Recommended reads #35

• Papers that triumphed over their rejections. How world-changing papers by Fermi, Krebs, Higgs, Margulis, Brockman, Mullis and more were rejected by Science or Nature. It’s fascinating to see the rationales for rejecting these manuscripts that, in hindsight, are so huge and important. By Nikolai Slavov.
• The new “What if?” book by Randall Munroe of xkcd is spectacular. I think it’s the best science education book of the decade, because it’s so fun and so chock full of applied science. This would be an amazing book for a physics class. Or for yourself. Or your kid, tween and up.
• Here’s a great story by Francis Smallwood about his opportunity to spend time with Alfred Russell Wallace’s personal copy of On the Origin of Species. I learned a lot and it was great to imagine myself in his place being able to go through this volume.
• We have a New Phylum of Animals!!! Oh, wait. We don’t. We might, maybe, have a new class of echinoderms. Sometimes, the best science journalists are scientists. (Other times, not so much.)
• Simon Leather reports on the disastrous decline of Plant Sciences as a discipline, and his work identifying the problem and the range of solutions.
• “At one conference, another scientist said, ‘Ben gave a great seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.’ (The scientist didn’t know Ben and Barbara were the same person.)”
• There’s a great story in the New York Times about how active learning is particularly effective for first generation college students and black students, based on this newly published paper.
• If you’re in the US and want to understand the experience of black students in your college classroom, I recommend this from Ta-Nehisi Coates, above all else:

I was a boy haunted by questions: Why do the lilies close at night? Why does my father always say, “I can dig it”? And who really killed the dinosaurs? And why is my life so unlike everything I see on TV? That feeling—the not knowing, the longing for knowing, and the eventual answer—is love and youth to me. And I have always preferred libraries to classrooms because the wide open library is the ultimate venue for this theater. This culture was reinforced by my parents, and the politically conscious parents around me, and their politically conscious children. The culture was so strong that it could be regarded as a kind of social capital. It was so old that it could also be regarded as a legacy. This legacy is more responsible for my presence in these august pages than any other. That is because a good writer must ultimately be an autodidact and take a dim view of credentials. My culture failed to make me into a high-achieving student. It succeeded at making me into a writer.

I have never had much of an urge to brag about this. I have always known that in failing to become a scholastic achiever, I forfeited knowledge of certain things. (A mastery of Augustine comes to mind.) But what I did not understand was that I had also forfeited a culture, which is to say a tool kit, a set of pins and tumblers that might have unlocked the language which I so presently adore.

• Here’s a “beautifully animated” three minute video on the history of the Keeling Curve. Especially if you happen to not know about the origins of the Keeling Curve, this is worthwhile.
• The Natural History Section of the Ecological Society of America built the foundation for a grassroots #IAmANaturalist campaign. This was brought to you by the leadership of Kirsten Rowell and Nash Turley.
• It’s a problem that some of our natural history museums are being bankrolled by corporate interests that use their influence to bend the science that we see in the exhibits. For example, how is it that David Koch, who funnels a ton of money to programs designed to misinform the public about climate change, sits on the board of the American Museum of Natural History? Of course, because money.Here’s a brief interview about a movement against this trend.
• Australia’s government, which is currently dismantling its scientific infrastructure as rapidly as possible, is now floating the idea of putting a specialist science teacher in every primary school. Good idea? Charlotte Pezaro says no, and it’s hard to argue with her reasoning.
• The story of declining research funding in the US was told very well by NPR this week:

Historically, payoffs in science come from out of the blue — oddball ideas or unexpected byways. Glomski says that’s what research was like for him as he was getting his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. His lab leader there got funding to probe the frontiers. But Glomski sees that far-sighted approach disappearing today.

“That ultimately squashed my passion for what I was doing,” he says. So two years ago, at the age of 41, he quit.

Instead of helping society improve its defenses against deadly anthrax, he’s starting a liquor distillery, Vitae Spirits. He’s actually excited about that — it’s a big challenge, and it allows him to pursue an idea with passion, rather than with resignation.

• If you think that “I Fucking Love Science” is a positive force in science education, I recommend you read this which explains the unethical foundations of this media empire. Bad behavior and irresponsible practices shouldn’t be given a pass just because it gets the word of science out there.
• Faculty Focus gives us a couple items: “Strategies for dealing with a certified jerk” about, well, jerks. And “She Didn’t Teach. We Had to Learn it Ourselves” about teaching evaluations and active learning.
• One bizarre thing about the medical establishment is the continued insistence that a certain set of symptoms are caused by spider bites when, in nearly all cases, they are not. Here’s a professional and excellent response to an article in a medical journal that gets it wrong, from scientists who know spiders.
• Here is a quick 12-step instruction manual from a first-time filmmaker about how he got to hire Bill Murray for his film. I think there are some interesting lessons and parallels (or perpendiculars) for scientists.
• On The Death of Adulthood in American Culture: “I do feel the loss of something here, but bemoaning the general immaturity of contemporary culture would be as obtuse as declaring it the coolest thing ever. A crisis of authority is not for the faint of heart. It can be scary and weird and ambiguous. But it can be a lot of fun, too. The best and most authentic cultural products of our time manage to be all of those things. They imagine a world where no one is in charge and no one necessarily knows what’s going on, where identities are in perpetual flux. Mothers and fathers act like teenagers; little children are wise beyond their years. Girls light out for the territory and boys cloister themselves in secret gardens. We have more stories, pictures and arguments than we know what to do with, and each one of them presses on our attention with a claim of uniqueness, a demand to be recognized as special. The world is our playground, without a dad or a mom in sight.”
• Here’s a whole new blog all about Promotion and Tenure Advice. It looks interesting and worthwhile, and it deals with the inconsistencies and lack of clarity that often goes along with the process.
• Check out this kickstarter campaign to restore and preserve a piece of the history of science:  a series of developmental biology videos produced by Lynn Margulis. The footage itself is interesting and valuable, and the context even more so.