The news of the day

Today's New York Times had several interesting articles:

First up, I was very amused to see that the French are freaking out over Sarkozy's proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

If two years really is a big deal, why does anyone act like doing two more years of postdoc should just fly by? Here's a whole country of people who agree that life is short, and two years longer than you planned is a very long time.

Meanwhile, I wonder if I could have gotten into a better college if my parents had known that I would have been better off studying somewhere other than my bedroom. Maybe that would have changed the entire course of my life? At the time when I was getting ready to apply, my parents seemed to think I should live and die by every single grade - especially if it wasn't an A.

Still, there are apparently federal programs for retraining those in the tech sector whose jobs have been outsourced overseas (this is mentioned briefly at the end of the article). What programs, I wonder? And why is it important to fund retraining for people who didn't keep their skills current and competitive? And why would we have programs for people whose jobs got outsourced when we don't have hiring programs that favor citizens over non-citizens?

Speaking of, I recently learned that there are services to help overeducated immigrants find jobs in the US. Of course, I'm not eligible for these, because I'm a citizen. I'm not aware of similar programs to help underemployed, overeducated non-immigrants find jobs in the US.

And because it's almost 9/11, I couldn't help reading this article about a girl who was killed that day and her family's efforts to make the world a better place in her stead. But I couldn't help thinking what a waste it was, that she apparently disliked the job that took her to the WTC every day, and had phoned her mother on 9/10 to say she planned to quit. The story implies there must have been some family pressure for her to work there in the first place, and she only worked there a few months before realizing she hated it. Sure, only a few months, but you never know when tragedy might hit.

In other news, I found this series of essays written by a mother who is treating her autistic son with marijuana very interesting. I think it's a perfect illustration of how most Americans come to find out about "alternative" treatments and how the medical establishment is often less helpful than anecdata from other patients.

what I'm reading

Poison Pills On Hiring from the Chronicle, an interesting post and interesting discussion.

And very relevant to that, a couple of interesting links from Alternet, both of which left me breathless:

Higher Education Gone Wrong, which lobs many accusations that could also apply to academic scientists.

Drugs causing mental illness, which goes back to an old post where I was saying that many people I worked with were taking anti-depressants, but it didn't seem to be helping any of them.

At the time, I wondered if it was a sign of the toxic atmosphere warping everyone's brains: rather than improve the working conditions, it seemed like everyone wanted the easy denial of taking a pill and pretending like everything was okay.

This article talks about the possibility, laid out in a new book, that long-term administrations of these kinds of drugs are actually making people less functional (although short-term use can be very helpful, they said). That has certainly been my anecdotal observation.

Pseudo Science, the Internets and Politicians

A while back, I was at a party with some smart non-scientists who happen to be extremely paranoid about health issues.

They were ranting about organic food this, pesticide-free that, traces of pharmaceuticals in the water supply, genetically-engineered plants, etc. Unfortunately, I was getting frustrated because they didn't seem to know what they were talking about.

Gradually, as I argued with them, I came to realize that they had been reading about these things on the internets, and getting their information largely from one-sided documentary films and whatever the water filter guy in Home Depot told them they needed to buy.

They didn't understand what genetically engineered actually means. Sure, it sounds kinda scary. But they didn't seem to know what "DNA" is, relative to "genetic". They were throwing around these terms about genes being "different" from ours without knowing that our most important genes are all conserved.

And they had seen some documentary about the potential evils of bionic alien plants, or whatever, which got them off on this kick of being very anti- almost anything scientific.

"It's not natural!" they kept screaming, and I really should have asked them if they use birth control (they don't have any kids, so I'm pretty sure they do). But I think you'll agree that some people believe that birth control of any kind is not "natural", either.

Or indoor plumbing. Or tv. Or microwaving.

I guess if they keep going on this path, they'll insist on joining the Raw Food movement and living in the forest, or something.

Mostly I was amazed at how much it annoyed me that they were vehemently arguing with me. Not because they were arguing, but because they were so dramatically misinformed.

And it breaks my heart a little, because I think they would make great scientists. Here's why:

1) They are interested in getting information, going to great lengths to learn about how the world works (however inept they were at determining the quality of what they found).

2) They are unrelentingly skeptical, not caring one whit for academic reputation or the Establishment.

3) They are passionate about their cause.

4) They have no investment in doing science to make money.

I always draw the analogy between science and government. If you've studied American History, you know that members of Congress were not supposed to serve lifetime appointments the way they tend to do now. There were supposed to be term limits for a reason: to avoid having career politicians (the way we do now).

I still think maybe the idea of science as a temporary position is not such a bad one, and we kind of already have it with most of our scientists working as terminal postdocs (but without the prestige of serving our country). I have to wonder if it's not the career scientists who do the most damage, just like career politicians?

And yet, as I ranted about on my last post, we're really doing a terrible job of educating the public. Instead, we're taking some of the most intelligent, vocal, self-directed amateur researchers and letting them feed on junk information.

If only they were as scrupulous about their reading as they are about their food.

Worth reading.

Check it out, some cool stuff I found on the internet:

Someone having similar experiences to mine, in a field other than science.

I found that post via Lessons for Girls, all the links of which I am reading now and enjoying immensely.

Also, do our pseudo-quantitative methods of evaluating academic contributions actually relate to anything relevant?

Apparently this is being questioned, with lots of references, even (!) and not just on blogs about science.

Stupid Question

Quick, what would you do? I can't decide.

My journal subscriptions are coming up for renewal. This is, god willing, the last year I am eligible for cheap subscriptions as a Postdoc.

Off and on, I have chosen to get hard copies. There are goods and bads to doing this.

I hate junk email. I don't like reading TOCs in my inbox. It's rare that I want to deal with clicking on the link and going to my web browser, blah blah blah.

I also hate reading papers online. Abstracts, okay, but I don't have a big monitor and I don't really like sitting at a desk. I'd much rather take a pile of paper and flop down on my couch at home!

So I decided, for these and other reasons, that hard copies are better. The chances that I will look through them are much better than if I have to remember to look online, and I like that I often find things I wasn't looking for.

The main danger I can see with using RSS feeders and preset searches is that you end up filtering out serendipity.

The drawback, of course, is the clutter. Physical information overload. If I get hard copies and don't have time to read them, they just pile up. And up and up and up.

So now I am torn about whether to renew, since of course for most things I can download papers for free via my institution. It's less aesthetically pleasing, but it works well enough.

I'm tempted to just not renew, save my piddling salary for better things, and look online when the mood strikes.

What do you do?

On what to read.

Anonymous said...

ok, msphd,

here's a practical question for you or your readers.

i'm a grad student. i perform pubmed literature searches daily on the key words of my thesis project. most of my reading, then, is directly related to my thesis project. how do you find or decide which papers to read that are outside your narrow area of focus?

any advice is appreciated.

sincerely,
anon grad student wannabe reader

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks for this interesting question, since otherwise I would be tempted to rant today. I am in that kind of mood.

In the interest of being more interesting, here's my advice.

Read about things tangential to what you work on.

They can be tangential in the sense of, homologs of your protein or analogous appendages in other species.

They can be tangential to your technique. Let's say you work on a protein that has no known homologs, but it would be really helpful if somebody could find one. Read about homology searching algorithms. Read about structural biology, since there might be a structural homolog even if there's no a sequence homolog. Think about why there might not be one, evolutionarily speaking.

They can be tangential to your pathway. Let's say you work on why hair is curly (I'm making this up, I know nothing about how that works!). Maybe hair is curly due to changes in the stem cells at the root of the hair follicle, or due to hormonal changes, or genetics (?). Read about those things, even if it's just at the level of Scientific American reviews.

Read about neat new stuff, even if it's totally unrelated to what you do right now. I'm very excited about the possibility of having wireless laptop charging by development of new technology to transfer electricity through the air! Read about how astronauts adjust to low gravity. Give yourself permission to daydream a little on a daily basis!

Read about science that affects your daily life, like the science of food (nutrition, agriculture?) or about additives they put in shampoo or to remove wrinkles from your skin.

Read widely, and I promise you will have new ideas. If nothing else, it will help you decide what to make for dinner!

Response to comment on last post- in defense of reading a lot.

Dear Anonymous,

In terms of getting a PhD whether you like reading or not, I think that we shouldn't abuse students who realize halfway through that they don't like reading. I'm in favor of terminal master's degrees (TMS) as per the discussion over on FSP's post about that. I think it's better for people to leave at that point than to try to finish "just because", or even worse, go and do a postdoc because they can't figure out what else to do with their lives.

But, I do think that a certain amount of reading (and of course, writing!) should be a requirement for a PhD.

So maybe if you don't like reading, you shouldn't have gotten a PhD in the sense that it was not the best use of your talents?

Did you think about quitting? How did you end up finishing? Do you mind telling us (however vaguely), what you do now?

For me, getting a PhD was not easy. In fact, it would have been easier to quit (and justify quitting) than to finish.

So I wouldn't give back my PhD, either, because I know I earned it.

Whether I would do it all over again, if I had the chance, is a different question.

So I'm curious about what got you through? In fact, I generally invite comments, for the benefit of our grad & younger student readers, on that topic.

But I digress. To me, reading papers is not so much about minutiae.

I think a lot more experiments work when you read a lot and plan carefully based on what's already been done. That might sound hopeless trite, but bear with me.

Even when no one has ever done what you're setting out to do, there are always common features to be found, and those things can make or break your experiments.

I can see how those details would be boring to some, but I really like having experiments work (as you say you do). So details of that sort matter a lot to me. To me, one of the worst feelings in the world is when you find out later that someone else got your difficult experiment to work using some little trick you didn't know about. I HATE that.

Reading a lot helps me avoid getting into situations where I have to feel like that! It's that same feeling like when you leave your wallet in the backseat of the taxi cab. ARGH!

Today I was thinking about how a couple of people in my lab missed something kind of critical because of just that sort of mistake- they didn't pay attention to common features and they didn't do enough reading.

It's not my project, so who's to say I wouldn't have also missed all the clues, too. But it's kind of sad, because in retrospect, it was all sitting there in pubmed if they had just bothered to read it.

But you know, you can only do so much. And everyone handles the 'down time' differently. I think that's as much about personality as anything else. I am always in a better mood when my experiments are working!

Sometimes reading is the only thing to get me out of an experimental rut- and actually in this case, it did. The only reason my experiments are working so well lately is because of a paper I read that gave me an idea for something to do, and how to do it.

I like ideas. But I like them even better when I can show why they're right.

Dear Oprah

Dear Oprah,

A few weeks ago, I wanted to do a blog on how you started a leadership school for girls in South Africa. The story on CNN made me want to cry. You seemed so fulfilled, and it's exactly the sort of thing the world needs.

In the meantime I was busy with work, so it fell by the wayside, and I always intended to come back and do a blog about how these kinds of things make you such an amazing role model.

But. In the meantime, I was reminded of something else you've done that fails to impress me. This whole business about James Frey's book, A Million Little Pieces, is just absurd.

Here's the thing.

1. I think everybody with half an education knows that a memoir is usually an embellished version of the truth.
2. I had the pleasure- nay, the good luck- to read the book BEFORE all this crap about it being 'true' came out on your show.
3. When I read it, I thought it was pretty obvious that some parts of it were fictionalized, maybe even most of it, BUT I DIDN'T CARE.
4. I still don't.

I understand that you like to choose literature based on how it inspires you, and that stories based in reality are more inspiring. But I loved other books that you later recommended on your show, such as The Color Purple (loved you in the movie, btw), Their Eyes Were Watching God, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and especially Beloved, by Toni Morrison (didn't like that movie nearly so much as the book). They didn't have to be non-fiction to be inspiring.

So, darling Oprah, I'm writing to ask you to please GET OVER IT. This business about refunding people's money who felt "defrauded" by the claim that it was non-fiction is completely over the top.

Please stop this nonsense right away, or I'll have to lose all respect for you. As it is, I have to question your judgement in starting all this fuss in the first place.

Sincerely,

MsPhD