Social Issues

I saw a story in the San Jose Mercury News that I thought raised an interesting question about sick leave, one worth discussing here. As it turns out, all the details of the specific case reported in the article sort of obscure the general question that it initially raised for me. But since I'm still interested in discussing the more general problem, here's a poll to tweak your intuitions. In cash-strapped community college system, an administrator collecting paid sick leave is ...online survey The question that the headline and first two paragraphs of the article raised for me was about…

In the midst of the ongoing conversation about managing career and housework and who knows what else (happening here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and likely some places I've missed), ScientistMother wondered about one of the blogospheric voices that wasn't taking an active role in the discussion. She mused in a comment at Isis's blog: Do we ever get a post from DrugMonkey about how he does it? He has kids and a wife (who I think is a scientist) but he rarely talks about balance issues. I'm sure its been an issue. Until the MEN start talking about its not going to change. When…

That all said, as a woman in science, it is sometimes disheartening to almost never hear an article suggest that a woman in science discuss household duties with her partner and split them evenly. The author of your article makes the statement that women bear the burden of household labor, but until scientists begin to tell other scientists that this isn't right, women are going to continue to leave academic science for fear of not being able to "balance" work and family. You can be right and be practical at the same time. These need not be mutually exclusive. I also think that you need not…

The title of John Tierney's recent column in the New York Times, "Daring to Discuss Women's Potential in Science", suggests that Tierney thinks there's something dangerous about even raising the subject: The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry's Law. The official title of this legislation is "Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering," but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard. This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the…

In recent days, there have been discussions of conditions for postdoctoral fellows, and about the ways that these conditions might make it challenging to tackle the problem of the "leaky pipeline" for women in science. For example, in comments at DrugMonkey's blog, bsci opines: Most people start a postdoc between the age of 25 and 30. Even in the academic world, a substantial portion of people are married by that age and a smaller, but non-trivial, proportion have children. How these people are supported on post-doc stipends is definitely an issue even in the first years of postdochood. When…

Over at the DrugMonkey blog, PhysioProf noted that a push to increase NIH postdoctoral fellowship stipend levels by 6% may have the effect of reducing the number of postdoctoral positions available. To this, the postdoctoral masses responded with something along the lines of, "Hey, it's possible that there are too damn many postdocs already (and fighting for those rare tenure-track positions in a slightly less crowded field might be better)," and "Being able to pay my damn bills might significantly improve my quality of postdoctoral life." There were also the expected mentions of the fact…

The January 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry has two articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and mental health.  One article presents the results of a study; the other is an editorial. href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajp;167/3/305">Association of Western and Traditional Diets With Depression and Anxiety in Women Jacka et al. Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:305-311 (published online January 4, 2010; doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09060881) © 2010 American Psychiatric Association Objective: Key biological factors that influence the…

As promised, here's the video of the February 16, 2010 panel discussion at UCLA about the science and ethics of animal-based research, sponsored by Bruins for Animals and Pro-Test for Science. UCLA Panel on Science and Ethics of Animal Research from Dario Ringach on Vimeo. The video runs for about 2.5 hours, so you might want to grab a glass of water or a cup of coffee before you launch it.

The panel discussion took place, as planned, on the evening of Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at UCLA. The hall was well-populated, if not completely packed, with members of the UCLA community. (Honestly, for week 7 of a 10-week quarter, during a spell of lovely weather, I'm impressed they had such a high turnout of students.) There was also a serious security presence (which the university felt was needed in light of past instances where strong feelings have been displayed in more than just words). Both Pro-Test for Science and Bruins for Animals deserve huge props for all the work they put…

Following DrugMonkey's lead, I'm going to play along on the meme proposed by Female Science Professor: What tradition or other general characteristic of academia would you like to see eliminated completely? According to the rules, which I just invented, the things to be eliminated have to be of a general nature. So, for example, the answer "my department chair" or "my university's moronic president" are unacceptable unless you want to eliminate the general concept of department chairs or university presidents. The candidates for disposal can be anything to do with academia, from the most…

I saw this headline on Google Fast Flip, and had to read it.  I'm always game for an anti-big-pharma story: even though I appreciate their efforts to relieve suffering, I do like to take notice of their shadier practices. href="http://business.theatlantic.com/2010/01/is_glaxos_charity_really_theft.php">Is Glaxo's Charity Really Theft? Jan 20 2010, 5:30 pm by Daniel Indiviglio Is there a fine line? Corporations have a duty to shareholders to maximize profits. But when they donate to charity -- which is regularly done these days, often through foundations -- this takes money out of…

In a comment on a post at Henry Gee's blog (I'd link the comment itself, but for the life of me I cannot figure out where the permalink is), Ed Yong offers his view on the relation between politeness and civility. Quoth Ed: My objection comes when people mistake politeness for virtue rather than what it actually is - artifice masquerading as virtue. Politeness is what you teach children to tell them when and how to speak and behave before they are fully rational and capable of thinking through the moral consequences of their words and actions. Adults, being (technically) able to do this…

Session description: The conference timing may keep some attendees away in their hometowns participating in local MLK activities. Therefore, we are introducing a session to promote the principles of Dr King in the context of online science communication: promoting social justice and eliminating racism in areas ranging from healthcare to scientific career paths. We plan to take a different angle from the blogging about gender/race session: how do we cultivate emerging science writers from underrepresented groups to promote science, for example, in areas of health disparities (i.e., diabetes,…

Coming up with a good definition is hard. And it's not obvious that people are even really talking about the same thing when they identify an action or a situation as displaying civility or incivility. So I'm wondering what kind of insight we can get by looking at some particular situations and deciding which side of the line it feels like they belong on. Before I put the situations on the table, let me be transparent about how I'm making my calls: I'm going to be asking myself whether it feels like the people involved are showing each other respect, and I'm going to make a special effort to…

Two weeks from today, at ScienceOnline '10, Dr. Isis, Sheril Kirshenbaum, and I will be leading a session called "Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents". In preparation for this, the three of us had a Skype conference last night, during which it became clear to us that there are many, many interesting issues that we could take on in this session (and that we come to the subject of online civility from three quite different perspectives). To try to get a feel for what issues other people (besides the three of us) might want to discuss in this session (or on blogs, of whatever),…

...for canceling the showing of a creationist film, Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record.  The background is on Greg Laden's Blog, href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/los_angeles_venue_cancels_inte.php">Los Angeles Venue Cancels Intelligent Design Film: You'll recall that it was recently reported that the California Science Center, which is loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, had planned a screening of "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" which is apparently a creationist documentary. Well, now, the venue has…

I couldn't resist that title, but I must admit it isn't mine; the author's post is href="http://pasadenasubrosa.typepad.com/pasadena_sub_rosa/2009/12/let-them-eat-antipsychotics.html">here.  This is about the NYT article about the finding that children on Medicaid are more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medication, compared to those with private insurance.  The obvious correlation is that children with Medicaid are from poor families, whereas those with private insurance are from families that have more resources.  It is one of those studies that documents an evocative finding…

I wrote about this before, a couple of times, most thoroughly href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/06/national_infrastructure_protec.php">here.  I was reminded of this topic when I saw that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) have updated their href="http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/">Report Card on America's Infrastructure.  In 2008, I compared the positions of the two Presidential candidates, regarding advocacy for infrastructure improvements.  Obama was better.  So I was somewhat hopeful that we would see some pretty big changes, after he won the…

Environmental regulations have greatly reduced the amount of sulfur in gasoline.  This has created many benefits.  But did you ever wonder what happens to all that sulfur?  Perhaps not, if it was never clear to you why you should care. The reason you should care is this:  Sulfur is present in coal and in most liquid fuels.  When it is burned, it oxidized, much as the carbon is oxidized.  Carbon becomes carbon dioxide; sulfur becomes sulfur dioxide.  When sulfur dioxide enters the atmosphere, it becomes a strong acid: sulfuric acid, which is battery acid.  This is one factor that contributes…

Is there some kind of especially violent undercurrent right now, in the right-wing river of hate? Ed Brayton just href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/missouri_republicans_call_for.php">posted about a billboard put up by the GOP, specifically the href="http://lafayettecountyrepublicans.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-i-70-billboard-replaces-famed.html">Lafayette County (Missouri) Republicans: style="display: inline;"> src="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/I-70%20Billboard%2011_19_09.jpg" class="mt-image-none" style="" height="300" width="400"> The sign href="http://…