Recommended Reads #165
The continuing decline of the art of scientific illustration.
Chimpanzees have a penchant for throwing rocks at trees, and prefer tree species that make cool sounds.
Stop making graduate students pay up front for conferences.
On luck, success, and becoming a professor.
Making evolution stick: using sticky notes to teach the mechanisms of evolutionary change
“Working in science was a brutal education. That’s why I left.” This was so gorgeously written and so on point that I wanted to find out more about the author. And lo and Behold! he has a novel that just came out, it’s getting rave reviews, written up in The New Yorker, and all that: Real Life by Brandon Taylor (amazon|indiebound). I haven’t even picked up my copy but am excited to put it near the top of the reading stack (which is getting high enough to endanger passersby) .
We know what works to close the completion gap: “What is, frankly, shocking is how rarely colleges and universities take such an approach even though we know it works.” YUP.
Truth decay: when uncertainty is weaponized
Researchers find cell-free mitochondria floating in human blood. What?
The chemistry of cast iron seasoning
The problem with “Great Schools.” Seriously – if you do use this website with even a modicum of sincerity, please give this a read. Some of the schools that they rank with a low score are downright superb, and read this to find out why these rankings make no sense.
Have a nice weekend, ya’ll. (Oh and if you haven’t added your favorite papers that you use in teaching statistics to the crowdsourced spreadsheet, you still have several days before the prize drawing.) I think we need more biomedical papers!