Thoreau offers without qualification some complaints about a paper in a glamour journal, ending with: All of this might have been excusable if the big flashy Glamour Journal paper had been followed up with more detailed papers in other places (a common practice in some fields). However, when I searched to see what the authors… Continue reading Academic Poll: See Longer Blog Post (Forthcoming) for Details
Category: Academia
Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?
Kevin Drum has done a couple of education-related posts recently, first noting a story claiming that college kids study less than they used to, and following that up with an anecdotal report on kids these days, from an email correspondent who teaches physics. Kevin’s emailer writes of his recent experiences with two different groups of… Continue reading Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?
Are Communications Skills Holding Science Back?
Over in yesterday’s communications skills post commenter Paul raises a question about priorities: I wonder to what extent good writers, public speakers and communicators are being promoted in science in place of good thinkers – people who can challenge prevailing dogma, invent promising novel approaches to old problems, and who have the intuition needed for… Continue reading Are Communications Skills Holding Science Back?
Communication Skills for Scientists
As I am still getting lengthy comments at the Chris Mooney post accusing me of making unreasonable demands on scientists, I thought I should spell out as explicitly as possible what skills I think scientists ought to have. This probably won’t solve the problem, but it’ll give me something to point to the next time… Continue reading Communication Skills for Scientists
Scientific Salary Stratigraphy: Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results
Inside Higher Ed has a news squib about gender disparities in academic science, which points to a Nature story about a survey on job satisfaction (bad IHE, giving a false impression on the story!). The gender portion of the story is limited to a short section at the end of the article, and one graph:… Continue reading Scientific Salary Stratigraphy: Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results
Uncomfortable Question: Worth the Tuition?
Continuing with the uncomfortable questions, H asks a good one: Union is one of the most expensive colleges in the country. What are students getting for their money? How does Union justify the increase in price over other schools with comparable academics and facilities? See, now that’s an uncomfortable question, especially on an institutional level.… Continue reading Uncomfortable Question: Worth the Tuition?
Relatively Comfortable Question: Physics First?
Starting at the beginning of the uncomfortable questions left by readers, we have Tex asking: If physics is the basic science that underlies almost every other science, why do American high schools usually teach it in the 3rd or 4th year, after biology and chemistry? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Physics first, then… Continue reading Relatively Comfortable Question: Physics First?
Two Cultures Publishing Journals
I hate to keep highlighting silly articles in Inside Higher Ed, but they keep publishing silly articles, like Jeffrey DiLeo’s argument that humanities journals cannot be ranked because they’re all unique and precious flowers too specialized: Another reason for the roaring silence regarding the ranking of humanities journals regards the high level of sub-disciplinary specialization.… Continue reading Two Cultures Publishing Journals
The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
The Virtuosi has quickly become a staple of the daily Links Dumps here, but the recent series of posts on experimental physics deserve greater prominence, so here they are: Life as an Experimenter- Day One Life as an Experimenter- Day Two Life as an Experimenter- Day Three Life as an Experimenter- Reflections The individual day… Continue reading The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
The Problem of Broader Impacts
Over at the Cocktail Party, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky has a post about the image of scientists that spins off this Nature article on the NSF’s “broader impact” requirement (which I think is freely readable, but it’s hard to tell with Nature). Leslie-Pelecky’s post is well worth reading, and provides a good deal more detail on the… Continue reading The Problem of Broader Impacts