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At my company (less in my unit of it), teaching is basically treated as a tax you have to pay to do your research, and faculty are hired and promoted for research and encouraged to avoid this tax where possible; indeed, one of our principal recruitment gestures is a reduced teaching load for the first [...]
Archive for the ‘Science and its methods’ Category
December 20th, 2011
December 19th, 2011
Category: Education policy, Science and its methods
Kevin Drum channels Brad DeLong to recall a Calvin and Hobbes sequence in which Calvin’s dad reassures him that it’s colder in the winter because the earth is farther from the sun then than in the summer. Kevin asks for a survey to find out how many people believe that. As it happens, a small [...]
November 6th, 2011
Category: Health and Medicine, Science and its methods
Professor Robert Rosenheck presented his blockbuster findings on long-acting risperidone at Stanford Psychiatry Grand Rounds this week. The injectable version of this anti-psychotic medication was heavily marketed as superior to its oral, less expensive cousins. The sticker price of $7,000/year was promised to be worth it because patients would need to be hospitalized far less [...]
August 31st, 2011
Category: Elections 2010 and 2012, Science and its methods
Conservative candidates are now routinely asked to take a stand on whether they “Think evolution is just a theory” or whether they are among the fallen who “Believe in evolution”. These exchanges nearly bring up my breakfast on their own merits and have the added disadvantage of mis-educating the public about the nature of scientific [...]
July 17th, 2011
Category: Science and its methods
Did Galileo discover Neptune centuries before its official identification? This is one of many fascinating questions explored in a delightful and informative BBC radio program that broadcast this week on the planet’s “first birthday”. It’s very much worth your time if you are an astronomy buff or just someone who enjoys high quality science journalism. [...]
June 2nd, 2011
Category: Science and its methods
(Cross-posted from the Century Foundation’s Taking Note site) There are many good reasons to fork over the cash and support the New York Times. The obituary section is one of those reasons. Today’s Times includes a nicely-written obituary of the biophysicist Rosalyn Yalow. She was only the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in [...]
April 24th, 2011
Category: Science and its methods
The current Harper’s reprints Environmental Microbiology’s annual list of selected peer reviewer comments on submitted articles, featuring such snark as “this manuscript has nearly sucked the will to live out of me” and “This is an interesting manuscript, not because of its results, but because of its complete ignorance of the scientific process”. The proper [...]
April 18th, 2011
Category: Climate change, Science and its methods
One of the predicted consequences of global warming – and let’s note that we have already had a good bit of that; it’s not something that might happen – is extreme weather events: wetter storms, more violent storms, and so on. The devastation from the 240-odd tornadoes this weekend’s storm wound up is exactly that [...]
April 17th, 2011
In my freshman year I took the introductory chemistry course for people who had had some chemistry, and as it happened, that year William Lipscomb took it over from a popular prof who was on sabbatical. His long line of PhDs (three more Nobels, uh-huh) and colleagues will be writing remembrances of his scientific contributions, [...]
