Recommended reads #125
This case study of search committees demonstrates how downright sexist conduct is pervasive in academic job searches.
When it comes to time management in academia, here is some highly condensed wisdom.
It’s well established that student evaluations of teaching performance are gender biased. Based on that fact, then, here’s an intriguing question: Are they illegal?
She was my world, but we couldn’t marry.
“If I had the chance to have a second career, I would try harder not to follow of the fashion of the herd. The mistakes I have made, at least those into which I have insight, have usually resulted from adhering excessively to the prevailing orthodoxy. Fortunately, I have often been rescued from this by the arrival of a brilliant young research fellow who has proposed a novel approach; I have usually resisted her/his idea initially before eventually come round to its merits.”
NSF is soliciting public comments on their new sexual harassment policy.
Coming out in STEM: Factors affecting retention of sexual minority STEM students
Logistic regression is not fucked.
At least one university is data-mining location data from student ID cards to decide who is academically at risk.
Here’s a nice synthesis piece on the 50th anniversary of “Why mountains are higher in the tropics.” Particularly notable is Janzen’s own take appended to the article:
It is fair to say that every one of the papers or processes for which I am “famous” has its origin in such an observation. I did not theorize that acacia ants protect their ant acacias and then test it. I saw it happen in front of me and then decided to repeat it “experimentally” to probe its variation and variance for a formal dissertation (Janzen 1966). The same applies to herbivores and tropical trees (Janzen 1970), toxic seeds (Bell and Janzen 1971), why fruits rot (Janzen 1977), and tropical conservation through biodevelopment (Janzen and Hallwachs 2016). It is fair to acknowledge that the experiments, formalizations, and “theoretical” conceptualizations always came after seeing something happen that was, in effect, a naturally occurring experiment. Nature is full of them. The question is only which of them does Homo sapiens care to pay attention to, for whatever agenda, and which does one happen to be carrying enough other contextual information to stimulate noticing.
The most spectacular things on twitter tend to make the mainstream news. Such as this.
A couple months ago, the crowd of goons that attacks progressive faculty members for things they say in class because they don’t support free speech on campuses came after a professor in my own university. You didn’t see this in the news, like you have at some other places. This is why. I’ve got an effective crop of admins at the moment.
Why was media coverage of the NASA twin genetic study so absolutely horrible?
Data from human subjects from NASA studies conducted more than 50 years ago continues to yield new insights.
I am the very important longread everyone is talking about
Nat Geo just realized they’re racist?
Have a great weekend, y’all.