I’ve retired my old profile picture, but I thought I’d give you a peek at the larger photo from which it was taken. That’s me in biology class, my senior year of high school, doing stuff with slides and an alcohol burner and microorganisms. Some dedicated yearbook photographer took the picture (though it wasn’t one of the candids that made it into the yearbook).
But high school was a long time ago …
Mad props to Joe Claus, the photographer who took the new profile picture. (Indeed, Joe’s skillz are such that the new shot might be about as fair a representation of everyday-me as the old yearbook reject. Someday, dear readers, we will discuss the artifice involved in visual representations — all of them, not just the ones doctored to fool the journals.)
Author Archives: admin
Changing sides/forsaking science
Last week, I blogged about my own path from chemist to philosopher. Not only did this prompt an interesting post from John Lynch about his trajectory, but it prompted the following comment:
Dear Dr. Free-Ride. Your mechanistic steps to changing from hard science to philosophy of it were more what I would expect from a hard technically-oriented methodical bench scientist rather than a philosopher of science.
Philosophically speaking (or is this bordering on sociology), what motivated you to forsake the rigor, the demands, the difficulties, the frustrations, and the infrequent joy of the eureka as a player of the game to become an onlooker from the security of stadium seats or the armchair. What conflicts did you face, if any, and with what rationalizations/motivations did you manage them?
Still playing the game and, yes, still yours truly a—
Polly Anna
It is true, my earlier post focused almost entirely on the external part of my journey — the particular tasks involved in my transformation — rather than on the internal process of deciding to throw myself in a different direction. At Polly Anna’s request, let’s delve deeper.
Advice for job seekers
Many a time, in the course of doing these memoirs, I have wished that I were writing fiction. The temptation to invent has been very strong, particularly where recollection is hazy and I remember the substance of an event but not the details … Then there are cases where I am not sure myself whether I am making something up. I think I remember but I am not positive.
–Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
Given the perhaps inevitable comparisons between memoirist-turned-novelist (all in the same book!) James Frey and recently resigned NASA press office operative George Deutsch, I think it’s worth taking a quick look at the relevant differences:
Changing career paths
Last week, while I was occupied with Tangled Bank, a reader left me this comment:
I was just wondering, how did you change from chemistry to philosophy? What little career steps were involved — if you don’t mind my asking.
– From an academic considering a career change.
Below the fold, my secret protocol for changing from chemistry to philosophy …
Optimism about the scientific community
The other day I was chatting with a colleague about teaching ethics to science majors. This colleague teaches ethics to business majors and was, I think, surprised at my general optimism. Teaching ethics to business majors*, it seems, can be discouraging.
As my colleague described it, the business majors seem to have a picture of the business world as a series of opportunities to savage, or be savaged by, one’s competitors (and while there are temporary alliances to gain advantage over others, in the end everyone is your competitor). Selling business majors on the idea of not doing things they can get away with, or of being virtuous when no one will notice it and reward it with a bonus, is Very Hard. Naive, non-business majors like me might think that being able to look at oneself in the mirror could be incentive enough not to prey on the weak, or cook the books, or whatever business people are tempted by nowadays. But business students explain, “What makes me feel good about myself is the size of my paycheck. That’s the good I should maximize.”
As sad as this conversation made me feel for my colleague, it made me feel very optimistic about the prospects of the community of science.
Friday Sprog Blogging: methodological concerns
Yesterday was Groundhog’s Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. The elder Free-Ride offspring expressed concerns about the conclusion that we’re in for six more weeks of winter:
- This is backwards! Seeing his shadow means it’s sunny. Sunny means it’s more like spring. I think seeing his shadow means spring should come sooner, not later.
- That groundhog is in Pennsylvania. We’re in California! Maybe we get spring sooner even if Pennsylvania gets six more weeks of winter. We would really need a groundhog in California to find out anything about what’s going to happen with spring in California.
- Why do they only check what the groundhog sees on this one day? Wouldn’t it be better to check whether the groundhog sees his shadow for lots of days? That would give more information about whether spring is coming sooner or later.
After enumerating all these problems with the Groundhog’s Day methodology:
“I don’t think groundhogs really know how to predict the weather. And, people who think whether the groundhog sees his shadow will tell them when spring will come are being kind of silly.”
Of course, Pseudonymous Kid suggests a change to a different animal system for the prediction.
UPDATE: Caroline Helpy-Chalk proposes yet another animal system here. I see the beginnings of a high-powered research institute …
Tangled Bank Polytechnic Institute Spring Catalog (#46)
These are the offerings for the semester starting February 1, 2006. Students are encouraged to sit in on a variety of classes during the “shopping” period.
In addition to academic offerings, this listing includes programs in the residence halls and around campus. Remember that a sharp mind needs to step outside the classroom and the laboratory from time to time.
Talk amongst yourselves.
I’m hammering away at the next edition of Tangled Bank (going up tomorrow) — plus, you know, teaching and stuff — but I wanted to give you a little something to work on. From New Scientist:
YOU could be forgiven for thinking that scientific fraud was in fashion. Weeks after the cloning superstar Woo Suk Hwang admitted faking research using human embryos, doubts have been cast over two other high-profile scientists.
Jon Sudbo of the Norwegian Radium Hospital, Oslo, has already admitted inventing a study into whether anti-inflammatory drugs can improve the prognosis for oral cancer patients, which was published in The Lancet in 2005. But fresh concerns have now been raised over papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April 2001 and April 2004 and the Journal of Clinical Oncology in October 2005.
…
Meanwhile on Monday, the newspaper Japan Today alleged that Kazunari Taira, a biochemist at the University of Tokyo, faked his research into coaxing E. coli bacteria to produce a human enzyme called Dicer. A university investigation team is preparing a report on the matter.
Has peer pressure replaced peer review? (“All the cool scientists are covered by the major networks!”) Is this evidence of a new epidemic of cheating, or of a new epidemic of catching cheaters? Or is this all a ploy to distract us from the hurried development of a super-secret weapon by which the scientists will finally zap scientific literacy directly into our skulls, the better to get new recruits? (“One of us! One of us!”)
Report your findings in the comments.
“Hush your mouth!”
[I’m blogging on this at the request of my mom, who also requests that I try not to blog so blue.]
As Chris, among others, has noted, there’s a piece in the Washington Post about global warming. The piece includes an all-too-familiar feature: the government scientist (here James E. Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies) whose bosses are trying to get him to settle down and not say so much about what he thinks the science says. Deja vu all over again.
Because I know others will attend the the specifics of the global warming science and policy issues here, I’m going to restrict my focus to what I see as the central ethical question: what are the obligations of the government scientist?
Defining terms (or, I got that ID survey, too)
Being identified as “pro-science” is pretty cool, given that some people get the idea (from my kvetching about ethics) that I’m against science. (I’m against sloppy or dishonest methodology masquerading as science, but that doesn’t make me an enemy of science.) But that was about the only part of the widely distributed ID survey that gave me the warm fuzzies.
What bugs me the most about the survey is that it isn’t looking for actual information — or, if it is, it’s very badly designed — so much as it is looking to force a certain response from the targeted respondants. Really, we’re talking question design on par with Stephen Colbert’s standard interview closer: “George W. Bush: great president, or the greatest president?”