This Week in Evolution

I liked this essay comparing areas in evolutionary biology where there is genuine controversy -- i.e., where people who are actually collecting data and publishing on a topic disagree -- vs. the phony controversies imagined by creationists. Group selection may still almost qualify as a controversy, a question I may address in a later post, but age of the earth, common ancestry of all species (at least those studied so far!), and the power of natural selection to solve difficult problems are not at all controversial among those actively publishing on related topics.

The question of how much exposure high school students should have to genuine scientific controversies seems a bit more complex to me. I agree that helping students get enough of the basics to understand active controversies in any depth is a big challenge. On the other hand, I've been amazed how many high school students (and their parents) think that the only definition of "research" is looking up information in a library or on the web. If we want students to understand that scientific research is an exciting, ongoing activity, some kind of exposure to areas where scientists disagree seems essential. Areas of research that are easier to understand, like the mindless screening of drugs, don't convey the intellectual excitement of real science.

Here's a seminar class I've thought about for either high school seniors or first-year college students. First, let's set the minimum standard for a scientific controversy as: at least two conflicting points of view, each represented by data-containing papers from at least two nonoverlapping groups, in journals with an impact factor of at least 1.0. Each week we consider one question, such as:
1) What causes AIDS?
2) What is killing amphibians around the world?
3) How old is the earth (within 10%, say)?
4) What living species is the closest relative of chimpanzees?
Students get points for showing that each topic was controversial, at least at one time, with a big bonus for whoever shows controversy most recently. Then we could make a time-line, showing when each question was settled (pending new data, of course!).

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most scientists also volunteer their time as "peer reviewers" for scientific journals, checking submitted papers for serious flaws, such as lack of appropriate controls. Reviewers also make good papers better by, for example, suggesting alternative interpretations of results. My own papers have been greatly improved by this process, which makes up for the few times I've thought a paper was rejected unfairly. (Fortunately, there are plenty of good journals, and the odds are against getting the same incompetent or biased reviewer twice.)

As a minimum, reviewers try to make sure that the paper describes what was done and what the results were, clearly and unambiguously. Which brings me to two recent sentences from the New York Times that probably wouldn't have made it through peer review:

And now add to the lengthening list Gov. Eliot Spitzer, husband, father of three teenage daughters, who authorities on Monday said had been involved with a ring of prostitutes.

Police found the soldier, who was still in the vicinity, shortly after 11 p.m., using a helicopter with a thermal camera.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you get a position where promotion (or even continued employment) depends on how much research you publish, how hard should you work? Morgan Giddings writes in PLoS Computational Biology that:

Enough work is exactly the amount at which one can maintain enjoyment of the process of work, without burning out (which is not enjoyable) or becoming socially isolated (which is not enjoyable). If that amount of work is not enough to maintain a scientific career, then a different career may need to be considered, where such enjoyment can be found.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

You know how, whenever you edit an MS Word document, your neatly positioned figures and captions fly off in opposite directions? Someday, MPen will solve these and other problems. Meanwhile, here's a work-around I just figured out:

Layout graphs and captions you want to stay together on a single Power Point "slide." Make slide width equal the width of your printed lines, so Word won't try to squeeze text on either side. Save individual slides as WMF files. Import each WMF file into Word about where you want the slide. Slides may still jump around when you edit the document, but at least slide(s) and caption(s) will stay together.

I'm still working on grant proposals, but thought those of you who don't use LaTeX might find this useful.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I thought this analogy between grad school and Lord of the Rings was pretty funny, but what about Monty Python and the Holy Grail? I'm really tempted to start my next oral exam with:

What is your name?
What is your quest?
What is the long-range dispersal mechanism of Cocos nucifera?

Continue reading "Grad school as an epic quest" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lots of discussion on Pharyngula today on a Nature story on the PhD glut. 7000 new biomedical PhDs per year and only 20,000 tenured positions. I remember looking at all the grad students and postdocs at the Ecology meetings and thinking "there aren't nearly enough job openings for this many ecologists", at least not at major research universities. Comstock commented

I see the universities as eager players, ready to get their share of the grant money, and not worrying that much of it relies on the labor of a servant class who will never be made master of the house.

Continue reading "Scientist glut as a tragedy of the commons" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

According to a National Science Foundation survey, 30% of grant panel members say that they often recommended "transformative research" projects for funding, but only 10% of other panel members (who also, presumably, answered the same question) did. This seems like a mathematical impossibility, like men having had more girlfriends, on average, than women have had boyfriends. But, just as the definition of "girlfriend" (or "sex", for that matter) may vary, so may the definition of "transformative research."

Can we do better than "the projects I like are transformative; those you like aren't"?

Continue reading "Defining "transformative research" for NSF" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rob Knop is leaving academia, essentially because it's so hard to get grants to support his research.

I'm all for increasing research funding, because I think benefits to society exceed the costs, on average. But increased funding might not help individual assistant professors as much as you would think. One problem, at least in the US, is that those who already have grants will usually have more publications and more preliminary data, so they (we) will also tend to be more competitive for any new money. So some professors have multiple postdocs working for them (not me!), generating yet more publications and preliminary data, while others can't get a grant.

Also, universities (which take half of each grant) would (and do) respond to increased research funding by hiring more professors than they need for teaching. This increased hiring would make it easier for new PhDs to get a job, at least in the short run, but it would then increase competition for grants, until the "tenure misery index" comes back into equilibrium.

My impression is that the Canadian system is more egalitarian and maybe less stressful. Anyone know if this is true? If so, how does this affect overall scientific productivity and quality (citations per dollar, say)?

Yes, I will be discussing an evolution paper this week.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Rob Knop liked my previous post. The comments on his post are well worth reading. For example, someone pointed out that, even if you don't go into debt to finance grad school, there's still usually an economic opportunity cost. During the years you spent in grad school and as a postdoc, you might otherwise be paying down a home mortgage, saving for retirement, etc., not to mention nonfinancial opportunities, like starting a family.

Terence Tao also has some good career advice,. It's aimed mainly at mathematicians, but much of it is relevant to science in general.

Continue reading "Opportunity cost of grad school, etc." »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This entry is inspired by "Why I got out of research" at http://vwxynot.blogspot.com/ and Rob Knop's blog entry Get out; you're not good enough , and is addressed to readers considering grad school in science.

There are more people qualified for faculty positions at research universities than there are openings. By "qualified" I mean having earned a PhD, done a postdoc, and published at least one senior-authored peer-reviewed journal article from each. By this definition, one can be qualified without necessarily being competitive in today's academic job market.

Those of us lucky enough to get such a research university position find that (as vwxynot put it):

"Even if you do make it big and get your own lab, you’re suddenly responsible for your whole team’s job security as well as your own. Grants depend on the quality of the researcher and their work, yes, but also on trends, fads, luck, nepotism, reputation, political interference and geography."

The importance of nepotism, politics, and geography probably varies among countries, but there's no doubt that only a fraction of good proposals get funded. And yet, getting grants is often an expectation for tenure.

So, if most PhD's won't get a research university faculty position (RUFP), then who should consider going to grad school in science?

Continue reading "Who should consider grad school in science?" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)