Academia
jstemwedel | November 7, 2007... is to get all the way through the 16 weeks without a single incident of plagiarism turned in as "student work".
Alas, it appears this will not be the semester in which my fantasy becomes a reality. Dammit.
What bums me out is how very obvious the plagiarism is. Three search phrases with Google and I've got them dead to rights.
Am I not supposed to know how to use Google?
Am I not supposed to be conscious enough, while grading papers, to notice content and phrasing utterly at odds with everything else the offending students have given me?
Am I not supposed to care? (Maybe if the…
drorzel | November 7, 2007Becky Hirta is thinking about exams:
For the giant calculus class I'm starting to write multiple choice questions. For a class like that, really the only issues for me to consider about the final are how to avoid cheating (change the order of the MC questions and the numbers in the long-answer), how to make that many copies before the copier breaks, and how to get it graded efficiently.
We don't teach large classes here-- even the intro mechanics course is broken down into multiple small sectiosn, so the largest class I've had to teach has been about 20-- but this did remind me of a great…
clock | November 6, 2007Cannot. Resist. Funny. Titles. Sorry.
But seriously now, the question of authorship on scientific papers is an important question. For centuries, every paper was a single-author paper. Moreover, each was thousands of pages long and leather-bound. But now, when science has become such a collaborative enterprise and single-author papers are becoming a rarity, when a 12-author paper turns no heads and 100-author papers are showing up more and more, it has become necessary to put some order in the question of authorship.
Different scientific areas have different traditions. In one discipline…
evolgen | November 6, 2007During my first semester of college I took an introductory chemistry class from a poet, playwright, and Nobel laureate -- that's all one guy, not three. His Nobel Prize is in chemistry, which made him more than qualified to teach us about acids, transition metals, and the other basics of chemistry. He also advocated a well rounded education, and he required we read The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. In addition to our exams and lab reports, we had to write an essay about one of Levi's short stories.
I bring this up because the intro-chem instructor, Roald Hoffmann, gave a lecture last night…
laelaps | November 5, 2007
The fiberglass skull of Barnum Brown's second Tyrannosaurus rex fitted on the revised mount now standing on the 4th floor of the AMNH.
The AMNH in New York is home to some of the most impressive biological collections in the world, the institution playing host to various students of natural history. This tradition of allowing researchers and graduate student access to the collections is now taking another step forward with the opening of the Richard Gilder Graduate School, currently offering a Ph.D. in Comparative Biology. As the "Welcome" statement from John J. Flynn states, much of…
catdynamics | November 5, 2007new study shows students with involved parents do better but
they get lower grades on average.
Huh?
Well, it makes sense.
Basically, involved parents go to helicopter mode when the students are struggling, over-reaching or just need a nudge.
So there are three classes of students:
those which do well, independent of parent involvement
those which do better than they would, because the parents are involved
and, those which do badly and don't get parental assistance
these are not exclusive or exhaustive
National Survey of Student Engagement
Another interesting point is the report that students…
jstemwedel | November 3, 2007
Via ScienceWoman, I learn that there's a month for those of us who aren't ready to write a novel, namely, International acaDemic Writing Month.
I am so there.
Back when I was disserting (the second time) a bunch of us who were at the stage of our studies where it felt like we ought to be getting serious writing done formed a kick-in-the-butt club. We met roughly twice a month (possibly weekly for certain stretches, if I'm remembering correctly), talked about what we had accomplished since the last meeting, brainstormed ways to face down writer's block, and most importantly, we set goals for…
scientificactivist | November 3, 2007On October 20th, animal rights extremists acting under the banner of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) flooded the home of UCLA professor Edythe London. I don't have too much to say about this latest incident, as it's just one of a series of destructive actions associated with a movement that seems more interested in intimidation than real dialogue. Since animal rights should be and are a paramount concern to the research community, this is quite an unfortunate situation.
Below, you can compare statements from London and the ALF. Briefly, though, I wanted to point out that I've written…
drorzel | November 2, 2007In the same basic spirit as the previous post, but with a physical science slant:
What items should be on the list for a scavenger hunt through an academic physics department?
The idea here is to keep a big group of grad students occupied and entertained for an afternoon by having them find items characteristic of academic physics research, such as:
One working piece of apparatus powered by vacuum tubes
One obviously broken piece of apparatus being kept "for spare parts"
One obviously broken piece of apparatus being kept for no apparent reason
One piece of computer software that's at least…
catdynamics | November 1, 2007I was rudely reminded today that it is the season where all research stops
while 10-20% of the community engages in the autumn ritual that mixes the Chinese Fire Drill with Musical Chairs, except that the number of chairs removed per round is more like 1/3 to 2/3 of the initial, rather than just one at a time.
Except every few decades when a bunch of extra chairs is randomly added.
Which poses the essential question: which music is appropriate for Academic Musical Chairs?
This is my first cut, additional suggestions welcomed.
Art of the Possible - Evita
U Can't Touch This - MC Hammer…
drorzel | October 31, 2007There are a couple of stories in Inside Higher Ed today talking about college graduation rates. One is a passing mention that the NCAA has released complete graduation rate data for Division I schools through its impressively awful web site (the statistics are available as a series of one-page PDF files, one for each institution, which you can select from a set of 26 pull-down menus, one from each letter...). They also have sport-by-sport data, though these files are so full of gaps and omissions as to be essentially useless.
The other article is a longer piece about lagging graduation rates…
catdynamics | October 30, 2007article claims the new US Army "Counterinsurgency Manual" is substantially plagiarised
There is an interesting article by David Price in "Counterpunch" which suggests that large sections of the new US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24), co-authored by Gen. Petraeus, is substantially plagiarised - that is it copies or paraphrases substantial sections of text from other published work without attribution or cite.
They quote multiple examples ranging from Lawrence of Arabia to an MIT on-line sociology course.
Some of the stuff is blatant, some might be considered less plagiarism and…
drorzel | October 30, 2007In today's New York Times Natalie Angier has a nice story about increased interest in physics:
Many people wring their hands over the state of science education and point to the appalling performance of America's students in international science and math competitions. Yet some of the direst noises about our nation's scientific prospects may be premature. Far from rejecting challenging science courses, students seem to be embracing them.
This year, for example, the American Institute of Physics said that the percentage of high school students taking physics courses was at an all-time high,…
terrasig | October 29, 2007The Scientiae blog carnival has been soliciting posts for their November edition on "talking to yourself." Zuska brought this theme to the attention of some of us guy bloggers and carnival host Yami at Green Gabbro elaborated as follows:
...the past few Scientiae carnivals have been composed entirely of women's voices. While I think it's appropriate that women's voices should dominate the conversation about women's experiences, the job of thinking about gender in science belongs to everyone! I'd like to invite all you equality-minded men scientists to join the fun this time around - how do…
catdynamics | October 29, 2007seasonal snippets for our seniors
your calendar shows more hours in committee than class this week
the papers need to be graded before the next assignment is due
oh, we charged a different overhead on that grant, a higher one
4070 unread e-mails
...including yours
not including the 1600 from mailing lists that are automatically filtered to archive
146 of them have .doc attachments
at the current rate it will take 37 weeks to catch up on arXiv again, but at least the time is now finite and positive
yes, we are more than halfway through the semester
"I just need your signature on…
drorzel | October 29, 2007An anonymous donor asks a tricky question, namely:
how apparently successful research faculty ... can best make the transition to a small
teaching/research institution?
This is a tricky question not only because anything relating to academic jobs is tough, but also because I don't have a great deal of experience with it. I've been in on a bunch of job searches, but we've never hired anybody fitting this description. As a result, this is necessarily kind of hypothetical.
I think the key bit of advice is the same for faculty looking to switch instituions as for people looking for thier first…
terrasig | October 29, 2007The always-insightful blog commenter, PhysioProf, had a terrific post yesterday on DrugMonkey about managing the various types of trainees in a research laboratory.
Some are focused on just doing interesting science. Some are working towards the goal of eventually achieving scientific independence and becoming independent PIs themselves. Some don't know why they are doing what they are doing, and may not even have ever asked themselves. Some are preparing themselves for working as scientists in industry. Some may be preparing themselves for non-scientific careers in which they make use of…
clock | October 29, 2007If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have seen this, this and this, i.e., an effort to design an icon that a blogger can place on the top of a post that discusses peer-reviewed research. The icon makes such posts stand out, i.e., the readers will know it is not a discussion of a press release or media reporting, or fisking of a crackpot, a meme, or showing a cute animal picture.
So, I am please to announce that the icons are here! Dave Munger explains.
Pick up the codes for icons on this page. Carefully read the Guidelines before you start using the icon.
See who is using the…
retrospectacle | October 28, 2007To the West, the idea of a modern, gender-equal, progressive sort of academic environment seems incongruous with Saudi Arabia's religious establishment. However, the current ruler, King Abdullah, is investing $12.5 billion in creating just such an environment--a graduate research institution where religious police will be barred and women and men will conduct research in collaboration. Currently, women's career options in other areas are severely limited, and co-ed institutions required men and women to enter through separate doors, and remain behind partitions.
The campus will be built, and…
clock | October 27, 2007Mark Patterson writes in Bringing Peer Review Out of the Shadows:
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Hauser and Fehr propose a system for holding late reviewers to account by penalizing them when it's their turn to be an author. A slow reviewer's paper would be "held in editorial limbo" for a length of time that reflects their own tardiness as a reviewer. The short article was intended to provoke a discussion about how to improve peer review - an opening card as Hauser and Fehr put it.
So far, 16 responses have been added from readers, and the general view seems to be that incentives would be more…