Academics

Any biologists looking for a job?

pharyngula — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 12:36:27 +0000

Any biologists looking for a job?

My university is hiring for a full-time, tenure-track biology position. Take a look at our job ad:

Duties/Responsibilities: Teaching undergraduate biology courses including cell biology, genetics, electives in the applicant’s areas of expertise, and other courses that support the biology program; advising undergraduates; conducting research that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program, the division, and the campus.

We're looking for a cell biologist who can also teach genetics…hey, hang on there. Those are the courses I teach! Are the other faculty conspiring to replace me?^* It's a cunning plan they had, then, to put me on the search committee to find a new person to bump me off. They probably thought I'd never expect it if it was happening right under my nose.

Oh, well, I'll accept my fate gracefully. If you think you'd fit in at a liberal arts university where teaching is your primary responsibility, and you know your cell biology and genetics, apply! We'll be reviewing applicants starting on 10 November, and will be doing initial phone interviews in early December.

^*Actually, it's more about flexibility. With a small department, everyone needs to be able to wear multiple hats, and I'm the only guy teaching genetics right now, and have been the only guy for over a decade. We like to have a backup for everything. So it's more like I'm a potential single point of failure.

pharyngula Wed, 10/12/2016 - 08:36

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Academics

Hi! I tried to take a look at your post, but It seems is not available from the link you posted. Is there any other way to access this information?

That's not a thesis, it's a junkheap

pharyngula — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 17:20:43 +0000

That's not a thesis, it's a junkheap

Well, cool. You can download Judy Wilyman's anti-vaccination thesis from the University of Wollongong and read it yourself. So click, click, wait a second, and…

YAAAARGH! My eyes! I thought the social sciences side of the academic world would possibly have higher standards for writing than the science side, but no…it's awful. This should have been shredded, and Wilyman told to go back and start all over.

I got a few pages in and couldn't take it anymore. Helen Harris managed to read the abstract, and ripped it apart line by line. Orac read some more bits; would you believe she's criticizing the germ theory of disease?

It's over 300 pages long. Does she think that if you pile up the drivel high enough it becomes an architectural marvel, or something? It doesn't work that way.

Note also: her advisor is now defending her work, blaming the criticisms on a conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies with a vested interest in selling vaccines, among other familiar crank tropes.

I presume her advisor, Brian Martin, is tenured, so there's not much one can do to boot him out in disgrace. But it is perfectly reasonable to deny a discredited professor the privilege of ruining students' careers by refusing him graduate students, or requiring additional, critical sponsorship by other faculty of any students. The University of Wollongong should be taking steps to protect their reputation immediately.

pharyngula Thu, 01/14/2016 - 12:20

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Academics

bad science

"... smallpox is only transferrable by direct skin to-skin
contact. It is not transmissible through the environment or until the symptoms appear. "

Well bugger me. Glad she backed that up with a reference.

Oh wait. She didn't.

Methinks the University of Wollongong needs more applications by Ph.D. candidates from around the world, asking if they might pursue thesis topics such as:

= House flies are good luck: debunking the connection between fly infestations and transmission of gastrointestinal disease.

= The conspiracy by plumbing fixture manufacturers and the plumbers' unions, to force people to have indoor toilets.

= Immune system benefits of living with uncollected garbage and open sewers.

= Deconstructing mosquito control: postmodernist perspectives on an exercise in murderous species-ism, with comparisons to the Nazi Holocaust and school dress codes.

Needless to say, anyone here who wishes to attempt such an application should save all correspondence for publication.

Well, I see one glaring error immediately. They spelled "Woo" wrong. They spelled it W-o-l-l-o-n-g-o-n-g. But aside from that, rapacious pharmaceutical companies don't exactly contribute to a warm fuzzy well loved image when they do all the crappy things that big business loves to do these days, so there is that. So maybe this is all just a question of who is mis-managing our mythology. Why are all the heart warming stories of plagues prevented, suffering ended, and diseases cured being driven out of the public forum and being replaced by stories of corporate psychopathy? Maybe because we DO have a problem with corporate psychopathy, and this wooful thesis is, IMO, quite possibly a mis-directed attack on that.

Looking at people like Wilyman, Cruz, Trump, Lamar Smith, or Scalia, it is clearly obvious that we need a higher minimum science and math requirement in modern higher education.

I worked in immunology for 15 years, and specifically in vaccine immunology research for 6 years.

I would happily and heartily welcome a serious investigation into the relative efficacy/benefits of the range of vaccines administered in the contemporary suite, but this PhD project is the biggest stinking pile of pseudo-research that I have ever encountered, and I've seen some whoppers. That it is in a sociological department is no excuse - this is bogus crap and nonsense of the highest order.

If Wollongong does not revisit this award they should seriously be reviewed as a provider of accredited tertiary education. FFS, what's next - a PhD thesis expounding on how the Earth really is flat, despite all the sphericist propaganda?

The author of this thesis is poised to become a hero of the anti-vaxxer movement, the only question is how many young lives will she be responsible for ending from a preventable disease. I doubt she will in any way feel responsible, as Yoda would say "Belief strong in this one!"

merhaba eskısehırde yasıyorum.. yasım 27..bekarım ve yalnızım. Evim var. lüks değil ama ev evdir ).buradan birçok bayan arkadaş edindim.. aralarında evli dul bekar türbanlı olgun bayanlar vardı.. kimisi aylarca kaldı kimisi sadece fırsat buldukça yolu düştükçe kapımı çalıyor. ben okumuş kültürlü ne istedıgını bilen bır ınsanım..amacım hayatın sıkıcılığından biraz uzaklaşmaş, sevgının beden dliyle uygulanması ve yaşlandığımda güzel anılar hatırlamaktır…birde sızde bılırsını yalnız yasamak hıc güzel degıl.. hayat paylaşınca ve sevişince güzel…ben çalıştığım için sehır dışına çıkamıyorum. evımde bır adet kedım var rahatsız olmazsınız umarım…eskısehıre gelmek isteyen benım mısafırım olmak ısteyen hanım efendıler telefonuma ulaşabılırler.. daha önce görüştüğüm bayan arkadaşlarımdan referans alabılırler.. sizi nasıl bırı olduğumu anlatırlar.. genelde kendı arzularımı değil partnerımın hayal gücüne göre sevişirim. Sevdıgı seylerı yaparız.. karşılıklı gizlilik ve güven muhakkak olmalı.. ben kımene yakışıklı kıme cırkın geliyorum bunun bır önemı yok zaten.. amacımız insan olmak hobımızı uygulamak zevk almak.. fırsat buldukça uzun yıllar görüşebılırız..ben kimseden ırtıbatı kesmedim..tekrar görüşmek ıstemeyenlere saygı duydum aramadım…6 sene önce tanıştığım bır bayanarkadas hala telefondan arıyor. evlenmıs cocugu olmuş.. güzel olan bunu basarabılmek.. belkı bende evlenırım ) şimdi karar verdıysenız telefonuma mesaj atın.. hazırlanın yola cıkın sızı karşılıycam

So the evil big pharma plot to sell vaccines had kept the evil big cosmetic plot to sell soap and hand sanitizers unnoticed.
Arguing vaccines are unnecessary is on the same level as arguing personal hygiene including washing the hands with soap is a mere marketing device to sell more soap.

Details that the author displayed here are really impressed! So maybe we should try to understand better on the idea of "thesis" and "junkheap".

I built a microscope today

pharyngula — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 17:00:52 +0000

I built a microscope today

I did! It was an origami microscope, with a single simple lens added. Here's what it looks like:

It's called a Foldscope, and I got it as part of a beta test program. It's a bit like the original Leeuwenhoek microscope, which you held up to your eye to see a magnified image.

The differences are that Leeuwenhoek used a drop of water to form a spherical lens; this comes equipped with a pre-printed lens. Leeuwenhoek used brass and little thumbscrews to move the specimen around; Foldscope comes on a sheet of thick paper, and you punch it out and fold it, and then move a slide around under the lens. Leeuwenhoek just aimed the back of his scope at a candle, or sunlight. You can do that with Foldscope, too, or it comes with a little LED source and battery that you can attach to the back. Leeuwenhoek did not have a cell phone camera, so he relied on his ability to draw what he saw. Now we can use magnets and double-stick tape to attach an iPhone to it.

Yes, I know. My iPhone costs a few hundred times what Foldscope does. Even more ironically, I was tinkering with Foldscope in my lab, next to a microscope that costs about 10,000 times more. Here's a quick photo I snapped of some prepared chick embryo slides I had.

It doesn't look like much, but this was taken two minutes after fumbling with the gadget. I saw much clearer images with my eye, but the combination of tinkering with my phone and the slide and the Foldscope was poorly practiced. Others are doing much better and are providing tips.

I can say that it's a better image than anything I saw with my old plastic microscope from Sears that I spent the whole of the summer of 1971 mowing lawns to pay for. It's a start. I'll have to practice more.

Apparently, these things only cost a dollar or so to make, so they have a lot of promise for citizen science, low income education projects, or field work. My $20,000 Leica is never leaving my lab bench, but this I can slip in my pocket and take anywhere, and you can imagine equipping a whole room full of kids, or mob of nerds at a SF convention, with these on the cheap.

So tell me, what would you imagine doing if you could get a bunch of microscopes for a dollar each?

pharyngula Thu, 02/19/2015 - 12:00

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Academics

Science

Here's a website that describes how to build a $10 adapter that turns your smart phone into a microscope. Judging from the pictures included, it seems to work pretty well:

http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-microscope-con…

I'd take them to the nearest underfunded school.

Sexism is derailing mathematicians from an early age

pharyngula — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 14:07:54 +0000

Sexism is derailing mathematicians from an early age

A study of students in Israel by Victor Lavy and Edith Sand has discovered a surprising result…or maybe not so surprising to you, but I was rather shocked. Math teachers score girls' performance lower when they know their identities.

In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names. The effect was not the same for tests on other subjects, like English and Hebrew. The researchers concluded that in math and science, the teachers overestimated the boys’ abilities and underestimated the girls’, and that this had long-term effects on students’ attitudes toward the subjects.

For example, when the same students reached junior high and high school, the economists analyzed their performance on national exams. The boys who had been encouraged when they were younger performed significantly better.

They also tracked the advanced math and science courses that students chose to take in high school. After controlling for other factors that might affect their choices, they concluded that the girls who had been discouraged by their elementary schoolteachers were much less likely than the boys to take advanced courses.

But…math. Isn't that one of those incredibly objective disciplines in which questions all have a right answer and a best method, and there's no wiggle room for adjusting a score? Just like all of science -- there's no subjectivity here at all.

No, when you're evaluating how well students think, there's always lots of room for taking student knowledge into account. I teach genetics, and it's a good example: I grade exams with my nice brief key by my side, and when students come up with the same answers I do, it's easy and fast. But when they don't, I have to look much more closely. Did they just make an arithmetic error in the last step? Did they understand the basic concepts, but just fail to integrate them all? Did they demonstrate a complete lack of comprehension of basic Mendelian principles? I have to see some sign of understanding in the work to make the effort to track through the problem more carefully, and it would be tempting to, for instance, know that this student did poorly on their last exam, so it's not worth the effort to try and figure out what dumb mistake they made this time.

(I take steps to avoid that trap: I grade papers anonymously, not looking at the name on the first page.)

But I have a hard time imagining taking a negative attitude towards a math problem on the basis of the solver's sex. Apparently it's common enough that it actively skews assessments downward, though.

I'm familiar with the Swedish study that showed a pervasive bias against women scientists on the job market, but it's clear the problem goes much deeper: women are being discouraged from going into math as early as middle school.

The paper also tried to puzzle out what was going on with these teachers, and found some other interesting correlations.

Older and single teachers seem to favor boys over girls: the coefficient of a dummy indicator of being older than 50 years old is positive and significant (0.206, SE=0.104), and so is the estimate of the indicator for single teachers (0.315, SE=0.202). The estimated coefficient for teachers from Europe-North America origin is negatively and significantly correlated with teachers’ biases (-0.204, SE=0.113). The other individual characteristics that we examined are being married (positive but insignificant) and the number of children and the proportion of daughters, both of which have negative coefficient but not significantly different from zero.

So older teachers are more biased in favor of boys; there's hope that that effect will diminish as a newer generation of teachers takes over. I don't think we can insist that teachers get married.

I also wondered about the effect of the teacher's sex on this problem. Buried deep in the paper is an interesting revelation: they couldn't look at that because all of the teachers in their sample were women. We learn two things from that, of course: that women can propagate sexist attitudes (no surprise), and that teaching is a deeply gendered profession. The gender distribution in the teaching profession also has to be sending a message to girls and boys.

Here's the authors' conclusion.

We also find that favoritism of boys among math and science teachers has an especially large and positive effect on boys math test score and on their successfully completion of advance math and science studies in high school; the respective effect on girls is negative and statistically significant. The estimates of the direct-subject effect in math are of special interest because of the considerable gender gap in math achievements and its impact on future labor market outcomes. Moreover, since this gap in math achievement partly results from teachers' stereotypical biases against girls in mathematics, eliminating these biases will go a long way toward reducing the math achievements gender gap, and it will also decrease the gender gap in enrollment in advanced math studies. The impact on the various end of high school matriculation outcomes carries meaningful economic consequences because these high stakes outcomes affect sharply the quantity and quality of postsecondary schooling and impact earnings at adulthood as well.

Another message we should take away from this: teaching is important. All you primary school teachers out there are shaping society as a whole.

pharyngula Sat, 02/07/2015 - 09:07

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Academics

equality

It seems to me that people holding such a prejudice are open to embarrassment when they encounter people who do not conform to their expectations. Sad that those little humiliations hardly balance the damage they do.

Tim: They just write us off as weirdoes. No embarrassment at all.

the worst class of my college years was a physics lab ...taught by a sexist who REFUSED to give me a good lab grade...my male lab partner got As and Bs I would get Cs ...I used to give my partner the answers.. I see things have only changed a little bit in 40 years ...(sigh)

These articles are very important for all stakeholders in a young woman's education. There is also the problem of rewarding (by acceptance) of boys' poor behaviour. This adds to young woman's reticence to speak out. It is useful to see the success of girls only schools - it says a great deal of how much the majority of schools need to change.

This is supposed to be a science blog. I see shabby evidence in the article justifying the conclusion made in the title, and it's not at all clear to me that Myers even read the original paper as opposed to just reading the Times' coverage of said paper. I see several issues with reaching the conclusion that Myers and the Times are reaching.

First, we are given no indication as to the sample size of the students and teachers (only that there were three groups of students). Neither Myers nor the Times mention the sample size, even though that ought to be a critical data point for extrapolating the results into any meaningful conclusion. (We are told that there were two tests given to the students...it is unclear if there were only two, or if there were multiple sets of two tests given.)

Second, it is not clear if the tests that were graded by the blind exam-graders were even the same tests graded by the non-blind graders; if the two groups were grading different tests (and especially if it were a small sample size of students), then it could easily have been that there was differential performance by the students on the different tests.

Third, this test was conducted on Israeli students and both Myers and the Times are mapping it onto a phenomenon as it appears in the United States with alarmist language. Maybe Myers and Miller are well-versed in the Israeli education graduate school curricula and are therefore confident that the teachers' educational background is roughly the same as American teachers' educational background - I personally have no idea what Israeli teachers are taught in education school. I do know that typical American education degree programs are deliberately calculated to eradicate bias and are if anything over-saturated with political conscientiousness that ought to shift the burden onto the researchers to prove the persistence of such bias among American teachers.

Without wanting to pay the $5.00 to read the paper itself, I'm not exactly convinced that I ought to buy the conclusion Myers is hawking.

Temporary ecology/organismal biology position at UMM

pharyngula — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 19:17:16 +0000

Temporary ecology/organismal biology position at UMM

We're hiring! If you have skill in teaching, and want to hone those skills at a school with a reputation for excellence in teaching, apply!

Full-Time One-Year Position in Biology
University of Minnesota, Morris

The University of Minnesota, Morris seeks an individual committed to excellence in undergraduate education, to fill a full-time, one-year, possibly renewable, position in biology beginning August 17, 2015. Responsibilities include: teaching undergraduate biology courses including a 2000-level survey of organismal biology for majors (with labs), an introductory-level survey of biology for environmental studies/science students (with labs, including field trips to local habitats), and an upper-level organismal or ecological elective in the candidate’s area of expertise; contributing to other courses that support the biology curriculum; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program as well as the campus at large.

Candidates must be at least A.B.D. in ecology, organismal biology, environmental biology, or a closely related field by August 17, 2015. Experience teaching undergraduate biology is required. (Graduate TA experience is acceptable).

The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) is a residential public liberal arts college serving about 1900 undergraduate students. As one of five campuses of the University of Minnesota, the Morris campus is located 160 miles west of Minneapolis in the rural community of Morris, MN. UMM is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a Top 10 Best Public Liberal Arts College. The student body is talented, diverse and engaged. The UMM student body is one of the most ethnically diverse in the University of Minnesota system with 20% students of color (13% are American Indian students) and a growing international student population.

The college values diversity in its students, faculty, and staff. The college is especially interested in qualified candidates who can contribute to the diversity of our community through their teaching, research, and /or service because we believe that diversity enriches the classroom and research experience at the University

Applications must include a letter of application, resume, graduate and undergraduate transcripts, a teaching statement with evidence of teaching effectiveness, and three letters of reference. Applications may be sent to Ann Kolden, Administrative Assistant, at koldenal@morris.umn.edu, (320) 589-6301, or they may be sent to:

Biology Search Committee Chair
Division of Science and Mathematics
University of Minnesota, Morris
Morris, MN 56267-2128

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Screening begins February 16, 2015. Inquiries can be made to Professor Heather Waye, Search Committee Chair, at (320) 589-6304 (wayex001@morris.umn.edu).

The University of Minnesota shall provide equal access to and opportunity in its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. To request disability accommodation or material in alternative formats contact: UMM Human Resources, (320)-589-6024, Room309, Behmler Hall, Morris, MN 56267.

pharyngula Thu, 01/29/2015 - 14:17

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Academics

The Lancet done screwed up

pharyngula — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 13:15:17 +0000

The Lancet done screwed up

Chelsea Polis and Kathryn Curtis wrote a paper that asked whether hormonal contraceptives affected your likelihood of being infected with HIV, Use of hormonal contraceptives and HIV acquisition in women: a systematic review of the epidemiological evidence. Here's the abstract:

Whether or not the use of hormonal contraception affects risk of HIV acquisition is an important question for public health. We did a systematic review, searching PubMed and Embase, aiming to explore the possibility of an association between various forms of hormonal contraception and risk of HIV acquisition. We identified 20 relevant prospective studies, eight of which met our minimum quality criteria. Of these eight, all reported findings for progestin-only injectables, and seven also reported findings for oral contraceptive pills. Most of the studies that assessed the use of oral contraceptive pills showed no significant association with HIV acquisition. None of the three studies that assessed the use of injectable norethisterone enanthate showed a significant association with HIV acquisition. Studies that assessed the use of depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) or non-specified injectable contraceptives had heterogeneous methods and mixed results, with some investigators noting a 1·5—2·2 times increased risk of HIV acquisition, and others reporting no association. Thus, some, but not all, observational data raise concern about a potential association between use of DMPA and risk of HIV acquisition. More definitive evidence for the existence and size of any potential effect could inform appropriate counselling and policy responses in countries with varied profiles of HIV risk, maternal mortality, and access to contraceptive services.

In short, hormonal contraceptives don't affect your chances of getting AIDS, with the possible exception of DMPA (better known as Depo-Provera), which a few studies with different methods found to elevate the risk. So, basically, it's saying that there's not a problem with contraception endangering women in this regard, but that inconsistent results with Depo-Provera warrant further investigation (later, they would publish an update (pdf) that suggests women ought to be warned about the uncertainty of this side effect of Depo-Provera). It seems reasonable. So they sent it off to The Lancet for review and publication, and that's where the mess began.

There are actually two problems here: The Lancet's sloppy review policies and their failure to adequately respond to a screw-up, and the abuse of the data in the paper by a group of religious ideologues.

The paper was sent out to three reviewers, only one of whom bounced it back with an unprofessional and strongly negative review. It happens. The authors responded with a thorough rewrite of the paper, which is a cautious over-reaction, but I think they were trying their best to be meticulous. Then it turns out that the negative reviewer is a peculiar kind of AIDS-denialist crank with absolutely no professional affiliation -- he's a guy with a degree crusading for his pet theory, that HIV is not sexually transmitted at all, but is spread by medical injections.

So one question is why this guy is even on The Lancet's list of reviewers. They've removed him now, which is one positive response, but it's unfortunate that he was given the opportunity to play the poison pill on papers that didn't share his weird hobby horse. At the very least, his bad reviews ought to have flagged him to the editors as someone who ought to be checked out.

Overall, though, I think The Lancet's response was muted but appropriate. It should have acknowledged the loss of time and effort by researchers that was lost because they let a wackaloon have his hand on the brake of publication.
The second problem is one The Lancet has little control over: it's that anti-science kooks tend to be unscrupulous and unethical. That third reviewer not only tried to squelch the paper, but then published the reviewer's copy on an anti-contraception web site, and somehow distorted it's message to be that Depo-Provera was inarguably deadly, and that there was a government cover-up to conceal it.

DEPO-PROVERA -- DEADLY REPRODUCTIVE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, they announced. It has been cited on LifeSite News, the mouthpiece for a conservative Christian "pro-life" group that opposes contraception and abortion.

The second classified document obtained by Fosu was authored by Chelsea Polis of USAID and Kathryn Curtis with CDC. It heavily influenced the WHO review staff to determine there was “insufficient reason” to withdraw Depo Provera and enforce mandatory warnings. Fosu claims the Polis and Curtis analysis “water[ed] down available evidence” by ignoring key research.

Oh, really? It was published in The Lancet. That doesn't sound very "classified" to me. It was stolen in violation of copyright and reviewer ethics before publication -- I don't quite see how they can claim an unpublished paper that was just working its way through the review process could have "heavily influenced" the World Health Organization, and further, its conclusion is a moderate call for caution and further research.

Polis is rightly annoyed at all this. The Lancet is not responsible for the theft and ignorant misuse of a scientific paper by a gang of fanatics, but they do have a responsibility to do a better job screening out said fanatics, and they ought to do a better job of recognizing the concerns of their contributors.

In sum, Lancet Infectious Diseases failed to perform due diligence in selecting an unbiased and professional peer reviewer, allowed unscientific and offensive comments to move forward in the review process, failed to protect my work from being leaked by an unethical reviewer who the journal was unable to follow up on, dragged their feet in taking my case formally to COPE, failed to fully describe the situation to COPE, and shrugged their shoulders at the violation of copyright given "reputational concerns". They've never apologized for this situation, or shown any interest in implementing more meaningful solutions to prevent this from happening in the future (e.g., telling reviewers that if they breach confidentiality that their names will be publicly shared so that other scientists can avoid being reviewed by them, or putting additional measures in place when asking unaffiliated individuals to serve as peer reviewers). Why not?

I agree that naming and shaming ought to be the very least action taken, so it's a little odd that she didn't come right out and name David Gisselquist as the unethical reviewer (although the links in her article do make it very easy to figure out who it was).

One more annoying little twist, that I've heard a thousand times before…

Recently, the journal did a Tweetchat called #AskLancet - and I had some follow up questions on my situation. How this conversation unfolded is best encapsulated in a Storify; in short, my questions were not responded to, until they were retweeted by a man who shared my concern. Click here to read the Storify.

pharyngula Sat, 11/29/2014 - 08:15

Tags

Academics

bad science

Science

(sigh)...sometimes i wish i were an atheist when i see how stupidly dangerous some of my co-religionists can be

Every university is broken

pharyngula — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 13:19:00 +0000

Every university is broken

But the University of Hawaii at Mānoa looks to be more broken than others. Christie Wilcox writes about the budget cuts there: the place is being gouged to the bone -- the College of Natural Sciences has a cohort of graduate students to whom they are failing to live up to their responsibilities (the university brought them in, these students made a commitment to UH Mānoa, you don't get to suddenly decide midway through their training to abandon your obligations.)

For the spring semester, 81 students applied for TAships within the department of Biology. Only 35 of those have advisors within the College of Natural Sciences, leaving 46 students with no funding source less than two months before the end of the semester. The deadlines for applying for financial aid have long since passed. It’s not like anyone has dozens of research positions to hand out willy-nilly. So this email left the advisors of 46 students with no time to react. Without their TAships, most of these students would be forced to take a leave of absence or drop out, because the loss of a position means the loss of a tuition waiver, too. For out of state students, that means paying more than $10,000 in tuition as well as losing $8,500 in income. It’s hard enough to live in one of the most expensive cities in the country on a TA salary. It’s basically impossible without it. And as Dr. Cole wrote, a sudden drop in TAs would directly impact the number of courses offered to undergraduates, negatively impacting their education that they pay thousands for every year.

It's specifically the sciences that are bearing the brunt of the cuts, and there is definitely a perception that that is unfair.

In the past few years, the College of Natural Sciences has been doing exactly what it should be: enrollment is up 35%. Faculty research funds are up 67%. The college—which teaches some 60% of all undergraduate majors on campus—has been booming, and now brings in 15% of all the tuition revenue at UH (and that’s including the professional tuition revenue from the law and medical schools). However, the budget allocation model, overseen by Vice Chancellor Reed Dasenbrock and Vice Chancellor Kathy Cutshaw, has remained stagnant, basing funds solely on historical allotments. The College of Natural Sciences has been expanding, but it’s budget hasn’t. Though it brings in 15% of the revenue, it receives 2% back. That’s it. I’ve seen the numbers—Ditto is right. He had two choices: cut TAs, or run in the red. He was explicitly ordered to balance his budget, so he cut TAs.

I'm going to disagree with Wilcox a little bit: the sciences do bring in more revenue at many universities -- here at UMM, biology is the most popular major on campus, and our enrollments have been growing at a faster rate than other disciplines. However, the sciences are dependent on every other department: we expect our students to take courses in math, and English, and foreign languages, and art. It is only right that the wealthier disciplines help subsidize the less heavily populated, but no less essential, disciplines. We're all in this together to provide a balanced, broadly based education.

But that doesn't change the problem. It simplifies it. Universities are grossly underfunded. These are state institutions, set up to serve the needs of the people, and our budgets are easy targets for know-nothing legislators, who nibble at them every year, and they're shrinking below maintenance levels. That's exactly where we're at now: fire essential staff needed to run the education mission of the college, or run in the red, because the state is starving them. I've seen the budget figures for the University of Minnesota, and it's shocking -- while demand for higher ed keeps growing, they keep cutting our budget, year after year, and telling us to throw more of the costs on the backs of our students, who already suffer from painful debt.

The problem isn't in the universities, or the students, or the faculty. The problem is that state governments have been shirking their responsibility to maintain the educational infrastructure for decades, and it's reaching a crisis point. First UH Mānoa, and then every other university will crumble into the same sewer of neglect.

pharyngula Wed, 11/19/2014 - 08:19

Tags

Academics

Yay! Sexism in science is over!

pharyngula — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 00:47:38 +0000

Yay! Sexism in science is over!

The New York Times has declared that Academic Science Isn’t Sexist. What a relief! The authors are reporting the results of a broad study of many different parameters of the career pipeline, and are happy to report that there are no problems in academia. None at all, no sir.

Our analysis reveals that the experiences of young and midcareer women in math-intensive fields are, for the most part, similar to those of their male counterparts: They are more likely to receive hiring offers, are paid roughly the same (in 14 of 16 comparisons across the eight fields), are generally tenured and promoted at the same rate (except in economics), remain in their fields at roughly the same rate, have their grants funded and articles accepted as often and are about as satisfied with their jobs. Articles published by women are cited as often as those by men. In sum, with a few exceptions, the world of academic science in math-based fields today reflects gender fairness, rather than gender bias.

Yay! But wait…I looked at their paper, and it was weird. Despite total equality, somehow there are still fewer women entering the academic workforce, still fewer getting tenure, women are getting fewer publications, etc. It's right there in the data they present. Somehow it all vanishes in the analysis, though. So I look at the data, I look at their interpretations, and there's some magic that goes on between the two that makes the differences disappear. I'm not sure how -- it's a long paper and it gallops all over the place, so it's going to take more scrutiny than I want to spend on it to figure out how they're doing that magic trick. But here's a clue, one among many:

The cause of this is not that women applicants are not being hired, but rather that they are choosing to opt out of academic science. [my emphasis]

Back to the NY Times article: we see the same sleight of hand.

Our analyses show that women can and do prosper in math-based fields of science, if they choose to enter these fields in the first place.

See? It doesn't count against academia if the women choose to leave, rather than not being hired or, I don't know, forced out at gunpoint. So, for instance, if women were facing a hostile work environment in academia, or are discouraged by being told or seeing that they'll have to work much harder than their male colleagues to succeed, or learn that they have to make a choice between family and work (a choice the men rarely face), and just decide "screw it, this isn't worth it", that's not a problem! Well, in this paper it's not a problem, it's waved away. In the real world, it's a problem.

Here's another summary of why women leave academia from a completely different source that doesn't dance away from the difficulties.

Men and women show radically different developments regarding their intended future careers. At the beginning of their studies, 72% of women express an intention to pursue careers as researchers, either in industry or academia. Among men, 61% express the same intention.

By the third year, the proportion of men planning careers in research had dropped from 61% to 59%. But for the women, the number had plummeted from 72% in the first year to 37% as they finish their studies.

If we tease apart those who want to work as researchers in industry from those who want to work as researchers in academia, the third year numbers are alarming: 12% of the women and 21% of the men see academia as their preferred choice.

So women find academia a far less pleasant prospect than men do, and abandon it in droves. But it's by choice, so Williams and Ceci have an excuse to ignore this hemorrhage. And why do they find it less pleasant?

Women more than men see great sacrifice as a prerequisite for success in academia. This comes in part from their perception of women who have succeeded, from the nature of the available role models. Successful female professors are perceived by female PhD candidates as displaying masculine characteristics, such as aggression and competitiveness, and they were often childless.

As if all this were not enough, women PhD candidates had one experience that men never have. They were told that they would encounter problems along the way simply because they are women. They are told, in other words, that their gender will work against them.

But this is not a problem. Because they choose to leave. In the same way, I suppose we could argue that ISIS is not a problem in Iraq, because all those refugees chose to flee their homes.

But wait! You know this story could be worse. Williams and Ceci could make some argument built around intrinsic differences, you know, the old "boys play with trucks, girls play with dolls" stuff…uh. Oh. Uh-oh. Crap.

As children, girls tend to show more interest in living things (such as people and animals), while boys tend to prefer playing with machines and building things. As adolescents, girls express less interest in careers like engineering and computer science. Despite earning higher grades throughout schooling in all subjects — including math and science — girls are less likely to take math-intensive advanced-placement courses like calculus and physics.

We live in a culture with pervasive gender roles -- we all learn early on that if we want to fit in (and as social animals, most of us do want to fit in), you adopt the roles that will make those around you happy, and often that means we can be personally happier that way. But let's not pretend that these aren't shaping women to fit into less well rewarded positions, or in many cases compelling them to abandon life choices to which they would be best suited (and likewise, this can afflict men as well). So here they even admit that girls perform better at science and math, yet somehow they end up not following through to enter science and math careers.

But this is not a problem. Because it is their choice.

What's really ironic is that the conclusion of their paper is that they have swept away all the attempts to reduce the causes of the attrition of women in STEM to a single “culprit” -- it's multifactorial and complicated, they proudly announce! Yeah, we already knew that. I don't know anyone who has tried to explain it away as a consequence of a single factor…except those people who try to argue that girls just don't like machines and building things. Or blue things. Or stuff that requires active involvement. Don't you all understand that men do things, women have things done to them?

You're going to see a lot more about this paper in the near future -- all of the gnathostomes are dropping their jaws at the denial of the obvious in that op-ed. Galileo's Pendulum sees a big omission.

The basis for dismissing sexism seems to be a small study of faculty hiring practices, comparing the percentage of male and female applicants who successfully landed academic physics positions. They didn’t look at retention — the problem that many assistant professors don’t achieve tenure or are slow to be otherwise promoted — and they seem to ignore all of the factors that decide whether women feel welcome in the profession. That seems to be a significant problem, not one that should be dismissed as “anecdotal”.

Emily Willingham has done a more thorough reading of the paper than I have -- she points out that the data in their figures is elided in the text to an amazing degree.

Check out Figure 15. Go ahead. Just for fun. And scroll on down to Figure 16. Look at the salary values on Table 4. Look at Figure 18. See the job satisfaction results in Figure 19. Take a gander at Figure 5. Figure 4. I don't understand how they wrote the paper or the op-ed they did while looking at the same results I see in their paper. Nothing about these data says, "OK, folks. Our work in the academy is done. Let's focus on those kindergartners."

And evidently, the implications weren't manifest to them, either. Even as these authors say there's no sexism in the science academy, they write:

... we actually found a greater exodus of women from non-math-intensive fields in which they are already well represented as professors (like psychology and biology, where 45 to 65 percent of new professors are women) than from fields in which they are underrepresented (like engineering, computer science and physics, where only 25 to 30 percent of new professors are women). Our analyses show that women can and do prosper in math-based fields of science, if they choose to enter these fields in the first place.

Emphasis mine. See, the problem here is that women don't choose to enter these fields in the first place. But that's not because academia's not unwelcoming to them or anything.

Willingham seems to have had the same reaction to the paper I did -- it's bizarrely jarring, in that the data just scream "ACADEMIA HAS A PROBLEM HERE!", while the text chortles happily and says "Academia has no problem at all here."

Ceci SJ, Ginther DK, Kahn S, Williams WM (2014) Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 15(3):75–141.

pharyngula Sat, 11/01/2014 - 20:47

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Academics

equality

Oh, dear

pharyngula — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 12:01:03 +0000

Oh, dear

The context of this graph isn't entirely clear, but it's from Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra of UC Davis, and it's from a poll of 800 first year students, so I presume it's the results of a survey of their incoming class?

Maybe one of the things we need to do as part of popularizing science to the general public is to emphasize the diversity of life, and talk more about the cool things plants and bacteria and fungi and so forth do. I know I started out as a zoologist, am still mostly focused on animal development, but over the years I've become increasingly aware that there are amazing contrasts to be studied. We might wish we could study aliens from Mars, but every time I look at plant development, for instance, I feel like I'm examining extraterrestrials already.

pharyngula Fri, 08/29/2014 - 08:01

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Academics

Maybe we need to firstly educate those conducting polls of first year students, analysing and publishing the results, that this isn't the way to conduct science. Avoiding selection bias is a critical thinking skill and just one of the many pillars of scientific enquiry.

Indeed, context was limited by twitter space. A poll of students in a first-year bio class. Sent to me by a colleague at a research university (not UC Davis), with the request not to name the institution. Was not intended as a scientific analysis of student perceptions, merely a guide for the instructor to get a feel for incoming students' interests.

In the 15 August issue of SCIENCE (vol.345, no.6198), page 738 has a book review of 'The Amoeba in the Room,' in which the reviewer, Michael Shen, brings up a similar point, concluding: "Scientists are often encouraged to 'think big'. 'The Amoeba in the Room' reminds us that perhaps we would be well served to do just the opposite."

Learning thresholds

pharyngula — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:08:34 +0000

Learning thresholds

Kim Goodsell was not a scientist, but she wanted to understand the baffling constellation of disease symptoms that were affecting her. The doctors delivered partial diagnoses, that accounted for some of her problems, but not all. So she plunged into the scientific literature herself. The point of the linked article is that there is a wealth of genetic information out there, and that we might someday get to the point of tapping into the contributions of citizen scientists. But I thought this was the most interesting part:

She started by diving into PubMed—an online search engine for biomedical papers—hunting down everything she could on Charcot-Marie-Tooth. She hoped that her brief fling with a scientific education would carry her through. But with pre-med knowledge that had been gathering dust for 30 years and no formal training in genetics, Kim quickly ran headfirst into a wall of unfamiliar concepts and impenetrable jargon. “It was like reading Chinese,” she says.

But she persisted. She scratched around in Google until she found uploaded PDFs of the articles she wanted. She would read an abstract and Google every word she didn’t understand. When those searches snowballed into even more jargon, she’d Google that too. The expanding tree of gibberish seemed infinite—apoptosis, phenotypic, desmosome—until, one day, it wasn’t. “You get a feeling for what’s being said,” Kim says. “Pretty soon you start to learn the language.”

I know that feeling! I watch students struggle with it every year, too. There is a certain level of biological literacy that has to be met before one can grasp the more sophisticated concepts -- and that once the door is opened, it becomes easier and easier to go deeper.

Someone who is strongly motivated and determined, like Kim Goodsell, can do it on their own, but I really feel that achieving that basic level of understanding is the goal of an undergraduate education. We prep students with enough information to get over the threshold (and also, maybe, some specific skills to get them started in professional schools), so that in an ideal world they can then charge off and keep learning on their own.

This isn't just true of biology, either. Literature, art, history, philosophy, economics, psychology, etc., etc., etc. all have a set of fundamental concepts that are hurdles to getting started…but once you're over them, you can soar.

pharyngula Thu, 08/21/2014 - 08:08

Tags

Academics

genetics

The dangerous part about the kind of self-teaching Ms. Goodall describes is just how much utter crap/woo/scam (choose your favorite term) can be found doing such searches. The fact that she started (based, clearly, on her own desire for reliable science) from a vetted and trustable source (PubMed) allowed her to avoid that minefield.

The important take away is that "SHE plunged in". She wasn't plunged in. She took control. That is the ONLY way any significant learning is going to happen. So unlike the conclusion of the author of this post, I would suggest that a great aim for undergrad education would be to enable graduates to reclaim their powers/independence which for the most part was stripped away from them in schooling!
Yeah, I know..I am a dreamer!! :-)

Define 'scientist'. An operational definition might be a person who engages in science. OK, so now we have to define science. Here's my definition: putting a thesis to the test by creating a hypothesis (an 'if' ... then' prediction) that can be falsified inter-subjectively by the recorded data.

Clarifying what science is not is also helpful. I suggest that science is not the same as technology; that technologists are not the same as scientists; and that the technical literature is distinct from the scientific literature. Many who might like to think of themselves as 'scientists' are more accurately described as 'technologists'. For example, medical doctors engaged in clinical practise and chartered engineers engaged in designing useful structures are technologists not scientists. Further, most medical research seeks to find practical solutions to disease. Thus, medical research itself often has more in common with seeking engineering solutions than the pure research of science proper.

To Kim Goodsell, it seemed more likely that her medical problems had one underlying genetic defect that that her problems were caused by two genetic defects. That's a reasonable hypothesis for anyone to make. Hence, Goodsell searched the published literature using PubMed, which again is a reasonable starting point for anyone who knows even the basics about medical databases.

Google Scholar rather than Google also comes in handy. Google per se is most useful for tracking down a full copy of a paper in PDF, that are otherwise behind a paywall, once you have identified exactly what papers you want to read using PubMed or Google Scholar. None of this requires that you be a Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine. Just because half the world's population has an IQ of less than 100, it doesn't follow that all humans are as clueless as the least clueless.

If you define the mean IQ of a normal population as 100, with an SD of 15, then roughly one fortieth or 2.5% of the world's population of roughly seven billion has an IQ of 130 or more. I suggest that, with a bit of perseverance, a person with an IQ of 130 or more is intelligent enough, if sufficiently motivated, to teach themselves pretty much the fundamentals of anything.

Hence, there are roughly two hundred million humans on this planet, who irrespective of whether they have graduated from medical school or not, are perfectly capable of reading and understanding the medical literature.

'... than that her problems were caused by two genetic defects.'

yes this is right that when you learn something you become a master of it. i am wokring at leatherzapp and i know nothing about leather and clothing items first but now i learned a lot.

yes this is right that when you learn something you become a master of it. i am working at leatherzapp and i know nothing about leather and clothing items first but now i learned a lot.