Because GrrlScientist asks, I took the quiz about whether my blog is working for me or I am working for my blog:
Marketing philosophy to admitted students.
My university had events on campus today for newly admitted students. My department tapped me (and two of our fabulous philosophy students) to man the Philosophy Department table at the College of Humanities and Arts open house.
Hundreds of admitted students — many with their parents — milling around in a room with such enticing major departments as English & Comparative Literature, Art & Design, Music & Dance (yes, the cool ones have ampersands), and we were supposed to sell Philosophy.
We opted for brazenness, and wrote in big letters on the white-board/easel we had brought with us:
Serving two masters is sometimes impossible.
The last two meetings of my ethics in science class have focused on some of the history of research with human subjects and on the changing statements of ethical principles or rules governing such experimentation. Looking at these statements (the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report especially) against the backdrop of some very serious missteps (Nazi medical experiments and the Public Health Service’s Tuskegee syphilis experiment), it’s painfully clear how much regulation is scandal-driven — a reaction to a screw-up, rather than something that researchers took the time to think about before they embarked on their research. Worse, it’s clear that researchers are perfectly capable of ignoring existing moral codes or standards to get the job done.
What some of these researchers may not have understood (but my students seem pretty well attuned to) is that in ignoring the norms that one ought, as a physician or a scientist, to be committed to, one comes perilously close to choosing not to be a physician or a scientist.
Friday Crocodilian
The younger Free-Ride offspring has been studying alligators and crocodiles in nature study. Some preliminary findings below the fold.
Friday Sprog Blogging: bird watching.
Elder offspring: I think at recess I might start a bird watching club.
Dr. Free-Ride: You’ll have to be careful with it.
Elder offspring: Huh?
Dr. Free-Ride: When you swing it, make sure you don’t hit any kids or birds, and don’t break the lens at the end.
Elder offspring: Not that kind of club! (groans in exasperation)
Dr. Free-Ride: Finally, I have my revenge for some of those jokes you’ve been telling me!
Being Socratic is nothing without the hemlock?
Do people routinely assert that the tools and activites of your field are utterly worthless in real life? Do they go so far as to say that what you’re doing is worse than nothing, because it distracts from the real tasks that need tackling?
Or is it mostly just philosophers who get this kind of reaction?
While there are some issues on which some philosophers focus that don’t have what I’d describe as wide appeal (problem of universals, anyone?), I’d like to think at least some of what philosophy has to offer is portable to all manner of questions and thus could be useful in real life. But perhaps I’m mistaken. So, let’s kick off the debate:
In the case that we need a geek taxonomy …
You may as well know that I’m as susceptible to peer pressure as the next geek.
This means that even though I myself was dismissive about the prospects for creating an accurate and/or useful taxonomy of my people in the tribe of science, now that my sibling ScienceBloggers are soliciting information to flesh out the taxonomies of anthropologists, physicists, and biologists, I don’t want to be left out.
A conversation on the way to class.
Do other bloggers ever stalk you in real life?
OK, maybe it doesn’t count if (1) it’s someone you know from real life (and I think even an online course counts as real life here), and (2) it’s someone who actually has business to transact in the building in which you run into her. Besides, Julie‘s a pretty cool blogger by whom to be stalked.
Anyway, Julie was kind enough to chat with me as I walked to class, and something like the following exchange took place:
Good ethics, good science, and the question of whether some knowledge is poisoned.
In comments to a pair of posts about research with animals, some issues that are germane to the subject of research with human subjects have come up. In particular, they raise the question of whether scientists ought to use results from ethically flawed experiments. And, this question pushes the question of the extent to which ethically flawed research can still be scientifically sound.
Here, I want to dig into the first question, but I’ll only make a first pass at the second.
Regardless of the specialty, they’re all geeks.
Alex Palazzo at The Daily Transcript has posted his lighthearted take on the disciplines within the life sciences. Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers notes some important omissions while pointing out that the categories are more porous in real life. Meanwhile, Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles sets out a taxonomy of physics specialties.
If you think I’m going to give you the geek chart for chemistry or philosophy of science, you must be daft.