Academic Mixtape 2

good stuff to read

Unhidden curriculum! An enterprising scientist assembled a single public spreadsheet with links to all of the funded GRFP proposals which have been published online, harvested from a range of websites.

Climate education that builds hope and agency, not fear.

I think one of the most impactful outreach projects is Skype a Scientist. You have a bit of time and want to chat with a K-12 classroom? They’ll hook you up. You’re in a K-12 classroom and want to bring in a real scientist to video chat with your class? They’ll hook you up. This nonprofit has been run for quite a long while now by Dr. Sarah McAnulty, is a registered nonprofit, operates very efficiently, and could really use your support. Feel free to become a contributor or perhaps ask them about writing them into the broader impacts of your next proposal? (Just to be clear, they didn't ask me to say these nice things about them or give a pitch. I just believe in the work and would love to see it grow.)

Why isn’t the US dealing adequately with heatwaves? Racism.

Here’s a nice interview with the folks of the Museum of Man Museum of Us in San Diego, about the transformation of the institution over the past decade. Love to see folks working to build a better science community.

Is Zoom using all of our conversations to train AI? I’m not sure? But maybe?

How does the philosophy of science matter for all of us? Well, when it comes to understanding experimental methods and the application of statistics, playing fast and loose with our choices of the tests we run and the ones we report in the context of hypothesis-driven frameworks has resulted in exaggerated effect sizes and a inaccurately painted pictures.

Here’s what I thought was a well-reasoned and thoughtful article about how the horrific conditions experienced by laboratory animals are getting in the way of learning from the experiments that we do on them.

Grifters need people to harass and a mainstream discourse to counter. As traffic takes a nosedive and Twitter becomes less a part of the conversation, it's going to be harder for these folks to make money.

It turns out that the access to working with famous people early in your career has lifelong career impact. Not a surprise but the size of this effect is rather stunning, and it definitely adds an element to the argument over whether you should choose to go to grad school with the powerful PI or the one who would be a good mentor. (And when you look at this knowing the identities and backgrounds of who gets supported and who gets exploited, you might get a sinking feeling about the insidiousness of this effect and why representation and equity seems such a distant goal).

This guy who visited every single country without air travel? And it took him 10 years? Does he have a book deal, because I would (probably) read that book.