Recommended reads #134
The illusion of objectivity in the classroom
The 2004 lecture that convinced David Attenborough to make a big deal about climate change
When you prep a course, how many times would you like to teach it?
Why we’re editing women scientists onto Wikipedia, and you should too
Here’s how PhD students can prepare for different careers, and how lab heads can help
Tips for scientists who want to be science writers
The Wall Street Journal does a story about how Americans lost the ability to identify plants
How insulin helped create ant societies
What economic austerity looks like at different kinds of institutions
Improving LGBT visibility in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
“The political and historical insights of feminism have made me a better statistician and scientist.”
Wow, NYU med school is now free. Considering that so many doctors go in to massive debt while in med school, and then have to practice in a lucrative position just to pay off those loans well into their career, this is huge.
“Innovative ways to help first-gen students thrive.” Okay, it’s not innovative and there’s nothing new here but it’s solid and a quick read that might be worth sharing with others who are unfamiliar with the issues.
Found this while digging in @cenmag archives, from 1968: IU becomes first university to advertise for professors https://t.co/FUn4r8s6FR cc @IUBChemistry @Chemjobber pic.twitter.com/2PjPKXZIYY
— Jyllian Kemsley (@jkemsley) August 16, 2018
The above tweet blows my mind. While I knew that higher ed was an old boys’ club of course, but I didn’t know that in some fields, advertising for job searches didn’t catch on until the 1970s. Before that time, it was purely “let’s call my friend who has a student who’s ready for a job.” There might be some professors on your campus right now, on the verge of retirement, who got their jobs this way. Wow. I had no idea.
Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, a public figure for fundamentalist atheists, has long had a reputation for sexual harassment. Finally, his university (ASU) has decided that he sexually harassed someone.
What do we do with the science of monstrous men? (content warning: sexual assault, child abuse)
Rosalind Franklin and the danger of gender harassment
A medical school felt that it was admitting too many women on the basis of their academic performance. So how did they handle this? For the past decade, they’ve been automatically lowering the scores of women applicants before evaluating their records.
The precarious balance between subjectivity and objectivity in science
Goop’s fact checkers’s google search history
School choice is the enemy of justice
One university is going to be installing a listening device in every dorm room and campus apartment, and allowing a third party to process the audio for data-mining purposes.
If you want my blueberry muffin recipe, you must read this preamble first