As part of my graduate coursework in chemistry, I took a biophysical chemistry course from Professor Wray Huestis — not because my research was in biophysical chemistry, but because I was curious. Possibly my best move ever in choosing my classes, since she gave us one of the smartest and most useful writing assignments I’ve ever encountered.
Category Archives: Tribe of Science
Learning to write like a scientist: factors worth noting.
I’m following up on yesterday’s post on where scientists learn how to write (and please, keep those comments coming).
First, Chad Orzel has a nice post about how he learned to write like a scientist. It involves torturing drafts on the rack, and you owe it to yourself to read it.
Second, I’ll be putting up a post tonight about the best scientific writing assignment ever, at least in my graduate school experience. It’s one more professors teaching graduate students might consider adapting.
In the meantime, I want to throw out a set of factors that probably make a difference in the process of helping scientists learn to write. (Use the comments to add factors I’ve forgotten.)
Where do scientists learn to write?
During my office hours today, a student asked me whether, when I was a chemistry student, the people teaching me chemistry also took steps to teach me how to write. (The student’s experience, in an undergraduate major in a scientific field I won’t name here, was that the writing intesive course did nothing significant to teach good writing, and the assignments did very little to improve students’ writing.)
It’s such a good question, I’m going to repackage it as a set of questions to the scientists, scientists-in-training, and educators of scientists:
Scientists and non-scientists need to talk.
In a guest-post at Asymptotia, Sabine Hossenfelder suggests some really good reasons for scientists to communicate with non-scientists — and not just to say, “Give us more research funding and we’ll give you an even smaller iPod.” She really gets to the heart of what’s at stake:
Keeping score in academe: blogging as ‘professional activity’ (or not).
During the discussion after my talk at the Science Blogging Conference, the question came up (and was reported here) of whether and when tenure and promotion committees at universities will come to view the blogging activities of their faculty members with anything more positive than suspicion.
SteveG and helmut both offer some interesting thoughts on the issue.
Unpacking Nature’s ‘Where are they now?’
Abi at nanopolitan nudged me to have a look at Nature‘s recent article on what has become of targets of recent scientific fraud investigations. He notes that, interspersed with a whole bunch of poster boys for how not to do science, there are at least a couple folks who were cleared of wrongdoing (or whose investigations are still ongoing) which seems, to put it mildly, not the nicest way for Nature to package their stories.
So, I’m going to repackage them slightly and add my own comments. (All direct quotations are from the Nature article.)
Is ‘what is this good for?’ a question to be discouraged?
Larry Moran posts a response to my response to his earlier post on the advisability of putting ethical discussions into science classes. Careful fellow that he is, he’s decided to stick to a single issue per posting, so he starts with “the relationship between science and technology and where ‘ethics’ fits in”. Larry opines:
Part of what we need to do as science teachers is to make sure our students understand the difference between science and technology — between the uses of science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge. …
The goal, as far as I am concerned, is to convince students that knowledge for its own sake is a valuable commodity regardless of whether or not the knowledge can be applied to the betterment (or destruction) of Homo sapiens.
Teaching about ethics and other sources of controversy in science class.
In a post about curricular issues in genetics and biochemistry courses, Larry Moran raises some good questions:
It’s almost a requirement these days that introductory genetics courses include a section on genetically modified crops. This invariably leads to tutorials, or labs, or essays, about whether GM-foods are a good thing or not. These discussions are usually lots of fun and the students enjoy this part of the course. Professors are convinced they are teaching ethics and that it’s a good thing to show students that ethics is an important part of science.
In introductory biochemistry courses we often have a section on fuel metabolism. That’s the part of biochemistry that deals specifically with how your food is converted to energy. It’s human biochemistry. In that section of the course the Professor often raises the question of proper diet. Is it okay to eat meat? Are trans fatty acids bad for you? Should you be eating carbohydrates? Our experience is that Professors who teach this section often have very strong opinions and their personal ethical stance is portrayed as scientific fact.
These are two different cases. In the first one, the question is whether the value of debating controversial “ethical” issues outweighs the disadvantages. The biggest downside, in my opinion, is the emphasis on technology as opposed to pure basic science. By giving prominence to “ethical” issues we are emphasizing the consequences of genetic knowledge as it relates to the human condition. …
Part of the problem arises from a desire to please the students. How often do we hear the complaint that students aren’t interested in biochemistry and genetics? The students are bored by science so we have to add sections on genetically modified foods and genetic screening to our introductory genetics courses. Isn’t this strange? Rather than concentrate on making the basic science as interesting and exciting as possible, we cater to the students by giving them the topics they think are interesting. That’s no way to educate.
There’s another problem; what is ethics? Sometimes it’s hard to see the difference between simple controversy and ethics. Sometimes it’s hard to define exactly what “ethics” is all about in spite of the fact that “bioethics” is one of the biggest growth industries in science. Here’s where a philosopher or two could weigh in.
Hey, I’m a philosopher! Here’s my take:
What are our duties toward crackpots?
At the AAS meeting in Seattle, Rob Knop risked his own well-being to get the details on a poster that was, shall we say, waaaay out of the mainstream. Quoth Rob:
Now, don’t get me wrong. There will be a lot of posters with data or theory that turns out to be wrong, and there are a lot of posters that disagree with each other and debate and dispute the best interpretation of the data. That’s the normal process of science. The nuts here… they think they’re participating in the normal process of science, but they do not understand it well enough to realize that they are just cranks, nothing more. “Closed minded” the will call those like me who write them off, or “stuck in the modern paradigm just like those who dismissed Copernicus, Galileo, and Einstein.” Well, no. These folks are off their rocker, and we know it.
Nor is this sort of thing an isolated incident; one of Rob’s commenters points us to this intriguing abstract from an upcoming APS meeting.
I’ve been there. Indeed, I’ve even blogged about it, back in August 2005. Here’s what I wrote:
Bush administration’s State Department thinks it’s A-OK for Libya to execute innocent health care providers.
Only a few days out from the 19 December verdict in the Tripoli 6 case, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the Bush administration honestly couldn’t be bothered that Libya shows every sign of being ready to execute foreign healthcare workers who the scientific evidence indicates did not commit the crime with which they have been charged. Otherwise, you’d figure that the State Department spokesman, once questioned about the case, would bother to do his homework and figure out at least the bare facts of the situation. He did not.
So the lives of healthcare workers who went to Libya to help Libyans are dispensible? If saving them from an unjust sentence scores no political points, it’s not worth even considering? May I suggest, then, that the president’s draping himself in the mantle of the “culture of life” is so ironic that it may be raising the president’s risk of heart attack.
Absolutely appalling.
Revere has more.