communication
jstemwedel | December 30, 2008Some time ago, PhysioProf asserted that journal articles in the biomedical sciences listing two first authors are misrepresenting the reality of the involvement of those authors.
I'm of the opinion that authorship issues are pretty important. It's not just a matter of which scientists get to take credit for the scientific advance a particular paper reports, but also a matter of which scientists are shouldering the responsibility for what that paper communicates (plus being involved in the further discourse between scientists about the pertinent scientific questions, techniques and so forth…
jstemwedel | December 19, 2008I've been asked by the National Academies of Science to let you all know about a survey in which they'd like you to participate.
Yes, you!
Here's the blurb:
What topics in science, engineering, and medicine matter most to you? The National Academies are interested in developing useful and engaging print and web-based educational materials on the topics that you'd like to learn more about. They invite you to participate in a brief survey. You can find that survey here.
In the 2-minute survey you'll be presented with a list of topics and asked to select the five that matter most to you. At the…
jstemwedel | December 17, 2008Do scientists see themselves, like Isaac Newton, building new knowledge by standing on the shoulders of giants? Or are they most interested in securing their own position in the scientific conversation by stepping on the feet, backs, and heads of other scientists in their community? Indeed, are some of them willfully ignorant about the extent to which their knowledge is build on someone else's foundations?
That's a question raised in a post from November 25, 2008 on The Scientist NewsBlog. The post examines objections raised by a number of scientists to a recent article in the journal Cell…
jstemwedel | November 26, 2008Over at DrugMonkey, PhysioProf notes a recent retraction of an article from the Journal of Neuroscience. What's interesting about this case is that the authors retract the whole article without any explanation for the retraction. As PhysioProf writes:
There is absolutely no mention of why the paper is being retracted. People who have relied on the retracted manuscript to develop their own research conceptually and/or methodologically have been given no guidance whatsoever on what aspects of the manuscript are considered unreliable, and/or why.
So, asks PhysioProf, have these authors…
amillikan | November 16, 2008With the announcement of Barack Obama's plan to deliver a weekly YouTube address, speculations are arising of how the new administration will make use of "facebook age" technologies to communicate with the public. ScienceBlogger Coturnix from A Blog Around the Clock discusses this and the potential clash between traditional policies requiring the president to abstain from informal communications—because everything is recorded—and modern inclinations to use networking programs and technological devices.
jstemwedel | October 29, 2008Earlier this month, I wrote a post on California's Researcher Protection Act of 2008, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on September 28. There, I noted that some opponents of the law expressed concerns that the real intent (and effect) of the law was not to protect those who do academic research with animals, but instead to curtail the exercise of free speech. I also wrote:
I'm left not sure how I feel about this law. Will it have a certain psychological value, telling researchers that the state is behind them, even if it doesn't actually make much illegal that wasn't…
jstemwedel | October 22, 2008I've talked about a number of these issues before, but since Abel and PalMD are having some conversations (here, here, here, here, here, and here) in preparation for their session at ScienceOnline09, and since I've experienced the blogosphere on both sides of the pseudonymous line, I thought I'd pipe up.
Some good reasons (from the top of my head) to blog under a pseudonym:
Your workplace frowns on blogging (even if you are not blogging about work at all) and you want to stay employed.
You are a student whose advisor will equate your blogging with time not spent doing research (even though…
jstemwedel | October 3, 2008
Americans for Medical Progress has produced a new DVD titled Veterinarians - Speaking for Research. (You can get your own free copy at the Americans for Medical Progress website.)
You might consider this DVD a follow-up of their previous DVD, Physicians - Speaking for Research (reviewed here). However, the two are pretty different, perhaps suggesting some differences not only in the intended audiences for the DVDs (veterinarians vs. physicians) but also in the concerns of the segments of the public each set of professionals is likely to encounter.
In this post, I'll first discuss…
jstemwedel | September 25, 2008One of the big things philosopher-types like to do with their students is work on extracting arguments from a piece of text and reconstructing them. This can be useful in locating sources of disagreement, whether they be specific premises or inferences.
But some chunks of text that seem like they ought to have arguments that can be extracted and reconstructed end up being ... opaque.
For example, this question and answer between Katie Couric and Sarah Palin (transcript by way of Shakesville):
Couric [on tape]: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class…
jstemwedel | September 20, 2008The congresscritter in question being Sherwood Boehlert, who represented New York's 24th Congressional district (1983-2007), and chaired the House Science Committee (2001-2007). Boehlert offers this advice in a video called "Speaking for Science: Bringing Your Message to Policymakers," available for download from the American Chemical Society website.*
The video presents two scenarios in which a group of scientists meets with their Congressional representative (who happens to be a member of the House Science Committee, played by Boehlert). As you might guess, the idea is to contrast the…
jstemwedel | September 18, 2008Back in June, I wrote a post examining the Hellinga retractions. That post, which drew upon the Chemical & Engineering News article by Celia Henry Arnaud (May 5, 2008) [1], focused on the ways scientists engage with each other's work in the published literature, and how they engage with each other more directly in trying to build on this published work. This kind of engagement is where you're most likely to see one group of scientists reproduce the results of another -- or to see their attempts to reproduce these results fail. Given that reproducibilty of results is part of what…
jstemwedel | September 5, 2008In a comment on another post, Blatnoi asks for my take on a recent news item in Nature:
An Italian-led research group's closely held data have been outed by paparazzi physicists, who photographed conference slides and then used the data in their own publications.
For weeks, the physics community has been buzzing with the latest results on 'dark matter' from a European satellite mission known as PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics). Team members have talked about their latest results at several recent conferences ... but beyond a quick flash of a…
jstemwedel | August 12, 2008Chad Orzel takes a commenter to task for fetishizing peer review:
Saying that only peer-reviewed articles (or peer-reviewable articles) count as science only reinforces the already pervasive notion that science is something beyond the reach of "normal" people. In essence, it's saying that only scientists can do science, and that science is the exclusive province of geeks and nerds.
That attitude is, I think, actively harmful to our society. It's part of why we have a hard time getting students to study math and science, and finding people to teach math and science. We shouldn't be…
jstemwedel | August 5, 2008Once again, researchers who use animals in their research have been the targets of violence at the hands of animal rights activists.
As reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
In one incident, a faculty member's home on Village Circle off High Street was intentionally firebombed at about 5:40 a.m. [on Saturday, August 2], according to police. The residence belongs to a well-known UCSC molecular biologist who works with mice. He was one of 13 researchers listed in threatening animal rights pamphlets found Tuesday in a downtown coffee shop.
In the second incident at about the same time, a Volvo…
jstemwedel | July 25, 2008The other day, Chad asked about the appropriate use of someone else's published data:
There's a classic paper on the Quantum Zeno Effect that I discuss in Chapter 5 of the book. The paper does two tests of the effect, and presents the results in two bar graphs. They also provide the data in tabular form. ...
If I copy the data from the table, and make my own version of the graph, am I obliged to contact them and ask permission to duplicate their results in my book?
Chad's commenters were of the view (substantiated with credible linked sources) that data itself cannot be copyrighted under U.…
jstemwedel | July 18, 2008In the aftermath of Sizzle Tuesday, Orac wrote a post posing a challenge to the science communicators:
How would you deal with antivaccinationism? What "frames" would you use to combat the likes of Jenny McCarthy?
In the comments on Orac's post, Matthew C. Nisbet turned up:
The anti-vaccine movement is a perfect issue to examine how framing has shaped communication dynamics and public opinion; and how various groups have brought framing strategies to bear in the policy debate.
I personally haven't had time to do research on the topic. ...
To understand and to make recommendations about…
jstemwedel | July 15, 2008I have misgivings about wading into Crackergate -- indeed, even about dipping my toe into the edge of the pool (which is all I'm promising here) -- but here goes.
First, let me commend the thoughtful posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and John Wilkins on the issue. If you haven't read them yet, read them now. (If you've already read them, read them again.)
Next, let me set forth the disclaimers that I'd hope would be obvious:
Issuing death threats (or threats to do bodily harm to a person, or to his family) is wrong. It's inexcusable (and I suspect in many jurisdictions it's also illegal).…
jstemwedel | July 14, 2008Randy Olson's newest film, Sizzle, bears the subtitle, "a global warming comedy". To my mind, it delivered neither the laughs nor the engagement with the issue of global warming that it promised. Maybe this is just a sign that I fall outside the bounds of Olson's intended audience, but perhaps the biggest question this movie left me with was who precisely Olson is trying to reach with Sizzle.
The film starts out presenting itself almost as Olson's own follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth; Olson notes that he liked Al Gore's movie a lot but wondered where all the scientists were. He…
jstemwedel | June 3, 2008Because Abi asked me to, I'm going to discuss the fascinating case of the Hellinga retractions. Since this is another case where there is a lot to talk about, I'm going to take it in two parts. In the first part, working from the Chemical & Engineering News article by Celia Henry Arnaud (May 5, 2008) [1], I'll focus on the common scientific activity of trying to build on a piece of published work. What happens when the real results seem not to fit with the published results? What should happen?
In part 2, drawing from the Nature news feature by Erika Check Hayden (May 15, 2008) [2], I…
jstemwedel | May 29, 2008In today's Chronicle of Higher Education there's an article about the methods journal publishers are deploying to detect doctored images in scientific manuscripts. From the article:
As computer programs make images easier than ever to manipulate, editors at a growing number of scientific publications are turning into image detectives, examining figures to test their authenticity.
And the level of tampering they find is alarming. "The magnitude of the fraud is phenomenal," says Hany Farid, a computer-science professor at Dartmouth College who has been working with journal editors to help…