In the comments to last week’s science majors follow-up post, commenter Jim G calls me out: OK, I agree with that 100%, and I’m sure everyone who reads this post has observed the phenomena you mention dozens of times or more. But I wonder whether you have a proposal, or if you’re just pointing out… Continue reading Fixing Science Education
Category: Science
Guess the Nobels, Win a Prize
October is almost upon us, which means that the winners of the 2008 Nobel Prizes will be announced soon. Very soon– the first announcement (for Medicine) is next Monday. The most important announcement– the Nobel in Physics– is next Tuesday, October 7. This is a good excuse for a contest, so: Leave a comment on… Continue reading Guess the Nobels, Win a Prize
Earmarks and the Ridicule of Science
There’s an interesting exchange over at the Reality-Based Community around the topic of “earmarks” for science, like the grizzly bear DNA study McCain keeps mocking. Michael O’Hare argues that science should not be funded by earmarks: Almost any piece of scientific research, especially in biology, that isn’t called “Cure cancer!” is liable to the kind… Continue reading Earmarks and the Ridicule of Science
Bandwidth and Community Expectations
Derek Lowe has posted an article about X-ray lasers in chemistry, which amused me because of the following bit: Enter the femtosecond X-ray laser. A laser will put out the cleanest X-ray beam that anyone’s ever seen, a completely coherent one at an exact (and short) wavelength which should give wonderful reflection data. This is… Continue reading Bandwidth and Community Expectations
Science21 Highlights: Inclusive and Exclusive Definitions
One full day of the Science in the 21st Century meeting wound up being devoted to what might be characterized as defining what we mean by Science. This started off with a talk by Harry Collins (microblogging, video), a sociologist of science who has done a great deal of work on the nature of expertise,… Continue reading Science21 Highlights: Inclusive and Exclusive Definitions
Fear the (Quantum) Turtle
The Pontiff beat me to it, but my Ph.D. alma mater has scored a $12.5 million grant from the NSF to fund the Joint Quantum Institute as a Physics Frontier Center for the development of quantum technology: The Physics Frontier Center (PFC) award, effective September 1, will fund 17 graduate students, seven postdoctoral scientists and… Continue reading Fear the (Quantum) Turtle
Science21: Supply and Demand, Booms and Busts
There’s an article in yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed about the supply of scientists and engineers, arguing that there is not, in fact, a shortage: Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, looked at what he called five “mysteries” of the STEM work force issue. For example, why do employers claim a… Continue reading Science21: Supply and Demand, Booms and Busts
Open Lab Notebook Software?
After talking to Cameron Neylon last week, I’m strongly considering setting up an online lab notebook for my research lab. Not so much for the philosophical reasons having to do with openness and the like– as a practical matter, I still don’t think my data will do anybody any good– but for reasons of sheer… Continue reading Open Lab Notebook Software?
Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like
Another thing I thought was intriguing that came up at the Science in the 21st Century meeting wasn’t from a formal talk, but rather a conversation over dinner with Garrett Lisi and Sabine Hossenfelder about the future of publishing. Garrett was suggesting a new model of publishing, based on pulling things from the arxiv (or… Continue reading Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like
Science21 Highlights: Open Access and Public Accessibility
I have never been a huge proponent of the Open Access and Open Data movements in science publishing, because they’ve always struck me as wasted effort. I’ve never really seen what value is supposed to be added by either project. When I think about the experiments that I’ve been involved with (see, for example, the… Continue reading Science21 Highlights: Open Access and Public Accessibility