Razib tossed off a post expressing amazement that a very attractive wine bar hostess was making science fiction recommendations. The noteworthy feature, apparently, was “the intersection of science fiction & female physical hotitude.”
Predictably, others have commented on this post, worrying about the casual profiling of hot chicks as not into S/F, or perhaps of women who are into S/F as closeted ugly chicks (or closeted boys).
Should I pile on? Maybe just a little.
Category Archives: Tribe of Science
When academics IM …
… Page 3.14 shares the transcript. Go read what we said when Ben Cohen and I shot the cyberbreeze about Karl Popper and the allure he holds for scientists.
I can’t promise it will leave you ROTFLYAO, but it might make you 
TTFN.
Karpova-Tonegawa update.
Making repairs, staying afloat.
Like sailors we are, who must rebuild their ship upon the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry dock or to reconstruct it there from the best materials.
Otto Neurath, “Protocol Sentences”
* * * * *
The Neurath quotation above was offered to explain something about scientific theories and scientific knowledge, but today it puts me in mind of scientific communities instead. For surely, if we could bring the ship of science to dry-dock, there are lots of rotten planks that we might replace with strong new lumber, but that’s not an option. We have to fix the old tub while it’s still at sea, and there are some bits in need of repair that might put the person making the repair in shark-infested waters.
I’ve been thinking about this because of a couple of blog posts that got stuck in my head.
Why do scientists lie? (More reminiscing about Luk Van Parijs.)
Yesterday, I recalled MIT’s dismissal of one of its biology professors for fabrication and falsification, both “high crimes” in the world of science. Getting caught doing these is Very Bad for a scientist — which makes the story of Luk Van Parijs all the more puzzling.
As the story unfolded a year ago, the details of the investigation suggested that at least some of Van Parijs lies may have been about details that didn’t matter so much — which means he was taking a very big risk for very little return. Here’s what I wrote then:
What ever happened to Luk Van Parijs?
Just over a year ago, MIT fired an associate professor of biology for fabrication and falsification. While scientific misconduct always incurs my ire, one of the things that struck me when the sad story of Luk Van Parijs broke was how well all the other parties in the affair — from the MIT administrators right down to the other members of the Van Parijs lab — acquitted themselves in a difficult situation.
Here’s what I wrote when the story broke last year:
How chemistry makes me feel. (One from the vault for National Chemistry Week.)
We’re just past the midpoint of National Chemistry Week, so I thought I’d share a “classic” post (from last year’s National Chemistry Week) about how studying chemistry can nourish one’s human yearnings.
Some academic links worth following.
There is a bunch of interesting stuff to read on the subject of teaching, learning, and being part of an academic department right now. Here are a few links I think deserve your attention:
Online AP science classes — with lab?
Adventures in Ethics and Science field operative RMD alerted me to a recent article in the New York Times (free registration required) about an ongoing debate on the use of online instruction for Advanced Placement science classes. The crux of the debate is not the value of online science classes per se, but whether such courses can accomplish the objectives of an AP science course if they don’t include a traditional, hands-on laboratory component.
The debate is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gets to the question of what precisely an AP course is intended to do. Second, it brings up the question of who has access to AP courses — and the special challenges presented for science instruction in some regions. Finally, I think it also prompts an examination of how colleges and universities deal with incoming student bodies whose preparation for college is rather more heterogeneous than homogeneous.
Full disclosure: As some of you already know, I regularly teach an online section of my philosophy of science course.* As well, about a hundred years ago, I was a high school student who took a bunch** of AP classes and AP tests.
My (unhinged) plan for improving science journalism and the market for it.
I’m blaming the folks at Three Bulls! for the post that incited this one. Indeed, I started my descent into what is clearly a delusional plan in a comment there.
The short version: Pinko Punko was disturbed at how very little actual communication of content was involved in a presumably science-centered media frenzy. The “journalists” in question neither sought actual informative content from scientists (let alone striving to understand that content), nor passed on anything like it to their viewers. To those of us who expect journalism to communicate actual content (or at least try to), this is disturbing.
Hoping that perhaps, from this brush with media frenzy, Pinko Punko could offer a more precise diagnosis of the problem, I asked:
Is it a supply-side problem — primarily, one of incompetent science journalists, or of journalists who think they understand more science than they actually do? If so, could this be the answer to our oversupply of science Ph.D.s (i.e., send them to the press conferences and the newsrooms)?
Is it a demand-side problem — with the public unable to get the least bit interested about science (at least when there’s a good Congressional sex scandal or a celebrity behaving badly), or interested but without the requisite understanding of the most basic details of science to really “get” the scientific findings they might be interested in?
Do the people on the supply end misjudge the interest or intelligence of the people on the demand end?
Can we lay this all at the feet of people who use print, audio, and video news to sell ads?
The diagnosis? Probably all of these are at work. That means it’s time for a cunning plan (which in its present form involves no turnips but possibly a little mind control). Here is a slight elaboration on the manifesto I posted at Three Bulls!