mattbk.com

I’m playing around with Lightbox and hoping I can create some simple image galleries (particularly cycling or geology photos). Here is an example of the pedal car.

This was an on-the-fly comment I made to an editorial in the local newspaper:

I can agree with some aspects of this piece, and disagree with others. The Internet is a great source of news, but only if you learn how to think critically and to not believe everything you read. Unfortunately for everyone who is clamoring for the death of newspapers, they do remain the primary sources of new information in this country.

Citing the purpose of newspapers as “to report the news” is misleading–newspapers are supported by advertisements, the same way television news is. Although many standards of reporting are still upheld by many reporters, I see a tendency (at least in the Herald) to give people what they want rather than the full story. Television or newspapers, people want the quick sound bite or quotation rather than in-depth reporting, which disappoints me. When was the last time you read a good long in-depth article in the Herald? When was the last time you read a well-researched opinion piece in the Herald that wasn’t reprinted from somewhere else?

Rather than dumbing things down, why not give us readers some more depth? Why not double the average word count of a story and give us more information? Why not cite your sources and let us (as readers) decide who actually knows what they are talking about? If the Herald keeps pandering to the dumbest readers, they’re contributing to the anti-intellectual movement in this country (okay, so maybe I exaggerate. Maybe.). An informed populace is essential to a Democracy, as the article says, but an incompletely informed one holds on to dangerous stereotypes and black/white views of the world.

Frankly, I like newspapers. I like being able to carry them around (when I get the time to read them). I like the sense (if not the actual truth) of objective reporting. I like that the reporters live here with the rest of us. I like being able to re-read parts of an article, something you can’t do with television news–and re-reading brings understanding. But I refuse to be talked down to by news organizations that don’t hire diligent reporters, that edit out background information that wasn’t a sound bite, and that continue to say “you need us, because we’re the only objective ones.” If you want to be needed, produce a product that’s worthwhile and worthy of being read by more than just the dumbest class of reader.

This recent New York Times blog suggests that we use the science stimulus money to pay “people without long-term aspirations to become scientists” who “could do much of the hands-on work,” in the interest of creating jobs and furthering basic science.

This plan is not exceedingly horrible, but it is less attractive to me than one I’ve wanted to put into action for years (more on that below). I have to admit that I’m a geologist and invertebrate paleontologist, which should explain most of what I’m about to say.

First, I have a hard time reconciling the fact that people (at least in the biosciences) equate “science” with “the biosciences”–and all that comes with that name. So I assume when these people talk about “science,” they’re thinking test tubes and a great deal of disposables (pipette tips, etc.). Second, they seem to equate everyone’s path in life with their own–undergrad, grad school, and then a long apprenticeship period that, for some reason, doesn’t end when you get your PhD. My thoughts on that particular system are fairly harsh: if we have so many bioscientists that they aren’t qualified to run their own labs, we either have too little funding for bioscience as a whole, or they aren’t learning enough in grad school.

Back to “Research for America.” The comments on that NYT blog (not a representative sample, I’m sure) are generally against the idea*. I disagree with some of the premises (those above) in addition to the one assumption that undergrads aren’t smart enough to jump into a lab and do work. It’s true that if you want these people to understand what they are doing with all the test tubes and pipettes, it will be a little while before they get up to speed with the rest of the lab. This is what the blog authors are saying: that laboratory technicians are glorified dishwashers (which I have no problem with, having been a dishwasher in my time). That doesn’t mean that they can’t learn or that they won’t learn, just that they’ll need some time to figure out where all the pots and pans go, when to change the water out, and how long exactly to blanch the broccoli rabe.

If your undergrads or graduate students aren’t intelligent enough to follow instructions and understand what they are doing, you might have larger problems at your educational institution. Keep in mind that the people who will want these jobs are those who are already interested in the field, not those who wander in off the street (well, not until the economy tanks out a little more at least).

For those of us who don’t need $2 million a year to buy little pieces of plastic and chemicals, science is a different animal. If you’re working for an ecologist (look! bioscience without the test tubes!), you can apply mathematics and statistics and observational data (once you’ve been trained in on how to observe) to understand what’s going on. If you’re a geologist or paleontologist, you just need to understand basic principals of the rocks, organismal biology, and be able to understand what you’re looking at. I’m not trashing my own disciplines here–I just want to explain that science is not all one thing, and it most assuredly is not all test tubes and trumped-up notions of self-importance because you use those test tubes. In my own department we have thousands of specimens that could be further prepped for study, and we have one undergraduate whose job it is to do that. He’s a business major.

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Now, about my own idea. I know not everyone is destined to run their own research program (be it in a “lab” or not), whether they want to or not. For those who have the good ideas, however, it seems like it’s especially hard to get into the running (and for those bioscientists out there, I do feel for you on the whole postdoc thing). I’d rather we took a large chunk of money and used it to fund young scientists (primarily Post-PhD) in whatever they want to do for a period of three to five years. This would include lab/office space, materials, and a staff. Let them get going on a project and see what happens–by the time they get out of the program they will either have enough experience and publications to make it on their own, or enough knowledge of themselves to choose their career path.

There would have to be a great number of these (let’s call them) fellowships, based on geography and research area. I’m almost inclined to suggest that we distribute them randomly based on the applicants in the interest of serendipity, a sort of lottery for the beginning scientist. Whether they are associated with a University or private organization would not be taken into account. I doubt that true randomness would be taken into account, but at least dividing the awards into several fields would keep the biosciences from eclipsing all the other good science that’s being done–geology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, psychology, astronomy, the list goes on.

I don’t know what the outcome of this idea would be in the long run–I imagine the winners would get pretentious and the selection would become politicized. Every so often, though, we might get a breakthrough from a young scientist who just needed some time to figure something out.

*I’ve found this quite often so far: it’s easier to tear down than it is to praise, which is why many online comments are negative.

Our abstract for the North American Paleontological Convention is just about officially done! All I have left to do is sleep on it, read it again, fix the mistakes that I missed tonight, submit it, and then email the people in charge to let them know about the italics (the online form does not accept formatting).

In other news, this week I’m bumming around the American Museum of Natural History in New York, courtesy of my advisor. By “bumming around,” I really mean spending long hours photographing fossil freshwater mussels under hot lights. It’s boring, but someone has to do it, and I get a low-cost trip in the bargain. If we get done within the next few days, I’ll hopefully get some time to scan or photograph part of the modern freshwater mussel collection.

Why scan? I’m primarily interested in the so-called “plain Jane” genera, or those without distinguishing internal or external features (typically this means the edentulous ones, but any poorly preserved specimen can be missing important characters). Rather than setting up a camera, lights, scale bar, label for every specimen I want, I’ve found it much easier to lay a series of single valves on a flatbed scanner and push the button.

The NAPC abstract was interesting to write, mostly because my intention changed halfway through (which may be obvious). Rather than the methodological study I was expecting on quantitative morphometrics, it looks like I’m going to be doing more with paleobiogeography (more on this after the abstract is accepted). This is fitting, since I’m starting my PhD on the paleobiogeography of freshwater mussels, but perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

Since I’ve got this week of little to do in the evenings beside sit in the hotel room, I may indeed get some other work done. Tonight’s task is to finish up the third version of a manuscript based on my Bachelor’s thesis. Wish me luck!

Please refrain from listing every computer you’ve ever owned in your signature. This screws up my Google searches to no end. You may be talking about iMac G5s, but I’m looking for an iMac G3 and you owned one, so now I’m on a page that has no information relating to my search!

Have a nice day.

I found out last week that Andy has linked to this blog from The Open Source Paleontologist, which is quite a leap for me. Thanks Andy!

I suppose being linked-to means I’ll have to make sure everything I write is coherent. I’ll see what I can do.