things, how "cognitive-enhancing drugs" are starting to find their way into the lifestyles of professors and students on university campuses, a development which raises some interesting ethical questions.
The questions are sufficiently rich here that this post will just serve as my first attempt to get some of the important issues on the table and to open it up…
drorzel | December 19, 2007A former Michigan law professor is suing the university because he was denied tenure:
The professor, Peter Hammer, won a majority of votes of the faculty of the law school in his case. But the 18-12 margin was two shy of the two-thirds requirement to win tenure, so he lost his job, and now is a professor of law at Wayne State University. He says he was the first male faculty member rejected by the faculty for tenure in 40 years.
Like lots of tenure disputes, this one has many facets -- debates on Hammer's scholarship, disputes on deadlines and technical parts of the tenure and grievance…
drorzel | December 19, 2007Travis Hime of Arcane Gazebo has just finished his Ph.D. on Solid-State Qubits with Current-Controlled Coupling. Go congratulate him on bringing quantum spam that much closer to reality.
("Dear sir or madam, I may or may not be the widow of the former president of Nigeria, and I may or may not have the sum of ninety billion dollars...")
jstemwedel | December 17, 2007Grades are due this Friday. Last Friday, the grader assigned to one of my courses was supposed to get me the grades for the online reading discussions that he was weeks behind on grading.
He didn't.
Nor has he responded to the emails I've sent him since then inquiring as to when he will give me these grades.
Nor has he been answering his cell phone, on whose voicemail I have been leaving increasingly frantic messages.
There is a real possibility that I will have to do this grading that the "grader" has already been paid for (since he is "salaried" this term -- as my grader). This could well…
drorzel | December 17, 2007Chris Mooney posted a couple of things last week-- one article at ScienceProgress and one blog post-- talking about the supposed shortage of scientists in the "pipeline." Following an Urban Insitute study, he says that there's really no shortage of scientists being trained, but rather a shortage of jobs for those scientists. Coming as he does from the policy/ journalism side of things, he brings the article to a ringing conclusion:
The numbers presented by the Urban Institute lead to an uncontestable conclusion: Some young scientists aren't going to be working in purely scientific positions.…
sb admin | December 17, 2007 There are many brain fitness software products available these days so when I was offered a copy of Core Learning's program Mind Builder, I agreed to check it out. It offers a series of test questions similar to America's SAT, while Mind Builder Pro is a fuller package that also incorporates IQ, career and aptitude tests intended to be "fun mental exercises." Unlike some similarly-marketed software there were no unproven claims of preventing age-related cognitive decline or improving processing speed. There were vague promises like "get smart, stay smart" and "build brain power" - whatever…
terrasig | December 14, 2007I learned via Kevin, MD, of a great new BlogTalkRadio show by Ohio physician, Doctor Anonymous. BlogTalkRadio is pretty neat in that you get video of the host, audio of the interview, and a chat window on which listeners can post a running commentary and discussion of the show. I got to "meet" Sid Schwab and Dr. Val, two frequent commenters as well as those whose blogs I read.
Last night, Dr. A interviewed Mexico Med Student, Enrico, who is currently a 3rd year med student at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara (UAG) School of Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Dr. Val was supposed to be…
jstemwedel | December 12, 2007In light of the ongoing flap about Iowa State University's decision to deny tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, I thought it might be worth looking at an actual university policy on tenure -- the policy in place at my university -- and considering the sorts of judgments required by policies like this. The take-home message is that tenure can't be taken as a "sure thing" if only you produce a certain number of publications.
First, it's worth pointing out that each college and university has its own policy on tenure, and my sense is that the policy at my university is rather more explicit than most…
omnibrain | December 12, 2007Every one of us in acadaemia has had our fair share of blathering idiots come into our labs to work. I just wish I could write a letter like this. It's a shame that the letter is not actually going to go out. Ohhhh well.... check it out:
Dear Admissions Committee,
Mr. Bronze Malheur has asked me to write a letter in support of his application to your graduate program. I am dumbfounded: not only am I astonished that he has asked me to write this letter, but also that he has any intention of going to graduate school or that he believes he could possibly be successful.
I met Mr.…
catdynamics | December 12, 2007I just got a "I wanna go to grad school letter".
These are always interesting, sometimes scary, and generally require serious work, like thoughtful and prompt (hah!) responses.
The Female Science Professor Explains.
READ IT!
There are, of course, type I, type II and type III letters (I knew she wasn't an astronomer, everyone knows it is type Ia, Ib and II); think about which one you are right now, and strive to become type III!
The primary reason for wanting to spend ~ 5-10% of your life in pursuit of a PhD, ought to be that it is something you really, really want to do with your life.
That…