Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad ponders faculty “service” in higher education. For those outside the ivy-covered bubble of academe, “service” usually means “committee work” or something like it.
The usual concern is that, although committees are necessary to accomplish significant bits of the work of a college or university, no one likes serving on them and every faculty member has some task that would be a better use of his or her time than being on a committee. And, because “service” is frequently a piece of the faculty member’s job performance that is regularly evaluated (for retention, tenure, and promotion decisions, for example), faculty members are on the lookout for “easy” committees with which to pad the service section of their CVs.
Chad suggests that these easy service options — and maybe some of the hard ones, too — could be a consequence of superfluous committees:
Author Archives: admin
Great moments in scientific reasoning.
In my philosophy of science class yesterday, we talked about Semmelweis and his efforts to figure out how to cut the rates of childbed fever in Vienna General Hospital in the 1840s. Before we dug into the details, I mentioned that Semmelweis is a historical figure who easily makes the Top Ten list of Great Moments in Scientific Reasoning. (At the very least, Semmelweis is discussed in no fewer than three of the readings, by three separate authors, assigned for the course.)
But this raises the question: what else belongs on the Top Ten list of Great Moments in Scientific Reasoning?
Pitching an idea for a new show in the Star Trek franchise.
Like a good nerd, I love me some Star Trek. I will confess to having a strong preference for the original series (TOS), on account of that was what my parents watched with us when we were wee young nerds growing up. (My dad had a freakish ability to tell within the first few words of Kirk’s “captain’s log” at the opening which episode it was going to be.)
Something I didn’t realize until I was a mature nerd was just how regularly, in TOS, Kirk and/or the rest of the crew of the Starship Enterprise violated the Prime Directive, which, as Wikipedia tells it:
dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of pre-warp civilizations, consistent with the historical real world concept of Westphalian sovereignty. It has special implications, however, for civilizations that have not yet developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight (“pre-warp”), since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization. Although this was the only application stated by Captain Kirk in “Return of the Archons”, by the 24th Century, it had been indicated to include purposeful efforts to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept completely secret.
From the point of view of plotting a gripping episode on a strange new world, you can kind of see where breaking a non-interference rule would come in handy. (It also increases the damage for those drinking along at home.) But we viewers hardly ever saw any official repercussions from these Prime Directive violations.
Here’s where the idea for a new show in the Star Trek franchise comes in.
One parenting mistake we are unlikely to make.
(From here.)
Not that we won’t make plenty of other mistakes, but they’ll run more to Nietzsche than Rand.
Come to think of it, the eternal recurrence test is probably just right for bedtime stories, isn’t it?
Friday Sprog Blogging: school supplies.
The Free-Ride offspring just kicked off a new school year. The start of school in these parts means a long list of supplies to find — stuff you’d expect, like crayons, pencils, binders and binder paper, scissors, and glue sticks, plus stuff for general classroom use like tissues, had sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, paper towel, and copier paper. The tighter the school’s budget, the more items get added to the “voluntary donations” list. (And we’ve heard tell that the donations aren’t always voluntary. If you don’t get crayons, your kid goes through the school year without crayons. This makes some of those color-by-numbers arithmetic assignments pretty hard to do.)
Anyway, one consequence of the abysmal state budget for the Free-Ride offspring’s school is that there are no longer designated science teachers (there used to be two). Now, each classroom teacher has to figure out how to work through the grade level science curriculum his or her self.
You figure some of those science lessons will require materials that didn’t appear on the school supplies lists that went out right before the start of school.
Today, the sprogs offer the school supplies list that they imagine they would request if they were teaching science this year:
An open letter to the powers that control our classrooms.
To whom it may concern,
I can deal with the third story classrooms, really I can. Running up and down stairs to get to and from class helps give me the exercise I wouldn’t get otherwise because I’m grading papers instead of hitting the gym.
And, I can live with the back-to-back class meetings in third story classrooms located in different buildings across campus from each other. That’s just more physical exercise, plus a chance to live by my resolution not to view other people primarily as obstacles. I appreciate the opportunity for personal growth.
I even understand the wisdom of filling every seat in the classroom, from a resource utilization point of view.
But, do you know what would be nice?
Does a retraction constitute defamation of your coauthor?
I’m used to reading about cases of alleged scientific misconduct in science-focused publications and in major media outlets like the New York Times and the Boston Globe. I’ve had less occasion to read about them in law journals. But today, on the front page of the New York Law Journal, there’s an article titled “Scientists Defamation Claims Over Colleagues Efforts to Discredit Her Research Are Dismissed”. (The article is available to paid subscribers. This may be a good time to make a friend with access to a law library.)
The legal action the article describes was brought by a scientist who argued she was being defamed by a collaborator who no longer stands behind work they jointly published. The defendant says the published results are not reproducible; the plaintiff says, stop defaming me!
The judge says, your case doesn’t meet the burden to prove defamation.
From the article:
H1N1 flu on campus.
In my university mailbox yesterday I received a memo detailing measures to help prevent the spread of flu (whether seasonal or novel H1N1).
Information that may undercut my credibility with you as a professional philosopher.
I guess I suspected that this might be a problem, but it really sank in when a close colleague told me the other day that he was freaked out by it. And I’d hate to have you hear it from anyone else but me.
Anatomy of a scientific fraud: an interview with Eugenie Samuel Reich.
Eugenie Samuel Reich is a reporter whose work in the Boston Globe, Nature, and New Scientist will be well-known to those with an interest in scientific conduct (and misconduct). In Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World, she turns her skills as an investigative reporter to writing a book-length exploration of Jan Hendrik Schön’s frauds at Bell Labs, providing a detailed picture of the conditions that made it possible for him to get away with his fraud as long as he did.
Eugenie Samuel Reich agreed to answer some questions about Plastic Fantastic and the Schön case. My questions, and her answers, after the jump.