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Professional advice (from a 10-year-old).

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Near the end of June, I’m going to a conference at the University of Exeter (in England). The information posted about the area notes that “June is generally a warm and pleasant month to visit Exeter. With temperatures ranging from 19° Celsius and lows at around 11°C with temperatures getting higher near the end of the month.”

Converting that to Fahrenheit (the temperature scale to which my intuitions are calibrated in matters of “dressing for the weather”), we’re looking at lows around 53 oF ranging to highs (?) around 66 oF. Maybe that’s warm June weather for England, but in this part of California, that’s chilly.

Indeed, since it was about 66 oF when it was time to retrieve the younger Free-Ride offspring from the afterschool program, I walked over without a jacket or a sweater. I shivered the whole way there and the whole way back.

On that walk back the younger Free-Ride offspring (speaking from the comfort of a fuzzy winter coat) said, “You should get ready for England by spending a lot of time in a room that’s kept at 66 oF. Eating ice cream and drinking ice water.”

“Or I could just dress for the weather,” I countered. “It’s just that packing to dress for the weather might require a bigger piece of luggage than what I originally planned. Probably fewer summer dresses and more trousers and sweaters.”

“But if this is a business trip,” the younger Free-Ride offspring said sternly, “you should be bringing suits. And tights, to keep your legs warm.”

“But this is a meeting of philosophers of science,” I said. “Dressing professionally does not require a suit.”

“For philosophers of science,” said the younger Free-Ride offspring, “I think you should wear a suit, and tights (to keep your legs warm), and a white lab coat over it.”

Dear readers, the sad thing is that I am halfway considering taking this advice. After all, the younger Free-Ride offspring’s fashion sense is better developed than my own, and a lab coat would provide an additional layer of warmth.

Murphy’s Law: it’s what’s for dinner.

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It would seem that the chili peppers I acquired today were just hot enough to inflame the skin of the hands that chopped them without being hot enough to confer any appreciable heat on the chili they were meant to make spicy.

How many scovilles is that?

Alternatively, I may have stumbled onto a combination of ingredients that acts as antimatter to capsaicin.

Cranky parental ponderable.

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I recognize that when an infant keeps dropping the stuffed animal or flinging the strained peas or whatever, that infant is likely just being a careful empiricist, probing the nearby grown-up’s response to determine how many drops or flings or whatever it takes for the grown-up to lose it.

However, I would have thought that gathering approximately 12 years of data on a particular grown-up might leave an approximately 12-year-old kid in a position to draw some conclusions. Perhaps these aren’t conclusive conclusions (what with the problem of induction and all), but they’re probably good enough to draw predictions about likely responses to certain kinds of behavior.

All of which leads me to believe that a 12-year-old engaging in a behavior that has reliably elicited a strong negative parental response is not being empirically thorough so much as bloody-minded.

Ethics and the First of April.

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On the Twitters, journalist Lee Billings posted this:

In case anyone was wondering, this is an April-Fools-free zone. Misleading readers is a disreputable practice, even under auspices of fun.

I think this is a position worth pondering, especially today.

Regular readers will have noticed that I indulge in the occasional April Fool’s post.

In fact, I posted another today.

And, today’s April Fool’s post was notable (for me, anyway) in its departure from “surprising news about me and/or my blog” terrain. Instead, I was offering “commentary” on a news story that I made up — fake news that was outrageous but had just enough plausibility that the reader might entertain the possibility that it was true. (Lately, the “real” news strikes me as outrageous a lot of the time, so my suspension-of-disbelief muscles are more toned than they used to be.)

So Lee Billings is, basically, right: I was striving to mislead you, my readers, at least momentarily, for laughs.

Was it unethical for me to have done so? Have I fallen short of my duties to you by engaging in this tomfoolery?

Maybe this comes down to what we understand those duties to be.

I try always to make my own thinking on an issue clear — to explain my stand and to give you reasons for that stand. I also try to set out my uncertainties — the things I don’t know or the places I feel myself torn between different stances.

I actually did this in today’s April Fool’s post, even though I was giving my thoughts on the implications of a proposal that no one has made (yet).

When I’m responding to a news story, I accept that I have an obligation not to misrepresent the claims the story makes. This is not to say that I treat the source as authoritative — indeed, in a number of cases I have expressed my own views of the “spin” of the reporting, and of the details that are not discussed in a news story. And, I include a link to the source so readers can read it themselves, evaluate it themselves, and draw their own conclusions about whether I’ve represented the source fairly.

Today’s post had me responding to a news story that didn’t exist. Clearly, that’s a misrepresentation. Moreover, it means that the link I included to the news story didn’t actually go to the news story — more misrepresentation. However, the diligent reader who actually clicked on that link would be alerted to the fact that there was no such news story before getting into my presentation of the purported proposal or analysis of it.

Maybe this means that readers who were successfully mislead by the post actually fell short of their duties to click those links and read that source material with a critical eye.

It’s possible, though, that I’m wrong about this — that you all want me to break things down so clearly and accurately that you never have to click a hyperlink, that you’d like me to dispense with ironic phrasing (yeah, right!), and so forth. My sense is that readers of this blog have been willing to shoulder their share of the cognitive burden, but if I’m mistaken about that, please use the comments to set me straight.

The other ethical worry one might have (and some have expressed) about today’s post is that my fake proposal might be taken up and advocated as a real proposal — which, in this case, I agree would be bad. If that were to happen, would I be responsible?

I guess I might. But then so might authors of dystopian fiction whose ideas are embraced (and implemented) by people who have a different view of how the world should be. Personally, I think exploring the pitfalls of bad ideas before someone thinks to implement them could help us to actually find better ideas to implement. However, I suppose where bad ideas that get implemented come from is an empirical question.

Does anyone have a good way to get the empirical data that would answer it?

Well, at least we won’t need search committees.

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Academics have long suspected that the bean-counters at colleges and universities would happily do away with tenured faculty if they could. Indeed, from the administrative perspective, the only advantage to the tenured and tenure track faculty over non-tenure track folks (who can be paid less, given fewer benefits, assigned five course loads, and needn’t be rehired the next term) is that you can make them serve on committees. (Actually, non-tenured folks also get pressed into committee service, but it strikes me as pretty exploitative.)

Now, according to a story from the Chronicle of Higher Education, there may be one less flavor of committee for service by the tenured and tenure-track — plus, the bean-counters may finally have a way to shrink the tenured professoriate until it’s small enough to drown in a bath tub.

The state of Illinois is close to finalizing details of a plan to make tenured faculty posts “hereditary positions”. This would mean that a tenured professor in chemistry (for example) could, upon her demise or retirement, leave that professorship (with tenure still intact) to “an appropriately trained designee”. Under the plan, the designee could be a spouse, or one’s child, or a sibling. The designee could also be one’s favorite grad student or post doc of all time. The department would get to maintain that tenured billet and would, presumably, have a qualified chemist in it without the time and effort of a search committee. As the article notes:

To pass on one’s position, professors will be required to file an “academic will” laying out the order of succession for administrative approval. Without such a plan — or if the persons specified in the plan are judged to be lacking the appropriate training — the position will revert to the non-tenure track pool for its erstwhile occupant’s department.

Here, the department still avoids the hassle of a search for a new tenured or tenure track professor.

According to the Chronicle article, an issue yet to be resolved in this plan is whether professors will be allowed to pass on their tenured position to their heirs upon retirement (rather than having to die to trigger the succession).

UIUC History Professor Linda Ethelred noted, “Our suspicion is that some faculty would happily retire, rather than staying in those posts past their prime, if they could appoint their own replacements. But retired faculty cost university systems money and the administration wants to cut one of those expenses, either the expense of maintaining the retiree or of maintaining the tenured post.”

What this plan would mean for university departments, if implemented, is not entirely clear. Maybe allowing senior faculty to choose their own successors would generally preserve a department’s strength in a particular area of specialization, but maybe it would entrench focus on an area that is some distance from where “the future of the discipline” is judged to be. Possibly, though, hereditary tenured posts will encourage more collegial relations within a department. If your senior colleague is in the position to pick your future colleague, helping that colleague to understand the value of your approach to the discipline (and working hard to appreciate the value of her approach to the discipline) strikes me as a pragmatic move, one that may positively influence her academic will-making. Indeed, it might even lead to productive conversations and collaborations before she shuffles off this mortal academic coil.

A totally separate issue is what this plan might mean for the family life of tenured and tenure track faculty.

Could this be favorable to couples who have trained in the same academic discipline? The chances of both partners getting academic posts at all, let alone in the same location, are frighteningly small in some fields. Here, if one has landed the tenure track job, the other may finally have a reasonable expectation of someday also having such a post. If a couple’s employment will be sequential rather than simultaneous, potentially this could change the realities of child-rearing, too — the partner providing the hands-on care for the children would no longer be abandoning hope of a tenured post and a fulfilling research agenda, but merely deferring it. (This is a place, I reckon, where it might matter a lot if the final plan allows the transfer of a tenured post on retirement as well as death. Personally, I like it when I’m worth more to my better half alive than dead.)

And who even knows what influence this might have on parental pressure to follow in professorial footsteps, or on offspring’s rebellion in the face of such pressure, or on the shape of sibling rivalry in families with multiple offspring. Indeed, the potential competition between an offspring pursuing the professorial parent’s field of study and that parent’s best graduate student might make for some very awkward dinner table conversation.

There are probably legal ramifications that need to be explored. For example, in divorce proceedings, would a tenured position acquired during the marriage be counted as community property? (I have no idea what the situation is in Illinois, but California is a community property state, and I expect the administrations of the University of California and California State University systems are looking at the Illinois plan with some interest.)

And, especially relevant in scientific disciplines, will federal funding agencies recognize such a transfer of academic posts and transfer the remainder of an ongoing grant to the academic heir of the original grantee?

Color me cynical, but I worry that some of these complications are features rather than bugs. The more ways there are to actually disqualify the designated academic heirs, or to practically undercut their ability to perform the duties of the job (like keeping a lab funded), the better the odds that the corresponding tenured posts will be abolished and replaced with non-tenure track positions that are much more subject to the whims of budget-focused administrations.

We’ll see how this plays out.

On the targeting of undergraduates by animal rights extremists (and the dangers of victim-blaming).

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This morning, the Speaking of Research blog brings news of an undergraduate science major targeted for daring to give voice to her commitments:

Earlier this week, the animal rights extremist group at NegotiationisOver.com posted an email they received from Alena – an undergraduate student at Florida Atlantic University – in response to their attempts to solicit local activists to attend an animal rights event:

Actually, I’m an undergrad researcher aiming to work at Scripps [Research Institute]! I currently test on animals and think that it is perfectly fine. In fact, it is the one of the only ways that we, scientists, can test drugs in order to treat human diseases. I’m sure someone in your family or even a friend you know has suffered from a disease or pathology that was treated (or cured) by medicines THAT ONLY CAME INTO EXISTENCE BECAUSE OF ANIMAL TESTING.

First off, we applaud Alena for standing up for what she believes in and for expressing support for the humane use of animals in research aimed at addressing the health and welfare of humans and animals alike. Not surprisingly, however, NIO launched an offensive of degrading and hateful emotional abuse that caused Alena to plead for them to:

…please stop saying such horrible, untrue things about me. It’s hurtful.

In response, they no doubt ratcheted up the threats, causing Alena to:

…denounc[e] animal testing and my involvement in it…. I will be looking for other career choices.

Not unlike perpetrators of child and spouse abuse who use fear of further attacks to ensure silence in their victims, NIO hopes that flooding the email boxes of young people with obscenities and rabid missives will ensure that the voices of scientists of tomorrow are suppressed. Even for NIO, this is a new low, and Speaking of Research sharply condemns those who chose to act like shameless bullies when harassing, threatening and intimidating any student, researcher or faculty member.

I’m guessing at least some readers, reading this, are thinking to themselves (or hollering at the computer screen), “Well, what did she expect? You can’t engage rationally with animal rights extremists! Sending that email to the extremist website was a rookie mistake, and now she’ll know better.”

Undergraduates may well be “rookies” in certain respects, but damned if I’m going to encourage my undergraduate students to give up hopes of rational engagement with the other people with whom they have to share a world. Giving up on rational engagement is how you end up with the current state of politics and “governance” in the United States. We can do better.

Anyway, I hope that a moment’s reflection will persuade you that blaming the victim of the harassment here is just as inappropriate as blaming victims of bullying or rape. “If she had just done X, Y, or Z differently, this wouldn’t have happened to her!” Coming at it this way may convince you that you are safe from such harassment because of how you are doing X, Y, and Z. You aren’t. The extremists can decide to target you regardless of what you do or don’t do.

Really.

The undergraduate targeted here by extremists was involved in research with fruit flies. And extremists have targeted scientists who no longer perform animal research (and their children). Indeed, they have targeted people who don’t do scientific research at all (like me) who have dared to express the view that animal research might be the most ethical of our options.

The extremists are not choosing targets because of what they do or how they do it. Rather, just existing in the public square with a view different from theirs seems to be enough.

Indeed, the extremist website Negotiation is Over offers its readers step by step advice on how to target undergraduate students in the life sciences:

How to Shut Down Vivisectors-In-Training in Three Easy Steps

  1. By and large, students pursuing careers in research science truly want to help people, not victimize animals. Their indoctrination into the world of laboratory torture is slow, methodical, and deliberate. While they are being groomed, we are obligated to intercede and educate these young scientists with truth. As Alena admitted, “I was naive…I really just did not know about all this stuff.” And she is not unique.
  2. Students also need to understand that making the wrong choice will result in a lifetime of grief. Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic. We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are willing to assume will also be visited upon their parents, children, and nearest & dearest loved ones. The time to reconsider is now.
  3. Like all young adults, college students are acutely concerned with how they are perceived by their peers. They need to maintain a certain persona if they wish to continue to enjoy the acceptance of their community. This makes them infinitely more susceptible to negative and inflammatory publicity than their veteran-mutilator counterparts. When education fails, smear campaigns can be highly effective. Abusers have forfeited all rights to privacy and peace of mind and, if an abuser-to-be should fail to make the correct choice now, NIO is here to broadcast all of their personal information. Remember, young people document every facet of their personal lives online. In about 30 minutes, we were able to compile an impressive and comprehensive profile for Elena.

We need to begin to actively identify those enrolled in scientific disciplines and isolate the students preparing for or involved in biological research. We need to get into the universities and speak to classes. This poses a minor, but not insurmountable, obstacle for many activists that have been trespassed, banned, or TROed. We need to team up with other aggressive campaigners who excel at engaging and educating. We need to implement a “good cop, bad cop” approach to keep our targets off balance and maximize our effectiveness.

Let’s take this point by point.

1. By and large, students pursuing careers in research science truly want to help people, not victimize animals. Their indoctrination into the world of laboratory torture is slow, methodical, and deliberate. While they are being groomed, we are obligated to intercede and educate these young scientists with truth. As Alena admitted, “I was naive…I really just did not know about all this stuff.” And she is not unique.

We start with a recognition that the undergraduates being targeted want to help people. But in the very next sentence, we get a picture of the established researchers deliberately indoctrinating these young do-gooders to transform them into gleeful animal torturers. (There’s no explanation here of how the grown-up researchers — themselves presumably once dewy-eyed undergraduates who wanted to save humanity — became evil.)

For the good of these young people, the extremists must intervene and “educate these young scientists with truth”.

It would be one thing if this were just a matter of dueling fact-sheets. Of course, one of the things we hope we’re teaching our undergraduates is how to be critical consumers of information. Among other things, we want them to recognize that the facts are not determined by who shouts the loudest.* So whatever claims the extremists — or their professors — make about animal research are only as good as the evidence that backs them up, and finding that evidence may require the student to do some legwork.

I’m OK with that. Moreover, I trust my students to reflect on the best information they can find, to reflect on their own values, and to make the best choices they can.

The extremists, though, want to influence those choices with more than just “the facts” as they see them:

2. Students also need to understand that making the wrong choice will result in a lifetime of grief. Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic. We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are willing to assume will also be visited upon their parents, children, and nearest & dearest loved ones. The time to reconsider is now.

Please note that these threats are not tied to any particular kind of animal research — to research that causes especially high pain and distress, or to research with nonhuman primates, or to research that violates the prevailing regulations. Rather, the bombs, home demonstrations, and targeting of family members are being threatened for any involvement in animal research at all.

The extremists do not have a nuanced view. Merely existing with a view of animal research that differs from theirs is provocation enough for them.

And, they are happy to make their case with threats and intimidation — which suggests that maybe they can’t make that case on the basis of the fact.

3. Like all young adults, college students are acutely concerned with how they are perceived by their peers. They need to maintain a certain persona if they wish to continue to enjoy the acceptance of their community. This makes them infinitely more susceptible to negative and inflammatory publicity than their veteran-mutilator counterparts. When education fails, smear campaigns can be highly effective. Abusers have forfeited all rights to privacy and peace of mind and, if an abuser-to-be should fail to make the correct choice now, NIO is here to broadcast all of their personal information. Remember, young people document every facet of their personal lives online. In about 30 minutes, we were able to compile an impressive and comprehensive profile for Elena.

Who needs facts when you have cyber-bullying?

Indeed, the extremists are pretty clear in advocating “smear campaigns” that they are happy to lie to get their way, and that “abusers-to-be” (that is, anyone who doesn’t already agree with the extremist position, or who hasn’t decided to totally disengage) have no right to privacy or peace of mind.

Again, I suspect a reader or two in my age group may be thinking, “Well, if those whippersnappers didn’t post so much information about themselves on the Facebooks and the MySpaces and the Tumblrs, they wouldn’t get into this trouble, dagnabit!” But note again the willingness of the extremists to engage in smear campaigns. They don’t need to find embarrassing pictures, videos, or posts, because they can make stuff up about you.

And, regardless of how much online time undergraduates spend in what I (or you) would judge “overshare” mode, I am not willing to tell them that the best way to deal with extremists is to go into actual or virtual hiding. I am not prepared to cede the public square, the marketplace of ideas, or the classroom discussion to the extremists.

Disagreement is not a crime, nor a sin.

Threatening and harassing people because they disagree with you, on the other hand, is a pretty lousy way to be part of the human community. Calling this behavior out when we see it is part of what we grown-ups ought to be doing, not just to set an example for the grown-ups-in-training, but also to do our part in creating the world those grown-ups-in-training deserve.

——
* The one obvious exception here: the fact of which side is shouting the loudest is determined by which side is shouting the loudest.

 

Friday Sprog Blogging: the perils of a kid who’s listening.

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The younger Free-Ride offspring and Dr. Free-Ride’s better half have been studying aikido for some years now, at the same dojo, although not in the same class. This means that the younger Free-Ride offspring’s class is getting off the mat as Dr. Free-Ride’s better half’s class is getting onto it, which frequently leads to playful sparring and verbal provocations between the dogi-clad Free-Rides, shenanigans in which their Sensei occasionally takes part.

Recently, Dr. Free-Ride’s better half had a birthday. Indeed, it was on an aikido night. However, while the younger Free-Ride offspring went to the dojo that night, Dr. Free-Ride’s better half pleaded “too much work” and stayed home. Jokingly, I wondered if this might be an attempt to dodge the traditional “birthday beat-down” and, that night at the dojo, I suggested that the younger Free-Ride offspring ask Sensei to reschedule this beat-down.

“I’m not going to do that!” said the younger Free-Ride offspring.

This week, as the kids were clearing the mat and the adults were filing in, Sensei grappled Dr. Free-Ride’s better half, grunted “Birthday boy, eh?” and gave him a perfunctory thumping. Dr. Free-Ride’s better half then turned and gave the younger Free-Ride offspring the hairy eyeball.

“It’s not fair,” said the younger Free-Ride offspring in exasperation. “I didn’t tell Sensei to give [Dr. Free-Ride’s better half] a birthday beatdown — I even said not to! But Sensei did anyway!”

“Oh well,” I said.

“And even though [Dr. Free-Ride’s better half] knows that it was your idea, Sensei thinks it was my idea!”

I allowed as how my good reputation with Sensei meant that he tended not to suspect me of masterminding such plots (and I should point out that all I did was mention to my offspring the possibility of asking Sensei to reschedule the birthday beatdown — my offspring and Sensei did the rest on their own). “I guess the fact that people don’t suspect that of me is what makes me such an effective super-villain,” I said.

“But you are not a super-villain,” my offspring said to me. “You are a good person. That means you have to tell the truth, like to Sensei, right now.”

Sigh. This is why I’ll never get anywhere as a super-villain.

Midweek self-criticism: what about that logic and critical reasoning course?

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Back in mid-December, a reader emailed:

If I remember right, you were at one point talking about teaching a course on logic, scientific method[s], etc. If so, and if it happened this semester, is it possible to get a copy of the syllabus? It sounded interesting, and I once taught such a course and might in the future.

On the other hand, maybe I remember wrong, and you’re wondering WTF I’m talking about. In that case, uh… um… Happy Holidays!! that’s the ticket.

My correspondent did, in fact, remember correctly that I was discussing the planning of this course, although that discussion here pretty much stopped when my semester commenced kicking my butt.

In any event, given that I taught the course fall semester, it was planned at least enough that I was able to deliver it to the enrolled students. How did that go?

I would not describe it as an unqualified success.

One issue was that it was really hard to fully integrate the two distinct threads of the course (distinct threads which, as I noted, flowed from the laundry list of learning objectives for the course’s general education area). On the one hand, we were concerned with critical reasoning, grappling with actual “arguments in the wild”, recognizing strengths and weaknesses of such arguments (including many flavors of informal fallacies), and having the students develop their own skills in framing arguments of their own, often in response to the arguments put forward by others. On the other hand, we were tackling the formal properties of arguments — which meant mucking around with symbolic logic, truth-tables, truth-trees, methods of proof, and the like.

I’m sure there exist approaches to weave these two threads together, if not seamlessly, then with more success than I had.

However, a pretty serious stumbling block for me was the fact that maybe half of the students had a fairly easy time with the symbolic logic, while the other half struggled with it. And, it’s hard to find the time to illuminate the connections when you’re working on getting the basic idea across (and when it’s taking at least three times longer than you had hoped it would take).

If I had to do it again (and I might!), I’d be tempted to split up the semester into two distinct blocks, the first focused entirely on the formal properties of arguments, and the second on “arguments in the wild”. Getting what seems to be the harder material out of the way might open up some space to then see how it connects to the natural language argumentation with which the students are more at home.

It might also result in a lot of the students who are most freaked out by the symbolic logic dropping the course within the first couple weeks, but I had a bunch of people hoping spaces would open up so they could add the course. Front-loading the difficult material might actually be a kindness to the students who recognize their inability or unwillingness to deal with it, so they could drop the course before drop day.

I was pleasantly surprised at the students’ ability to engage with arguments in English (as opposed to Ps and Qs). Both in class discussions and in their essays, they did quite well at identifying the premises that were being put forward to support a conclusion, at zeroing in on implicit premises, at finding places where the link between premises and conclusions was not as strong as the person making the argument would have you believe, and at mounting persuasive counterarguments of their own. In other words, they demonstrated their ability to bring critical thinking to their reading of the op-ed page. This is a very good thing indeed.

On the other hand, some of the students hadn’t figured out how to ask good questions (or in some cases, any questions) about material they were having trouble understanding (again, mostly the symbolic logic stuff). This became painful in the class meetings and review sessions devoted to helping them get clear on the concepts and skills on which they were unclear. If you can’t even tell me which problems from the homework you want to see worked on the board, or whether, once you see they worked on the board, they make more sense to you, then I need telepathic powers to figure out how to help you learn this stuff.

Sadly, I do not have telepathic powers.

As it shook out, I don’t think I’d use my own syllabus again. Still, I will probably come up with a couple drafts of syllabi for the next iteration of the course. One will try to address the issues I discovered with the particular student population I had. The other, to satisfy my hunger for Platonic ideal forms (one of which must exist for a logic and critical reasoning course), will propose the mix of topics and activities I’d want to teach with no regard for externally imposed learning objectives or for the existence of students who might actually be resistant to spending more than the minimum time and effort on learning the material (and maybe even caring about it).

I reckon that drafting those syllabi would be a nice diversion from the mountains of grading. When it happens, I’ll post them here.