Since it has come up in the comments on my review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, I’m going to go ahead and discuss some of the issues around cutting-edge biomedical technologies in the book that might, or might not, be plausible when pondered. (As Bill points out, the scientific details in the novel itself are pretty minimal — the focus is squarely on the interactions between characters — so plausibility is only an issue if you’re not good at suspending disbelief.)
WARNING: This post will be packed with spoilers!
Unless you’ve already read the book, or you have sworn a blood-oath never to read the book, you really should skip this post.
Author Archives: admin
Book review: Never Let Me Go.
Last May, on my way back from a mini-conference in Stockholm, I had a long layover in Munich. Since major airports are now essentially shopping malls with parking for commercial jets, I used a little bit of that time to wander through a pretty impressive airport book store, where I picked up a copy of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I had heard a bit about it (maybe in reviews on the radio, if memory serves), and knew that it had some connection to ethical issues around biomedical technologies that seem not to be too far off from where we are now.
Because I was taking a stab at using my layover time wisely, though, I spent the hours at the airport reading a couple of other books I had promised to review for journals. Then, once on the plane, I slept. Then, I was back home fighting the twin demons of end-of-semester grading and jet lag.
A couple days ago, while straightening up some piles of books, I found Never Let Me Go and decided I needed some “me-time” reading a novel. Less than 48 hours later, I was finishing it and wondering what would count as a decent interval to wait before rereading it.
It’s a very good book. I’ll try to explain why without giving away too much, since a lot of the pleasure of reading this book is the way in which the reader comes into possession of key details as the story unfolds.
The death of an administrator.
Zuska reminded me that today is the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Denice Denton, an accomplished electrical engineer, tireless advocate for the inclusion and advancement of women in science and, at the time of her death, the chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz.
I never met Denton, and a year ago my feelings about her were complicated. On one side was her clear public voice against unexamined acceptance of longstanding assumptions about gender difference; from an article dated 26 June, 2006 in Inside Higher Ed:
She was in the audience when Lawrence H. Summers made the controversial comments about women and science last year and she was among the first to speak out against them, telling The Boston Globe of Summers: “Here was this economist lecturing pompously to this room full of the country’s most accomplished scholars on women’s issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day.”
Any gathering of such scholars would indeed have included Denton, who was then dean of engineering (one of her many “first woman” accomplishments) at the University of Washington and was about to become chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Throughout her career in research (as an electrical engineer) and administration, she was known for being a mentor to women — in the public schools, in graduate school, at faculty levels. Last month, she was named this year’s winner of the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award — named for the first female astronomer in the United States and given to a person or organization who does the most to advance women in science.
On the other side, shortly before her death, Denton had been the subject of a San Francisco Chronicle story about the amount of money the UC system spent on administrator salaries and perquisites.
Not officially from the M.P.A.A.
If you had to give this blog a movie rating, what would it be and why?
And while we’re admitting you to college, let’s throw in the Ph.D. program too!
Another article from Inside Higher Ed that caught my eye:
The chancellor of the City University of New York [Matthew Goldstein] floated a unique approach this week to dealing with the long lamented problem of low enrollments in the sciences: Offer promising students conditional acceptances to top Ph.D. programs in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) as they start college. …
In a speech Monday, Goldstein envisioned a national effort in which students identified for their aptitude in middle school would subsequently benefit from academic enrichment programs that their own local high schools might not be able to provide (The chancellor described the proposed program as one that could have a particularly strong impact on increasing woefully low minority enrollments in the STEM fields).
Upon entering college, students would be offered a spot in a top Ph.D. science or math program, provided they meet certain performance requirements throughout their undergraduate years.
“It sends a very strong statement to students who have not necessarily had the encouragement … that very elite places genuinely believe in them and, at an early age, they are prepared to make an investment to serve as an incentive for those students to continue to do very good work,” Goldstein said.
Some of my initial reactions to this proposal:
What ought to be driving college admissions decisions?
Recently Inside Higher Ed had an article about a study (PDF here) coming out of the University of California on the predictive power of the SAT with respect to grades in college courses. The study, by Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica Santelices at the UC-Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, followed the performance (which is to say, grades) of students at all UC campuses for four years and found that “high school grades are consistently the strongest predictor of any factor of success through four years in college”. Indeed, the study found high school grades a stronger predictor of grades past the first year.
The SAT turned out to be not such a great predictor of college grades, but a dandy predictor of socioeconomic status of the kids taking the SAT.
What interests me about this story is not the perennial debate about whether the SAT tells admissions officers anything useful about applicants, but the larger question of what admissions officers — and folks in society at large — imagine should be the guiding principle in deciding who ought to win the competition for scarce spaces in a college class.
Friday Sprog Blogging: psychic powers?
On a busy weekday morning as members of the Free-Ride family prepare to get out the door:
Elder offspring: Let’s check if you have psychic powers.
Younger offspring: How can you check if I have psychic powers?
Elder offspring: We’ll see if you can tell which Pokemon is on the card before I flip it over.
Younger offspring: I don’t think I can do that.
Elder offspring: (to Dr. Free-Ride’s better half) Can you do an experiment with me?
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: There’s not really time right now — I’m trying to get ready for work. What kind of experiment?
Elder offspring: I’m going to use Pokemon cards to give you a psychic test. That’s OK, we can do it tonight.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Kiddo, every evening is a psychic test.
Reliance on professional integrity and personal ethics shouldn’t mean letting the rascals get away with it.
Zuska sent me an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education (behind a paywall, I’m afraid) that’s more than a little connected to the thought experiment I posed earlier in the week.
The article was written (under a pseudonym) by an assistant professor whose nomination for a university award was torpedoed. By a member of his own department. Who was blocking the nomination of the author not out of any particular animus toward the author, but as a way to attack the department chair who had made the nomination.
What fun things must be in that department!
Scientists and journalists.
I’m late to this round of the discussion about scientists and journalists (for which, as usually, Bora compiles a comprehensive list of links). The question that seems to have kicked off this round is why scientists are sometimes reluctant to agree to interviews, especially given how often they express their concern that the larger public seems uninterested in and uninformed about matters scientific.
As I have some interest in this topic, I’m going to add a few thoughts to the pile:
A few words on names and expectations.
You’ve probably seen the posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here.) responding to the University of Florida study claiming that women’s names affect the social support or discouragement they’ll get for pursuing technical subjects. (Those with the more “feminine” names will tend to be discouraged from “manly” activities like math, although apparently a frilly name won’t hurt their performance in those activities.) Since the above-linked posts give the reasonable critiques of the research, I’m going to veer immediately to personal anecdata: