Cool Science

Let's carry on with the "Confessions..." series

Two days ago I stumbled on a paper that may have scooped a colleague of mine. That's never fun, but it's a reality of science. In this case it would be unfortunate I think because it was theoretical work and his was an especially good idea in my opinion and I had encouraged this colleague to pursue it. I maintain that the situation is a little like how Michelangelo said that one doesn't sculpt stone but merely discover the figure that was buried inside. Science works like that - with a lot of smart people on the hunt, it is likely that multiple people will stumble across the same good idea.

There are a few silver linings to being scooped; in science we've all learned to make the best of it. One thing that softens the blow to the ego is simply that it demonstrates that your idea was a good idea, worthy of publishing. Trust me, this counts for something deep down. You ultimately never know if an idea is any good until you get those peer reviews back, and any validation, any at all, gives you a little warm fuzzy feeling in your frontal lobe. I have a paper in review right now that presents a very simple idea, but which is counter-intuitive and many find surprising because you don't think it should be true, but it is and then on top of that it's easy too. It's the most rudimentary paper I've ever written, and I wonder if reviewers are going to take me to the cleaners. We'll find out.

What else is 'good' about being scooped? Well, you had better start writing a grant if you're not already. Funding agencies want to fund science, not write history books about it. The NSF and NIH want the US to lead the world in science. So think about it - if you got scooped then you have already been thinking about this idea for a long time and you already have a lot of work in mind that you want to do with this idea. Now you cite that other guy's paper that proves the idea is worthy in your grant proposal to show that you are on the right track. Reviewers, NSF and NIH want that proof of principle before they fork over the money. Before you know it, you could be on the leading edge of a new sub-discipline based on the cool idea you got scooped on. So let's be honest, most scientists crave recognition and ego-boosts; but if you refuse to work in an area because you didn't think of it first, then you'll NEVER do any work. If that's all you're in it for, then you're missing out on a lot of the fun and you're missing out on the big picture altogether.

In the spirit of being scooped...in my thanksgiving post, I commented that I would have said something about why it snowed that day even when temperatures were touching the 40's and no where near freezing. Just the other day, this Q&A on yahoo got some press on the answer.

Or how about recently when I expressed the concern that the upcoming year of chemistry might get overshadowed by astronomers and their quest for proof of life beyond our humble planet? Well, NASA certainly made an attempt to generate some thunder on that this week by discovering a species of bacteria on earth that is able to rescue itself by using arsenic when it is deprived of phosphorous. But that is another post altogether...

Posted by Dave at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I missed the time stamp on this one, but perhaps folks will forgive me. Scientific conferences are a funny thing and I guess I could rant in a multi-part post on the topic about it. Maybe I will. Recently I've learned the lesson that you do a lot better if you get on the web and book your own hotel nearby the meeting. For reasons I don't understand, conferences insist on being held in very expensive hotels and conference rates usually are just symbolic discounts ( a couple of exceptions though to be fair). Most befuddling are the extreme resort conference though - Swiss alps, Italian alps, etc. These price a lot of us out of attending, a strange thing. Anyway, it's too late... more tomorrow.

Posted by Dave at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to phone this one in a bit, but I think it's still interesting. In the last few years I've noticed that the academic job ads for chemistry have been pretty thin. It's no secret that academics everywhere delayed their retirements when the markets tanked. On top of that the vast majority of institutions froze hiring and many trimmed their numbers through what little attrition did take place. It's been a brutal few years in this business. But this year, there's been a change. To my eye the academic job ads are back in chemistry, perhaps even up to their pre-recession levels. Everybody needs to look at the economy from their own microcosm and I know this is not a simple issue, but in our little corner of the world I'm seeing some good signs.

Posted by Dave at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ages ago, I had a cheesy poster with a fancy drawing of a robot on it (which looked really cool 25 years ago, trust me) with the ominous caption 'the future is now'. A discussion today reminded me of this. Today, right now, a strange new future is upon us - everything is instantaneous from entertainment to online education to Kindles, etc. I blogged a while back about how surreal it is that one can download original scientific texts in seconds to an e-reader. But the college paradigm is relatively the same. OK, every college must now have (sigh) a climbing wall; and today I was really discouraged to hear that some schools have full time dorm concierges in an effort to attract students to theirs halls of higher learning.

But the bottom line is that students physically attend classes on a schedule, not in random moments on Hulu or Tivo or Roku. They trudge with their Orange Mocha Frappuccinos into lecture halls large and small and most actually take notes by hand (on the powerpoint handouts provided the day before of course). They follow syllabi, churn through homework, attend office hours at the set time every week. There's no app for that.

So why has the college norm persisted, and especially the residential college? I really, really, really want to get all preachy and serious about this, but I don't think that's the way to go here. True, I want to rant on about the epic intellectual and emotional maturation that takes place when kids go off on their own for four years and immerse in (to carry on the metaphor) an intellectual sink or swim odyssey. I want to talk about obvious points like hands-on learning and peer-learning and daily access to renowned scholars. But that's maybe for another day.

I feel like going the Sci-Fi route here. Maybe Bill Gates imagines that a Matrix-like computer loaded learning technology will one day exist that will be far superior to attending lectures and seminars ("Woah - I know quantum mechanics!"). Or maybe one day we will embrace a Geiger like melding of humanity and machine that will make concepts of place and geography irrelevant. But my attempt at something profound here is that I think our humanity drives us to learn together and that we don't want technology to isolate us and to hand virtual degrees out to us in our little suburban boxes.

Posted by Dave at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's always a place for 'firsts' and this post is my first time spreading a viral video (which means you've probably seen it already). Yeah sure, it's a promo, but it still has that satisfying reality distortion effect where you're just trying to wrap your brain around what's going on and wondering how they did it. If you're a purist, the non-massaged version with live sound is arguably better. Then of course you're going to have to watch it a few times to see just how layered this thing is. You gotta love those Belgians. Now that I have passed it on, I can finally be free of it.

Hmmm, need some science here. Well, I just rejected a paper that I peer reviewed and luckily that doesn't happen much, but when it does it puts me in a funk. It's a lot like grading. Correct assignments are easy to grade. But when a student homework or exam goes way off track, it's really time consuming to work through it all, make sure they get the benefit of the doubt, and figure out a fair grade.

A weak paper is similar - you have to look up a bunch of their references, read lots of extra papers, and realize that you better be sure the paper is too weak to publish and exactly why it is, because there's a really nice research group out there that's going to be very disappointed. Well, it's way too late again, so I'd better turn off youtube and hit the hay.

Posted by Dave at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Some projects start with no hope but you forge ahead, chip away (insert favorite cliche here) and finally you get them running, and in hindsight you wonder what the fuss was about. That's really satisfying. This is the standard m.o. in research. But there is a more unusual type of project. It starts off with a beautiful preliminary result that falls in your lap - seeing something new for the first time that nobody has seen before - but then it becomes instantly near-impossible. And you realize nature just decided to let you have that tantalizing sneak peak and not to let you near any more information that might shed more light on that little glimpse that drew you in. I have some of both types of projects going on, but I'm a little obsessed about the latter, rarer type of project. Sometimes nature pulls the old bait and switch; taking the bait is easy, but then the hook sinks in and you'll have to fight with everything you've got to break free with your prize. Maybe I shouldn't post after late nights in lab...

Oh, and just for kicks here's an awesome pic of a boomerang trajectory

Posted by Dave at 01:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

2. The online pricing myth. Some time ago, there was a brief period in which journals offered deep discounts to subscribe to web only editions on the premise that it saves tremendous costs in preparing the print editions. Those rates are long gone and the presses are back to their claims of 'high production costs' when in fact production costs have dropped because of the online publishing, and were low to begin with because of the free content and peer review (point 1 below). Related to this, personal subscriptions to scientific journals are in the stratosphere, running several hundreds of dollars at a minimum and often thousands. Gone are the days when faculty could subscribe to 2-4 journals most relevent to their research group's interest. I think that's particularly sad. There's nothing like flipping through a recent issue of a journal while an experiment is running, having them lying around a lunch table while you talk about them with colleagues, etc. Maybe this makes me a dinosaur, but I think these are really important things. I wish I was making a case for personal subscriptions again, but nobody can afford them.

Posted by Dave at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to start here a new category of posts to talk about things in the 'academic' realm. And I'll start with a series of posts with my concerns about the prices of scientific journals. A major problem facing academic researchers is the ballooning subscription rates for journals. And there are substantially more journals than ever before. Even well-funded libraries have cut back, with some famous boycotts of Elsevier by Cornell, Harvard, MIT and others; Elsevier is thought by many to be the worst offender in journal pricing but they are not the only ones. I have a few points to make and I'll spread them out over a few posts:

1. Free content and free peer review should equal fair pricing. The journals neither write the papers nor perform the peer reviews. A number of journals require authors to perform the majority or sometimes all of the layout. These services are all provided free by authors and by professors who view the review process in particular as one of the most serious and important of their scholarly duties. There is an unwritten trust between academians and the presses that providing all content, both authoring and review, for free should translate into fair pricing. Sadly, it is past time to stop submitting to or performing peer review for publishers that are gouging. This is a messy topic for professors who must publish to further their careers and advance their research.

Posted by Dave at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)