The Loony Bin Called Academia
pontiff | June 7, 2010Science is dynamic. Sometimes this means that science is wrong, sometimes it means that science is messy. Mostly it is very self-correcting, given the current state of knowledge. At any given time the body of science knows a lot, but could be overturned when new evidence comes in. What we produce through all of this, however, at the end of the day, are polished journal articles. Polished journal articles.
Every time I think about this disparity, I wonder why different versions of a paper, the referee reports, the author responses, and all editorial reviews aren't part of the scientific…
pontiff | April 8, 2010Items sharing a similar topic, meandered onto in the depths of a major outpouring of procrastination...
The path less traveled by Andrea Schweitzer (via @mattleifer) on a different way to have a career as a scientist. And for a description of one of the most successful scientists from quantum computing, an interview with Ignacio Cirac (sent to me by Daniel.) Somedays, however, one might wonder about all the time professors spend working and contemplate the idea of death by tenure track. Or if you care a lot about the notion of tenure versus non-tenure AND you don't mind reading redstate.…
pontiff | January 18, 2010"Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory" - Emily Post(er)
As a literature major physicist, one of the biggest culture shocks I've encountered when attending theory computer science conferences (STOC and FOCS) is the lack of a poster session at these conferences (or at least the ones I attended, which, truth be told, is not many.) Admittedly, I'm a sucker for free wine, beer, and cheese (or at least a cash bar peoples) and some of my warmest thoughts are of the…
pontiff | November 23, 2009@EricRWeinstein is at it again in twitterland, this time on the subject of the funding of science. For an intriguing read about the glut of Ph.D.s versus science funding, he links to his (circa 1998?) article titled: "How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers." An interesting read, to say the least. Then @michael_nielsen points to Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion by Daniel Greenberg which I now have to go out and buy. Damn you internet for pointing me to things I should read!…
pontiff | September 16, 2009Via Asymptotia, an interview with Murray Gell-Mann (who just turned 80. Happy Birthday Murray!) I particularly like the comments at the end of the article:Battles of new ideas against conventional wisdom are common in science, aren't they?
It's very interesting how these certain negative principles get embedded in science sometimes. Most challenges to scientific orthodoxy are wrong. A lot of them are crank. But it happens from time to time that a challenge to scientific orthodoxy is actually right. And the people who make that challenge face a terrible situation. Getting heard, getting…
pontiff | July 26, 2009Writing a blog is for me (1) amusing and (2) amusing. Can anyone take anything that I write on a blog seriously? Well sometimes people do. Many eons ago (okay, I lie, it was 2005), I wrote a post about the then new "h-index." The h-index is an attempt at trying to find a better way of "ranking" citation counts. As such, it is, of course, nothing more than another meter stick in the long line of lazy tenure committee metric sticks. But it's also fun! Why is it fun? Because calculating any "metric" is fun for people like me who spent their childhood involved in such mind expanding tasks…
pontiff | June 23, 2009The "slow movement" is a vast beast: there's Slow Food, Slow Travel, Slow Money, and even, I kid you not, Slow Reading. These movements all begin with the premise that modern culture emphasizes ever increasing speed and convenience (cue the Eagle's: "Listen, baby. You can hear the engine ring. We've been up and down this highway; haven't seen a goddam thing.") The prescribed medicine is a moderance in life. More smelling of the roses (but watch out for Ringo), more taking the long road, and most definitely more chewing your food slowly. While the movement suffers from large doses of…
pontiff | June 10, 2009The astro/physics blogosphere is all atwitter about papers the Nature embargo policy (See Julianne If a paper is submitted to nature does it still make a sound, the cat herder Hear a paper, see a paper, speak no paper, and he of less than certain principles Unhealthy obsessions of academia. He of uncertain principles loses the catchy title contest :) )
In this discussion, the uncertain principal brings up an interesting effect for arXiv postings:There's an obsession in science with the order of publication that I don't think is really healthy, and I think it's only gotten worse. At the…
pontiff | May 27, 2009One of the more interesting "problems" in Science 2.0 is the lack of commenting on online articles. In particular some journals now allow one to post comments about papers published in the journal. As this friendfeed conversation asks:Why people do not comment online articles? What is wrong with the online commenting system[s]? I think this is one of the central issues in Science 2.0.
Or as Carl Zimmer commented on comments appearing at PLOS One a few years back:What I find striking, however, is how quiet it is over at PLOS One. Check out a few for yourself. My search turned up a lot of…
pontiff | May 7, 2009After watching Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk* it occurred to me to go back and look at my own scientific papers and try to assess them for how creative they were. Some things you should just never do, I guess, but it did lead me to an interesting question.
* The first 2/3 of the talk is excellent, ending not as great. I'm heartily in support of his cause, but it felt to me like he was implying that this was the one and only problem with the education system, which I find hard to swallow.
Looking at the list of my papers, I'm struck by many things. First of all I'm amazed by how tightly I've…
pontiff | February 17, 2009Congrats to the quantum tenure odds booster award winners Sloan award winners:Robert Raussendorf, UBC
Hartmut Häffner, UC Berkeley (Go Bears!)
Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Haavard
Scott Aaronson, MIT (that other Tech school)
Andrew Houck, Princeton
Subhadeep Gupta, University of Washington
Lance lists the theoretical computer scientist winners.
pontiff | February 2, 2009A long time ago, in a blog far far away, I ran a small poll about paper refereeing. The poll asked "What is your ratio of reviewed to submitted manuscripts?". The results were
>=6 reviewed for every 1 submitted: 7 votes (8 percent)
5 reviewed for every 1 submitted: 3 votes (4 percent)
4 reviewed for every 1 submitted: 9 votes (10 percent)
3 reviewed for every 1 submitted: 12 votes (14 percent)
2 reviewed for every 1 submitted: 13 votes (15 percent)
1 reviewed for every 1 submitted: 20 votes (24 percent)
1 reviewed for every 2 submitted: 6 votes (7 percent)
1 reviewed for every 3…
pontiff | November 24, 2008Today is the 149th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. I'm probably just suffering from a bout of dewy eyed pastoralism, but when was the last time a book which was readable by the general public was also a major work of science? (Not Here That's For Sure)
And you will say "but science it is so complicated nowadays!" and "but science is so big these days!" And you will say "only smart people can understand string theory!" and "there is so very much that one must learn in order to even understand today's science!"
So then you will go back to your…
pontiff | November 20, 2008If only I were Michael J. Fox, a letter I would send back in time.
Dear Respected Mathematician/Scientist/Researcher:
First of all let me tell you want an honor it is to write to you from the future. Your work is so important in my time that we have named the main theorem which you proved in your paper "Megamathematical functorial categories which nearly commute" after you. Yes the JoeRandomName theorem is well known and used every day in my field. Thank you for thinking it up and proving it!
But I'm writing to you today, not because of this great piece of work. Instead I'm writing to…
pontiff | November 13, 2008Melody points me to this gem of an advisory from the NSF:In the event of a natural or anthropogenic disaster that interferes with an organization's ability to meet a proposal submission deadline, NSF has developed the following guidelines for use by impacted organizations. These guidelines will take the place of the previous NSF practice of posting notices to the NSF website regarding each specific event.
Flexibility in meeting announced deadline dates because of a natural or anthropogenic disasters may be granted with the prior approval of the cognizant NSF Program Officer. Proposers should…
pontiff | November 11, 2008John Baez (via Zoran Škoda) points to the case of M.S. El Naschie. El Naschie is apparently the answer to the question "how do you publish over three hundred papers of craziness in an Elsevier journal?" Simple: just become the editor and chief of the journal!
Tell me again the argument about scientific publishers rendering a valuable service with their stellar editing?
pontiff | August 11, 2008Last week, before I headed to my current location in the land of Coca Cola and the Cartoon Network (the hotel is so nice here that when my friend stopped outside so that I could drop my bags off, the concierge asked him if he wanted would like some water while he waited), I attended a very inspirational talk on open access by Jonathan Eisen. The video is now available online (lecture 2.) Well worth watching as it was a good talk laying out the case for open access to research journals (which Eisen makes sure to delineate from open science. Say the word open science, I guess, and some…
pontiff | August 9, 2008Say it ain't so Hasbro, say it aint so. From an NPR story on a makeover of the game "Clue":The characters have changed, too. Miss Scarlet has a first name: Cassandra. Colonel Mustard left the military; he's a former football star. Victor Plum, formerly the professor who was always known as the smartest man in the room, became recast as a self-made video game designer -- a dot-com billionaire.
Take that you stuffy academic professors, with your padded elbows and your pipes and your uncombed Einstein hair: you're no longer the smartest person in the room (unless you've made a video game, that…
pontiff | August 6, 2008Hot off the presses!In an amazing breakthrough, which this press release has no room to describe in any real detail, scientists at research university BigU have made tremendous progress in the field of quantum computing. The results mean that quantum computers are one step closer to replacing your laptop computer
Quantum computers work by some mechanism that we don't have the time to understand. But we are sure our researchers will explain it to you, but you won't understand anyways, so why ask them? It's definitely got something to do with multiple universes and bits that are both zero…
pontiff | July 30, 2008Turning down a tenured position at the University of Chicago Law School:Soon after, the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.
Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.
File this one away in regards…