Chad and Tara have spilled the beans on a highly classified backchannel discussion we ScienceBloggers have been having. Since the cat is already out of the bag (presumably a bag of beans), I suppose I’ll chime in.
What basic concepts would you like me to explain here?
Friday Sprog Blogging: a child’s garden of empiricism.
We have been dancing near record low temperatures in these parts. It’s not quite as cold as the dark side of the moon, but it is cold enough that the water in the garden hoses is frozen in the morning and there’s frost on the ground. (Also, cold enough that ice needs scraping off the windshield in the morning, which has led me to the discovery that, in the absence of a proper ice-scraper, a Safeway card does the job.) Still, in anticipation of our traditionally temperate late-winter weather here by the San Francisco Bay, we’ve been planning some garden-related fun for the Free-Ride offspring. As you might guess, a lot of the plans have a science-y angle to them.
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:
Even at a conference, you’ve got to eat!
Hey, for those of you coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, don’t forget to sign up for the dinners! There’s one big group dinner on Friday, January 19, from 7 to 10 PM, and a bunch of group dinners on Saturday, January 20, right after the official conclusion of the conference.
You know you’ll have fun sharing a meal with other conference attendees, some of whom you may only know through the screen. Make a date to meet them in the three-dimensional world.
For those of you who really like planning your trips, many of the restaurants in question have their menus online. Yes, I’ve already decided what I’m getting both nights. I don’t want to risk missing some good conversation while my head is buried in a menu!
Happy birthday to ScienceBlogs!
As John Lynch points out, today marks the first anniversary of the launch of ScienceBlogs, an experiment in gathering conversations about science in a dedicated corner of the blogosphere. (Yes, I know that spheres don’t have corners. Let me enjoy my mixed metaphor.)
A few words on faculty searches.
Chad has an interesting post explaining the timescale of a faculty search at his college. One of the rate-determining steps he notes in the process is the posting of the job (and its deadline for applications):
So, why does it take so long? Well, to start with, you need to post the job and set the deadline so as to obtain a reasonable pool of applicants. Academic job-hunting season traditionally begins in September or thereabouts, so jobs tend to be advertised on major academic sites during September, October, and November. If you post the ad and set the deadline too early, you won’t get many good applicants, because people don’t really start looking before the fall, but if you do things too late, you end up picking from the people who are left over after everybody else has made their offers. We went with December 1 as our deadline, which is maybe a little on the early side, but not ridiculously so.
National Delurking Week 2007
Liz reminds us that Paper Napkin has declared the second week of January to be National Delurking Week.
What does this mean?
It means that if you are a reader of a blog but have not commented on that blog, you should “delurk” by leaving a comment to indicate that you’re out there. Good person that you are, you shouldn’t just do it on this blog you’re reading right now — you should also do it on the other blogs you may read this week where you haven’t commented before.
Trust me, the bloggers to whom you delurk will appreciate it.
Blogroll updates
Since our technical guru Tim Murtaugh seems to have cleared the squirrels out of the ScienceBlogs server, I have managed to update my blogroll. (It’s in the left sidebar — scroll way down and you’ll see it.)
In the main, the updates have involved:
Loyalty to the hands that feed you.
There was an interesting story today on Morning Edition about new research on potential bias in nutrition studies funded by industry. Dr. David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital in Boston led a team that analyzed 206 nutritional studies published between 1999 and 2003. More than half of these studies were at least partially industry-funded (in particular, funded by purveyors of milk, fruit juices, and soft drinks).
I’ve written my talk!
As some of you will have noticed, I’m scheduled to give a talk at the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference in just under two weeks. This morning, I finished (kind of) working out that talk.
A few things worth noting: