Mailbag

I've been seeing a lot of questions popping up in the comments - and for me, I find it difficult to answer them in the confines of post comments. Many of them are quite good and would probably be of interest to lots of Eruptions readers, so I thought maybe it is time for another Eruptions mailbag post. So, without further ado, email me your burning volcano-related questions! Send them to by February 15, and I'll try to answer as many as I can in a mailbag post. Looking forward to your questions!

I received an email from reader Doug Blank (who gave me permission to share it here and to identify him by name) about a perplexing situation: Janet, I thought I'd solicit your advice. Recently, I found an instance of parts of my thesis appearing in a journal article, and of the paper being presented at a conference. In fact, further exploration revealed that it had won a best paper prize! Why don't I feel proud... I've sent the following letter to the one and only email address that I found on the journal's website, almost three weeks ago, but haven't heard anything. I tried contacting the…

Chaiten in Chile erupting in January 2009. Even after over a year of activity, Eruptions readers are still captivated by the volcano. Thanks for sending me your questions about volcanoes and volcanism. I'll try to tackle some hear - but as always, keep the questions coming! Send them to For those of you who have submitted a question but don't see the answer here, do not fret. Likely it just means that I needed to do a little more research into the question and will get to it in a later mailbag! So, without further ado ... Mark M.: Here in the Appalachians we have very dense crystalline rock (…

One of the key requirements that researchers conducting studies with human subjects must meet is that they obtain the informed consent of the participating subjects (or of a parent or guardian, if the subject is not able to give informed consent himself or herself). However, there are particular instances where giving the subjects complete information about the study at the outset may change the outcome of the study -- namely, it may make it practically impossible to measure what the research is trying to measure. If these studies are not to be ruled out completely, doing them necessitates…

I recently received an email, prompted by my series about having a family and an academic career, asking for some input: I am a mere first year in a Ph.D. program and am a bit older than the other students. I am wholeheartedly committed to the program I am also considering the seemingly traitorous act of having a baby. Do you think it's essential to wait until ABD status? From the point of view of getting things done, it is certainly possible to take classes (and TA classes) while pregnant. A lot depends on your work-style. I'm the kind of person who's better off doing something…

In the aftermath of my two posts on allegations of ethical lapses among a group of paleontologists studying aetosaurs, an email correspondent posed a really excellent question: what's a junior person to do about the misconduct of senior people in the field when the other senior people seem more inclined to circle the wagons than to do anything about the people who are misbehaving? That's the short version. Here's the longer version from my correspondent: I am and have been outraged by the blatant corruption in my field for a couple of decades, and one of the "stars" in my field was my first…

A regular reader of the blog emailed me the following: Have you ever considered setting up a section for laymen in your blog where posts related to the philosophy of science, how research is conducted, how scientists think etc. are archived? An example of what I think might be a good article to include would be your post on Marcus Ross. Part of why I like reading your blog is because you analyze these fundamental issues in science, and I believe that this will help any laymen who stumble upon your blog for the first time quite a bit. It certainly helped me! I had to trawl through tons of…

To address an issue that came up in discussion of posts on other blogs, I want to make clear the principles I follow when dealing with real-world scenarios here or via email: My overarching goal is to foster reflection and dialogue among people (particularly scientists) working out how to behave ethically. Talking about different scenarios can provide good material to sharpen our ethical intuitions and to try to formulate courses of action that are both ethical and do-able (from the point of view, say, of not wrecking one's career). I don't believe that scenarios lose their usefulness if…

While our exams were weeks ago, I know that some folks (especially high school students) are just finishing up. So these observations sent to me by a reader may be timely: I believe that if students are passing their classes with a B and above they should not have to take final exams. Most students drop letter grades when taking an exam that is an accumulation of material that they have to dig out of the crevices of their brain from 5 to 6 months ago. I cannot remember what I had for breakfast last week; how can we expect our students to try and remember what they learned in January by the…

In a private communication, Sciencewoman asks: Just out of curiosity, how have you been able to blog under your real name? Has your department been supportive? Are you post-tenure and immune from some of the pressures that the rest of us feel? Or is it that a philosophy department views outreach/education differently from a strict science department? In the same communication, she also suggests that I might answer these question in a blog post, so I am. Some of you will recall that I've written before about issues around using one's own name or a pseudonym as a blog author. In one of those…

Brains enjoy getting information about the world around them. Although our sense organs do a pretty good job of keeping the data flowing to the brain, the occasional sense-organ-extending measuring device can add a whole new set of experiences for our brains to chew on. We wrap up the brain-friendly giftables list with a selection of measuring devices. A (lab) notebook or sketch pad would make a fine accompaniment to any of these. A microscope. Hands-down, this was the most recommended giftable measuring device, and I don't think this is just a matter of ScienceBlogs skewing heavily…

The human mind seems to like creating things, and kids will use whatever tools are at their disposal to build. My uncle used to build death-defying systems of roadways with Hotwheels track and masking tape. A childhood friend of mine built elaborate structures out of Fig Newtons (largely because they were in abundance in her home and she couldn't stand to actually eat them). When you have a creative itch, almost anything can serve as the scratcher. Here are some toys for building that are probably less likely to attract ants than are Fig Newtons: Gearation Strictly speaking, you might…

There are two features of games that have always appealed to me. First, the good ones put you in a place where you are explicitly thinking out different ways the future could play out -- the possibilities that are more or less likely given what you know (and what you don't know). Second, many of them let you drag someone else (whether your opponent or your teammate) into thinking through these situations, too. Any game where you have to make choices about what to do involves some sort of strategy, and formulating or refining strategies is a work-out for your brain. This means that games,…

As promised, I bring you some gift recommendations for kids who are into math or science (or could be if presented with the right point of entry). The first installation: books. Books are the best. They don't need batteries or assembly. They don't have lots of little parts that will end up strewn on the floor (or lost under the couch). You can read them alone or read them with others. You can buy 'em new, but you can also find some amazing books at used bookstores, or garage sales, or library sales. And of course, if you have a library card you can partake of an astounding number of…

In a comment on the last post, zwa asks: I'm curious about your vegetarianism (as one myself) and whether your kids are. If yes, did they choose it, if no did you try to convince them? My kids are vegetarians, and have been since birth -- so they didn't choose it. I have imposed it on them in a stunning act of maternalism. OK, it's actually not that stunning. Anyway, for the curious, here are my reasons for this particular parenting choice: The family dinner table isn't a restaurant. The choices are to eat what I'm serving or not eat it. This was the deal (at least when I was growing up)…

I'm revisiting a topic I posted about half a year ago: once you have a Ph.D., what are your job options beyond a faculty job or a research position? The last post was more about what one could do with a science major or masters degree. It didn't necessarily exclude non-standard things to do with a science Ph.D., but it wasn't specifically aimed that direction. Here, I want to take on directly the problem of what you do with that shiny Ph.D. (in science or any other field) if, despite all your efforts, you can't land a faculty job (or can't land one you can live with). And, I'd like to get…

From time to time I get emails asking for advice dealing with situations that just don't feel right. Recently, I've been asked about the following sort of situation: You're an undergraduate who has landed an internship in a lab that does research in the field you're hoping to pursue in graduate school. As so often happens in these situations, you're assigned to assist an advanced graduate student who is gearing up to write a dissertation. First assignment: hit the library and write a literature review of the relevant background literature for the research project. You find articles. You…

Loyal ScienceBlogs reader Dr. Kim D. Gainer is moving to a newly-renovated office (Yay!) that is smaller than her current office -- which means that some of the goodies on her bookshelves are in need of new homes. That's where you come in. She writes: If folks would like any of these books, they should e-mail me at kgainer@radford.edu, and I will ship them out to them, no strings attached. There is no fine print to this offer! I will cover the postage (media rate, of course, so people shouldn't expect the books to appear via next day FedEx). I simply want these books to do the most good.…

Occasionally I get email asking for advice in matters around responsible conduct of research. Some readers have related horror stories of research supervisors who grabbed their ideas, protocols, and plans for future experiments, either to give them to another student or postdoc in the lab, or to take for themselves -- with no acknowledgment whatever of the person who actually had the ideas, devised and refined the protocols, or developed the plans for future experiments. Such behavior, dear reader, is not very ethical. Sadly, however, much of this behavior seems to be happening in…

This post, originally posted 8 January 2006 on the old site, responds to an email I got after the last post. Given John's recent post on Pro-Test, the questions are still timely. * * * * * I received an email from a reader in response to my last post on PETA's exposing of problems with the treatment of research animals at UNC. The reader pointed me to the website of an organization concerned with the treatment of lab animals in the Research Triangle, www.serat-nc.org. And, she wrote the following: Some people may think that PETA is extreme. However, the true "extreme" is what happens to…