Category Archives: Tribe of Science

You can take the girl out of the lab …

Posted on by

It’s time for another spin of the “Ask a ScienceBlogger” wheel! The question this time is:

Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?

You may recall that I chose to leave chemistry for a career as a philosopher of science. Near the end of my time in chemistry, I was pretty anxious to leave the lab behind — preparing solutions, calibrating (and repairing) pumps, washing glassware, etc. So I’m actually a little surprised at my own answers to the questions, since I find myself drawn back to experimentation.

Continue reading→

Women and science: cultural influences.

Posted on by

Regular readers of this blog know that I periodically muse on the question of why there aren’t more women in science. But since I’m not, say, an anthropologist, my musings have been rooted mostly in my own experience and the experiences of people I know.
Well, the Summer 2006 issue of Washington Square, San Jose State University‘s alumni magazine, has an article — including interviews of an anthropologist and a sociologist — entitled “A difficult crossing: Obstacles that keep women from science” (pdf). Some evocative anthropological insight from that article after the jump.

Continue reading→

Cantor’s Dilemma, inappropriate relationships, and the emotional dimensions of mentorship.

Posted on by


Near the end of the “Ethics in Science” course I teach, we read the novel Cantor’s Dilemma by Carl Djerassi. It does a nice job of tying together a lot of different issues we talk about earlier in the term. Plus, it’s a novel.

While it’s more enjoyable reading than the slew of journal articles that precede it, Cantor’s Dilemma is a little jarring for the students at first, because it contains whole passages that aren’t directly relevant to the question of how to be a responsible scientist. As one of my students synopsized: “Science. Sex. Science. Sex. Science. Sex.”

Upon reflection, though, I think at least some of the “novelistic” relationships in this novel really do have something to say about the nature of the scientific life. Explaining it is going to require some spoilers, though, so if you haven’t read the novel and don’t want me spoiling it for you, go read it before you click the link for the rest of the post!

Continue reading→

Editorial cartoons that will ignite your Bunsen burners (not overturned cars).

Posted on by

There’s a lot going on in our world that might make you want to gnash your teeth. Some of that stuff, which you’ve heard about here before, involves the government trying to exert an influence over science — either in what research gets supported (and who makes that decision) or in how the results of research are reported (or not) — that maybe the government ought not to exert.
Sometimes detailed analyses of these skirmishes are what is called for. Other times, satire is the best delivery method for a stinging condemnation. Cartoonists, the Union of Concerned Scientists is tagging you in.

Continue reading→

What a night in a Stockholm club has to do with good science.

Posted on by

Yesterday, I returned home after an excellent five days in Stockholm, discussing philosophy of chemistry with philosophers of chemistry, eating as many lingonberries as I could manage, and trying not to wake up instantly when light started pouring through the curtains at 4 AM.
It was a good time.
My last night there, we decided to go to Stampen, a club in Gamla Stan (the old part of Stockholm), to hear the Stockholm Swing Allstars. They were fabulous. If they are playing anywhere near where you are, you should see them without fail. They have no CD (yet), but they have some MP3 demos on their website.
And, watching them perform put me in mind of some of the things that can make good science, like good jazz, really good.

Continue reading→

The author unaware.

Posted on by

When non-scientists think about the big ethical issues in the practice of science (beyond questions of how much freedom scientists should have with the tax-payers’ money, and whether scientists ought to be “playing God”), they usually think about the three mortal sins of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.
Thought the big three happen, for most scientists they don’t really present ethical questions. Scientists know they are wrong. If you ask scientists about the ethical issues that need the most clarification, one that usually comes up is authorship. In working on scientific research with other scientists, most scientists have had occasion to wonder who really is supposed to be an author of a particular manuscript.
A personal anecdote of mine about authorship (from the vault) below the fold.

Continue reading→

“I do not think that phrase means what you think it does.” (NYT on peer review)

Posted on by

There’s an article in yesterday’s New York Times about doubts the public is having about the goodness of scientific publications as they learn more about what the peer-review system does, and does not, involve. It’s worth a read, if only to illuminate what non-scientists seem to have assumed went on in peer review, and to contrast that with what actually happens. This raises the obvious question: Ought peer review to be what ordinary people assume it to be? My short answer, about which more below the fold:Not unless you’re prepared to completely revamp the institutional structure in which science is practiced, and especially the system of rewards.

Continue reading→

Getting ideas from Donald Trump? (An oldie from the vault.)

Posted on by

Hey, it’s May already! Could that explain why things are crazy-busy here?
There will be new content soon, once I’ve plowed through some more grading and exam-writing and curricular trouble-shooting. In the meantime, since I copped to enjoying reality TV more than I should (in that ABC meme, under “Not going to cop to”), I thought I’d share a May post from the earlier incarnation of this blog, a post in which I muse on what “The Apprentice” (a show, as of this season, I no longer watch … we’ve grown apart) might teach us about how to improve the scientific community.
Yes, it’s utterly daft. So what are you waiting for?

Continue reading→

Authorship, guests, and irony.

Posted on by

My favorite T-shirt says “I [heart] irony. It’s a great shirt, because no one can be absolutely sure that I love irony. Maybe I’m ambivalent about irony and I’m wearing the shirt … ironically. Despite what the Ethan Hawke character in Reality Bites may have said, irony is not as straightforward as meaning the opposite of the literal meaning of the words you are uttering. Rather, it’s meaning something that is some distance from what those words mean — a distance that some in your audience may be able to decipher, but that others may miss altogether.

What, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with the issue of authorship of scientific papers?

Continue reading→