Sunday, July 26, 2015

Put a neuro on it!

Put a bird on it, is a sketch from Portlandia commenting on the use of something to the point of over saturation. If The Guardian newspaper is any indicator, neuro- prefixed fields and fads have reached bird trend levels. I've posted about neuroeducation (1 and 2) and written satirical ad copy about marketing (1 and 2) before, and two article about neuromarketing and neuroeducation in The Guardian show that the tides are still raising. As with many design trends, like putting a bird on it, many neuro- trends are more flash than substance. Hastily applied neuroscience used to distract lay audiences does nothing to help further the abilities of real scientists attempting to bridge neuroscience with other fields.

Two quotes, one from each article, summarize the issues of these neuro- (mis)applications:

"Much of commercial neuromarketing EEG uses cheap kit, in poorly controlled, poorly designed experiments, that often produces junk data."
"No one should be looking to neuroscience to provide quick fixes or shortcuts to effective learning..."
I'm all for combining neuroscience with other fields, but looking to do so in a way that is appropriate, measured and well-designed. If people keep trying to use colorful brains to make a quick buck, we're going to soon run into a number of problems with shoddy science meets a scientifically tested end.


 

Thursday, July 23, 2015

My first experience with socialized medicine

I spent the previous year in Canada and everyone that I already knew or met asked me the same first question, "How's the healthcare?" For most of the year I couldn't say much other than that even I as a visiting American scholar was provided OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Program) after just three months of residency. Finally, as I was preparing to move I went to say goodbye to some friends and play basketball one last time.

It was the end of May and I was in the middle of training for a 25K trail race about a month away. So instead of biking to the court as I normally did, I decided to run there, with the 7.2 mile roundtrip giving me another 50 mile week. After I arrived at the court, we were down a few players from normal but luckily there was a man who had brought his sons to the park and was interested in playing with his. Vlado and I teamed up in a two on two game against my friends and everything was going well. Vlado seemed to warm up quickly and was a much better player than I first assumed. About 20 minutes into our first, and only game, disaster struck as I drove for a layup and came down on my defender's foot, twisting my right ankle hard to the outside. In immediate pain, I stumbled around, tried to lay down and put my foot up, and then watched as my ankle quickly swelled and started to spill over my running shoes.

At that point Vlado, the man that we had met just 20 minutes earlier offered to give me a ride to the hospital. Within minutes he left his sons in the care of my friends and had me in the front seat of his car going towards the hospital. However, he didn't really know where the hospital was. We were driving from an elementary school in the Junction towards the east, but neither of us really knew where a hospital was, so we started to ask people on the sidewalks before being directed to Toronto Western near downtown. A few minutes later Vlado was pulling up to a turn around and dropping me off with cash to take a cab ride home. I couldn't believe the kindness and generosity of this almost stranger.

As he left, I began to limp towards the emergency room. About 5 minutes of limping later I was in the emergency room and just two minutes after that I was checked in. Over the next four hours, between bouts of waiting, I had an X-Ray, spoke to a doctor and was released with instructions of how to treat want turned out to be a severely sprained ankle. In those four hours I wasn't thinking about how long it was taking or the fact that I was receiving government subsidized healthcare, I was impressed by the fact that over 30 other people with a range of maladies on one Sunday afternoon in a 4 hour window were receiving government subsidized healthcare. Overall, it was a great experience and definitely showed me the benefits of socialized healthcare.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Hitchhiker's cliff notes to a career in neuroscience 2

I realize in many of my posts I seem to lash out at something. Often its a piece of news from the realm of higher education, but recently it was the seemingly glib treatment that researchers laid out a career guide in neuroscience. They began by glossing over the oversupply of trainees and the intense level of competition both within academia and in the careers that neuroscience trained scientists could easily transition to outside of academia. They then went on to say that there are four things you need to succeed in attaining your own neuroscience research lab within academia that I summarize as, mobility- you have to go where the jobs are, networking - you need plenty of connections to succeed through the backchannels and other paths outside the traditional structures, build your CV - you need to publish a lot in high impact journals in order to chase your own independent funding, and finally engage in neuroscience and the next generation - you have to like what you do and help others like it too.

In my previous post I gave my impression of what a career guide to becoming a research professor actually looks like. Here I'll give another impression expanding the guide to wanting to work in academia more broadly.

1. Engage in neuroscience and the next generation
2. Taking your time
3. Train broadly (yet also specifically)
4. Networking and saying yes (and no strategically)
5. Reflecting and Introspecting

1. Engage in neuroscience and the public/next generation
Before starting down the path towards a career in neuroscience you really have to love the topic and the process. The reason that people with perfect GPAs and GREs but no research experience don't get into graduate school is because without evidence of having gone through the research experience and wanting more, its a gamble whether this intelligent person has the qualities that make them a good scientist. Much of the research process is a grind and filled with ambiguity and failure. You have to enjoy both being by yourself and at times with a lot of other people. You have to enjoy gray areas and trying to sort through tons of conflicting information. You have to go through the grind for few rewards, internal or external. Graduate school is hard and probably becomes nearly impossible if you don't enjoy the topic that you're studying.

Sometimes when you're down in your silo working away you can forget about the outside world. In order to have a future for you to be able to keep doing your work, its necessary to share you process with the public and school-aged children so that they can be excited and understanding of what you're doing. Without public support there will be no academia and no support for research.

2. Taking your time
In the second half of college as students start to think about what they want to do in the future, sometimes I hear students say that they're just going to go to graduate school because they're not sure what they want to do. It scares me to hear that because it seems like they're skipping step 1 above. While I realize that the road to your first position as a tenure-track is a long one (2 years masters, 4 years PhD, 2 years post-doc), it seems that most people who are in the position of giving grants and hiring professors see trainees as fine wines or spirits that need years of aging before they're ready. That means that in general many successful people put in time as a research assistant/lab manager after college and maybe pursue a tangentially related masters and maybe complete multiple multi-year post-docs. Also, within each stage the general theme seems to be hurry up and wait, where you rush to do something but then you have to wait for someone or something. Most deadlines are not even set in stone, so by taking your time to do things well, one time you can save yourself time.

3. Train broadly (yet also specifically)
The triumvirate of academic assessment includes research, teaching and service. If we visualize that triumvirate as a pyramid in terms of the expectations, the bottom of the pyramid is research with teaching in the middle and service at the peak. No matter the path you want to take in neuroscience either inside or outside academia, the foundation of your training is in research. Even if you're looking to train towards becoming a teaching focused professor or a non-profit worker, your increase in effort or experience in teaching or service cannot come at a cost to your research. Graduate schools are now recognizing that there are not enough academic positions available for all of the graduate students who are there (either as cheap researchers or cheap teachers) and have begun to provide training opportunities outside research. As much as a PhD is a ticket towards a research, teaching or service oriented career, the specific skills that you gain as a researcher set you up for success in all of the other realms.

4. Networking and saying yes (and no strategically)
Meeting people both formally and informally in academia is one of the most important aspects of success. The more people you know the better your chance to find out about opportunities that are either not advertised or only offered to select people. Knowing people can help you find jobs, publish in special issues or edited books, speak at conferences and be invited to contribute to grants or new companies. In order to meet people, you have to be open to experiences and be willing to say yes to almost every opportunity. Early in your career its important to say yes to basically every opportunity while keeping in mind that not all of them will work out. After establishing yourself, then you can start to say no strategically while at the same time reaching out to others to make connections.

5. Reflecting and Introspecting
The path to a career in academia is a long one with a number of built in check points. A number of people fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy and stick with the career long after they should. There are both formal and informal requirements depending on your career path and career stage that allow people to check-in and see where they compare. Its difficult if not near impossible to give up on something after putting 20 years into it. Its also especially frustrating when you feel that things outside your own power and effort are the reasons that your (in)formal requirements don't meet up. The path is long and life and career circumstances can change quite quickly, but by following the first four pieces of advice you shouldn't have much difficulty pivoting your career focus at any stage.

Monday, May 11, 2015

The Hitchhiker's cliff notes to a neuroscience career

Source
Both my wife and I are on a galaxy wide trek in attempt to find our path in the neuroscience academic field. While unfortunately our treks have taken us to different zip codes for another year, Neuron published a guide in a recent NeuroView to help us make sure that we're on the correct path. Interestingly, since "throngs" of scientists and aspiring scientists enter the field each year with no less that 1.7 million individual scientists worldwide actively publishing on the brain and behavior since 1996, as the authors state, "not all of these young researchers can make an academic career in neuroscience."

The authors discuss instruments and initiatives that they feel can help people (with a focus on European researchers) progress through early- and mid-career steps:

1. Mobility
2. Networking
3. Build a CV and Seek Advice
4. Enjoy Neuroscience and Engage the Next Generation

The authors are describing a career trajectory towards running your own research lab at a research university, which is important to keep in mind as I revise their suggestions:

1. Publish early, publish often, publish in "glamour" journal
2. Repeat

If you want a research career in neuroscience you need to start publishing in undergraduate with at least a first author publication from your senior thesis. You then likely need to get a "glamour" first author publication in your masters or first year of PhD so that in your second year you can obtain fellowship funding (e.g. NSF, NIH, CIHR/NSERC) from a national funding source. Then through the rest of your PhD you need to publish first author "glamour" articles and use your "networking" and "mobility" and collaboration to beef up your CV with co-authorships in specialized and field-specific journals. With over 10 publications in your PhD you can then find a post-doc and maybe even bring independent post-doctoral funding with you where ever you go (remember mobility means you get to go where ever). More "glamour" first author pubs and at least 20 author publications before you're ready to go on the market, you better make sure that you were PI or co-PI on a medium or large grant before attempting to apply for jobs.

I think any good travel guide not only includes the things you should do, but also the things that you should avoid, the "tourist traps" if you well. So I''d like to hear or see the things that young scientists should not do if they want to find a career in academia. I'd also like to see a guide that goes beyond the research lab PI role to encompass other paths in academia.

Education and Neuroscience: Friends, foes or something in-between?

Three years ago I took a course on service-learning and developed a psychology service-learning course where psychology students would work with local primary and secondary school teachers to implement the latest findings from psychology and neuroscience in their courses. In association with this proposed class I also proposed a research study in which I would assess the neuroscience literacy of teachers and their willingness to learn more about the latest in psychology and neuroscience research and how it could interface with various aspects of the classroom experience. This project was heartily endorsed and approved by the University of Iowa IRB but then soundly rejected by the Iowa City School Board.

At the end of the course, for my final project I wrote a paper that I later submitted to a special issue on ways neuroscience can contribute to education that was rejected. I rewrote the paper and submitted it it to a neuroscience and education journal and was rejected for the neuroscience being to simplified. I rewrote the paper and submitted it to a broad community engagement journal and was rejected with the thought that the community wouldn't want to know about the topic. I then most recently rewrote the paper and submitted it to a higher education and community engagement journal and was again rejected (after being in review for 9 months!) and sent back very few comments where the reviewers appeared to misunderstand the what type of article it had been submitted as.  With these three years of experiences, although I see the relationship between neuroscience and education as potentially fruitful and mutually beneficial, I don't think that sentiment is shared in either field.

Source
Recently the Guardian touched on the contentious relationship between neuroscience and education. The article beings by noting the number of nonsense neuroscience claims that make their way into the educational system. Quickly though it notes a program called, "I'm a scientist - Get me out of here" which is a public engagement initiative connecting scientists with the public, in particular children. I'm glad to see this program mentioned in the context of bringing neuroscience and education together. It tells me that I am on the right path trying to bring neuroscience and education together and taking the right tact by brining educators into the mix early, trying to see what they want to know about neuroscience rather than just telling them that right-left brain teaching and multiple intelligences are nonsense. Once I settle somewhere permanently I'll be able to form the long-term reciprocal relationships necessary to carry out this work.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Peer-Review Problems, add sexism to the list

Fiona Ingleby recently submitted a manuscript to a PLoS journal and received one terrible and sexist review rejecting it (interestingly the manuscript investigated the progression of PhD students to post docs in biology and found evidence for gender bias in their data). She and her co-author appealed three weeks ago with no response from the journal at which point she posted excerpts from the review to twitter, unleashing a storm of outrage towards the reviewer and PLoS. I'll let everyone else comment on the problems of sexism that this raises (here, here, here, and here) and focus on the problems of the current peer-review system that this situation highlights.

Objectivity
One of the first problems was that the reviewer was not blind to the authors which allowed them to bring their sexist attitudes to the review. Even more inappropriately the reviewer took time to research the authors and made other comments about them including that they were too young and inexperienced. Introducing double-blind reviews may help prevent or slow down such easy efforts to undermine particular researchers. However, in practice, especially when publishing in specialized journals and when you are firmly planted into your research line, it is fairly easy to figure out who the senior author is on a manuscript, blinded or not. Generally, more than one person serves as a gatekeeper to publication with at least two, sometimes three and other times even more. By having more than one reviewer you can get different perspectives and improve the reach and impact of the paper. It can also be good for editors where consensus among reviewers indicates the potential high-impact quality of publications. But by having more than one reviewer, a pragmatic issue may be to help the editor screen out any bad reviews. Two reviewers with completely opposite opinions may indicate that the paper needs clarification or that one of the reviewers is trying to tank a paper (oh no scientists are people with emotions and egos too!) or is not qualified to review the paper (oh no sometimes reviews are passed off to under qualified trainees). This issue of objectivity and double-blind review leads into the next point of pre-registration.

Pre-registration
The review had no critiques that could be used to improve the manuscript. The closest that the review came to actually commenting on the science was that the manuscript was “methodologically weak” and “has fundamental flaws and weaknesses that cannot be adequately addressed by mere revision of the manuscript, however extensive." Anytime that a review attempts to go after the methodology, it irks me a little. If we think back to the origin of any particular study, it has to go through at least one if not more reviews before you can even carry out the research. Every study gets a once over from IRB and other institutions to make sure that the study crosses some bar of ethics and usually includes that it is being carried out with good science. Next, many, if not most studies are carried out with funding. Funding success at federal levels is hovering around 10% and only slightly better in other realms meaning that any research that has funding has potential implications and is being carried out in a way that may achieve those implications that it beats 9 other solid research proposals. So it always seems odd that its not until after the study is complete that apparent methodological flaws make a study unworthy of publishing as if every published paper is perfect in its formulation and the way that it was carried out. Pre-registration, in which a study's methodology is submitted and if it is accepted is published regardless of the results, allows us to avoid these issues and provides early feedback in the publishing process.

Slow
Three weeks! Three weeks of sitting on an appeal that justifiably points out that the review did not actually comment on the science of the article and was sexist seems like a poor move for PLoS. Now the outrage from the science community is reiterating that sentiment. The circumstances of this review raises so many questions, what was the editor thinking sending that review out, why was there only one reviewer, why would you appeal after a terrible review process and not go somewhere else? Post-hoc review is slow with quick decisions on the order of a month and slow decisions that more than a year (not including shopping to multiple journals or going down the prestige ladder). Before even submitting a manuscript for review, researchers are faced with questions that often pit time to publication against ease of publication. Many researchers always go down the prestige ladder just because the turn around (i.e. rejection) can be fast and if something hits, its worth the time. Other researchers would rather publish fast and will choose specialized journals with reputations for turning around manuscripts quickly.

Could we improve the quality and speed of peer-review by giving more credit or reward (some people think this option removes objectivity) for peer-review? Perhaps peer-review could improve if we shift how we approach it. Instead of thinking of ourselves as the gate-keepers of the sanctity of science we could see ourselves as collaborators in trying to improve science and disseminate science, messy though it may be.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Consortium for Faculty Diversity


I was recently hired as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow at Haverford College in Philadelphia, PA in the Psychology Department. The Consortium is an association of liberal arts colleges committed to enhancing diversity among members institutions. Last year when I was searching for tenure track positions, teaching positions and post-docs at liberal arts institutions, I found the CFD application with opportunities to work as a post-doctoral fellow at a liberal arts institution. When I saw this application, I knew that my experiences in community engagement may qualify me. I was so excited for the opportunity to apply for this program because my goal for the past 10 years has been to be a scholar and teacher at a liberal arts institution.

The CFD Fellowship program offers the liberal arts faculty experience described as follows:
  • The residential liberal arts colleges of the Consortium are committed to promoting excellent teaching for undergraduate learning. 
  • As part of their intellectual vitality, interactive teaching and active learning environments, Consortium member schools seek to build rich intellectual communities of students and faculty members. 
  • At our schools, a passion for teaching is a "must," as is significant effectiveness in a variety of pedagogical settings. 
  • Faculty members at Consortium member schools can expect to devote a substantial amount of time to teaching and advising undergraduate students. 
  • Because our campuses and departments are small, faculty members are encouraged to undertake inter-departmental and inter-disciplinary curricular projects, including the design and teaching of interdisciplinary courses, first-year seminars or courses for non-majors. 
  • Use of innovative pedagogy that supports student learning, such as collaborative group work or inquiry learning, may also be expected.
At Haverford I'll be teaching three courses including a Seminar in Embodied Cognition, Introduction to Psychology, and Cognitive Neuroscience. Also, I'll be conducting research with undergraduate students and looking for engagement opportunities in the Philadelphia area. I'll have more updates about the experience in the future.

Continued Misunderstanding of the Function of Higher Education

In my free time my favorite thing to do run. I think I was drawn to research for many of the same reasons that I love running. You need to be somewhat crazy, you have to put in long hours of work for only small personal victories, only people who do the same thing as you, in order to excel you have to good at a number of seeming unrelated activities, and finally at the professional ranks you have to answer to people who have little understanding of the inner workings. Earlier this week I went to the Boston Marathon to watch my wife run (a PR in 3:17:23). As a spectator of the marathon, even though I was only watching people run 26.2 miles in 2 to 5 hours, I was actually watching the culmination of hours, months and even years of hard work and preparation. At the professional level, the men and women race winners were each awarded $100,000 for 2 hours of effort and similar to other professional sports, many mistakenly believe that they are only compensated for their time in the limelight. In run training, you have to combine hours of volume training, hours of race pace training, hours of speed work, hours of strength and form training as well as cross training, active recovery, proper diet and sleep. So instead of $50,000 an hour, if we only count the days elapsed so far this year, the athletes likely only made $76 an hour.

In my other field, in the past week, two examples of people with little understanding of higher education made a similar mistake in only paying attention to the limelight and forgetting everything else behind the scenes. In Iowa, a legislator introduced a bill that would have the professor with the lowest ratings in teaching fired while in North Carolina an education bill would mandate 4-4 teaching for all faculty. While the bill in Iowa died in committee the idea behind it shows almost no understanding of the role of faculty. Just as the two hours on the marathon course are just a sliver of what makes a marathoner, the three hours per week in one particular course are just a sliver of what makes a professor a professor. I value the importance teaching and have worked hard to gather feedback from my students throughout my career teaching but I am sympathetic to professors who struggle in the classroom. However while student evaluations are one of the only ways that teaching ability is assessed, this article discusses some issues with student evaluations and suggests that they may not be the best way (check out the comments as well).

In North Carolina, Senate Bill 593—“Improve Professor Quality/UNC System” would “ensure that students attending UNC system schools actually have professors, rather than student assistants, teaching their classes.” The bill asks professors at the research institutions of North Carolina to teach 4 courses a semester and ignores the fact that if tenured faculty are not teaching courses, its likely adjunct professors. Again while 12 hours in the classroom per week may not seem like much, its just the tip of the iceberg with lecture preparation, grading, and meeting with students. But this focus on teaching at Research I institutions ignores the fact that professors at these institutions are supposed to be creating knowledge in order to pass on that knowledge in the classroom. In my six years at research focused universities (Iowa, York and Toronto) I have met very few professors that were openly hostile towards teaching with most enjoying teaching (in the broader sense, including time outside the classroom). However, almost all of the professors that I know teaching 1-2 courses a semester have almost no time as it is. Few take time off, few sleep regular hours and few have hobbies outside teaching. Asking them to teach 4 courses but place the majority of their evaluation on their research will lead to research professors in North Carolina to leave in droves with no one looking to take their place (despite the huge oversupply of candidates).

If anything I think these two bills suggest that higher education needs to do a better job of communicating its role in society. College is not just a place for job training, so in order to avoid further commodification of higher education we need to not only communicate the importance of our research, but our teaching and engagement.

Edit: 4/27/15 One day after I write this, this article is published on the future of the American Research University. This passage echo's my sentiments above:
"Those of us leading or working in research universities, especially public ones, face the urgent imperative to articulate and give full-throated explanations of the extent to which university research not only brings economic and social betterment (through new medicines, policies, products, jobs, etc.) but also is crucial to the educational mission. It drives discoveries that can be commercialized to enrich innovators and their backers, and it ensures that those innovations will be deployed to sustain the vitality of our economy, our society, and our human values. Research is also a good in itself across the full set of disciplines and fields that constitute university life; it is an aptitude and skill that students, both undergraduate and graduate, learn in college that can be of lifelong value; and it is a force that generates new knowledge — and new modes of teaching and learning."

Monday, April 13, 2015

The "real reason" college tuition costs so much

In higher education, there many be no other refrain spoken more often than the costs of tuition raising at a pace that far exceeds inflation (or any other good and service). Two articles in the New York Times in the past few months have attempted to explain why tuition is so high and has increased so much. The earlier published article appears to be a couple page ad for a forthcoming book about the future of education and the author's assumption that it will be revolutionized by on-line education. Of the many problems in higher education he identifies, the one discussed at present is the profile and rankings arms race that he sees national and regional research institutions chasing. The article can be summarized by a quote from Mr. Trachtenberg, the former president of George Washington University, the case study of little brother universities trying to punch above their weight by raising their costs so they can spend that money on the "wrong" things:
"College is like vodka, he liked to explain. Vodka is by definition a flavorless beverage. It all tastes the same. But people will spend $30 for a bottle of Absolut because of the brand. A Timex watch costs $20, a Rolex $10,000. They both tell the same time."
With this metaphor and case study in George Washington University, the author describes the amenities arms race taking place at universities across the US. Under the assumption that more (or higher priced) means better, the author suggests that the price of tuition is increasing because it can. Without the higher price, universities lose out on the lazy rivers and luxurious apartment-style dorms that all of the other universities are investing in. So in this author's view, the high and increasing price of tuition is due to the misguided, endless search and battle for supremacy in research prestige, branding and self-aggrandizement.

In the second article, the real reason why tuition costs so much,  the author names two different reasons for the increasing cost of tuition, the increasing number of students attending universities (requiring more services, facilities, etc.) and the increasing number of university administrators. Surprisingly, the author vehemently denies the most commonly cited cause of raising tuition costs, decreases in state and federal funding. He states that higher education's federal budget is 10 times higher than the 1960s and state appropriates are 4 times higher than the 1960s. Almost everywhere else I looked I couldn't find data supporting the idea that funding hasn't decreased (this was a very difficult search to do given the motivations on both sides of the argument). In 1960, 2.9 million students were enrolled in colleges and universities while in 2014, 7.24 times that many were enrolled. This piece from the Chronicle does a great job summarizing state funding trends with their findings pointing to decreases in funds.

Combining the suggestions from the two articles and reanalyzing one of their points I think we find the reasons why tuition is increasing. There has been an explosion in the number of students attending college, paired with increased government oversight and an increase in the number of services that colleges provide causing an increase in the number of staff to oversee/audit those new services all while the schools receive less funding from the public (federal and state).

One thing that seems to be rarely discussed when pointing out the college tuition is skyrocketing is that college today is much different from the 1960s or some other time period that is pointed to for lower tuition costs. Technological advances has created the need for revolutionized infrastructure in order to support computer and internet abilities (that also comes along with specialized staff to make sure those services are provided safely and timely). Other support services have been created and expanded including alumni/career services and student support services that help students find employment, health services or extracurricular activities. Again, to beat an old drum, college is more than sitting in a lecture and taking a multiple choice exam (or watching a video on-line, writing in a forum and taking tests). If we envision college this way, then it also makes sense to extend it to all aspects of the college experience. Dorm rooms should be 9X7 concrete blocks, the cafeteria should serve gruel and there should be no extracurricular opportunities because all of the students' time outside of the classroom should be spent working and preparing for class.

Colleges are meant to provide for the public good and includes more than just the time students spend in the classroom. In short, the public good provided by colleges/universities include: collaborative relationships with the community, service to the community, supporting diversity, improving quality of life, providing economic benefits, training a workforce, regulating social change, transmitting culture, creating knowledge, disseminating knowledge, providing critical reflection, promoting diversity of thought, increasing problem solving abilities, promoting democratic citizenship, civic participation, and social responsibility. Practically these public goods are reflected in increased engagement by college graduates including more volunteer work and participation in elections. College graduates are also more likely to make more money thus increasing their contribution to tax revenues while also using less social services. So while we watch public funds drain away from colleges and universities, at what point does the public good become a private good?

Friday, March 27, 2015

SfN Hill Day


Yesterday was SfN Hill Day, an annual event in which neuroscientists advocate for the importance of biomedical research and funding. From the SfN website, they note that the purpose of the event is to
"Meet with their congressional representatives to discuss advances in the field of neuroscience, share the economic and public health benefits of investment in biomedical research, and make the case for strong national investment in scientific research through NIH and NSF."
I searched through the hashtag, #SfNHillDay and recorded the Senators and Representatives (or staffers) that were tagged as having met scientists. In total, 18 Senators and 24 Representatives met with scientists to discuss the importance of funding and investment in neuroscience research. I found the timing of the Hill Day interesting as Rick Domann, a Professor from the University of Iowa has recently tweeted a few interesting articles about science funding in the US including one from Science Magazine where 1000 senior investigators dropped out last year and one from Research Trends about the NIH. Together these two articles suggest problems in biomedical funding. While I am all for more money being responsibly invested in biomedical research, in particular neuroscience, we should first consider fixing a broken system.

Going forward, it will be interesting to watch how these 42 congress people vote and advocate for science funding. As the 2015 NIH budget looks relatively flat, I wonder what the future of funding will look like. Will public funding levels continue to decrease and will we see a rise in crowdfunding of science? As scientists look towards this bureaucratic bypass I wonder what types of institutional oversight and quality control measures will be put forth in order to make sure that the best studies are being put forward for the opportunity of crowdfunding.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

BetaBoost Brain Serum

BetaBoost is your brain but better. Natural ingredients match your own endogenous chemicals and they probably even cross the blood-brain-barrier. After bringing together the world's best neuroscientists, nutritionists and food scientists, we've created the first scientifically tested and validated neuroenhancer and nootropic. Whatever your brain problem is fogginess, tiredness, depression, concentration or even intelligence, BetaBoost has you covered. Mention the keyword EngagedBrain to receive 10% off your first 12 pack of BetaBoost.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

"Noncognitive" Contributions to College Success


FiveThirtyEight blog, the site that makes statistics cool, is best known for predicting political races and athletic performance (especially baseball), but has recently began expanding into a number of new frontiers. This week the blog questioned how we traditionally predict college success. Although it varies across colleges and universities, the traditional application materials include high school GPA, standardized test scores, letters of recommendation and personal essays. The blog notes that a score of 1550 on the SAT (about 52-61% on the subcategories) give a student a 65% chance of attaining a B- average in the first year and a 69% chance of graduating within 6 years, while students scoring below 1550 have a 45% chance of graduating within 6 years. For ACT scores, a student with a 22 (out of 36) in math have a 50% chance of attaining a B in college algebra. However, only 40% of test takers hit college readiness levels in 3 or 4 of the tested subjects and 33% of test takers didn't meet benchmarks in any subject.

However, many argue that standardized tests do not accurately predict college performance like William Hiss who was quoted in the article saying:
“What we have found is that in a significant number of cases, the students who have perfectly sound high school records, but much less impressive SAT scores, do fine in college”
Besides arguing about the value of using standardized test scores and high school GPA to predict college success, FiveThirtyEight wades into their favorite territory of using esoteric and mystical measures like "noncognitive" measures to predict future performance. The mention skills like grit, motivation and perseverance (which are all sound like synonyms of conscientiousness - but I guess I shouldn't question something that was awarded a MacArther Fellowship) as well as the "hidden curriculum" which includes scheduling meetings and reaching out to the right people for help.

From my own experience in college, graduate school and teaching a number of first-year college courses I've developed a number of suggestions for first-year college students transitioning from high school. At Coe College, I asked first-year students to write wiki entries about topics that are important for first-year students, but these were topics that college students should be aware of or face, not topics that would necessarily help them transition to college.

In no particular order these are my suggestions to help students handle the challenges of college:

Join a club, sport or activity that gets you to campus early. While many campuses offer a week zero or transition week for first-year students, any chance to spend as much time on campus as possible and meet older students gives you a chance to get advice from people who have gone through what you are going through and explore the campus without the scheduled events of week zero. In my experience, I played soccer and was able to move to campus more than a week before week zero and met all of the other athletes on campus early, make friends on the team and explore campus, including moving into my dorm room first before the rest of the first-year class.

Time-management. Most students are used to going to class for some number of hours straight and when faced with a college schedule that could include an 8:00AM class and a 6:00PM class with nothing in between can get lost. A typical class schedule may include 3 M/W/F 50 minute classes a 3 hour lab and 1 T/Th 80 min class which means only a little over 13 hours in class. Depending on the course, it is suggested that you study 2-4 hours per hour in class which means somewhere between 26 and 52 hours of studying per week. This means that you should spend between 39 and 65 hours per week on school material or between 5.6 and 9.2 hours per day. If you make sure you get your sleep and get 8 hours per day you have between 6.7 and 10.3 hours per day left to work, participate in extracurriculars, and have fun. After working a 20 hour per week part time job you'll have between 7.4 and 3.8 hours per day for extracurriculars and fun. To some people, this may not sound like much but if you plan and use your time well, then it works well. This works especially well if you plan your part time job well. For example if you have a job that allows you to spend a lot of your time studying (e.g., office work, dorm front desk) or allows you to save money (e.g., working in the cafeteria or at a restaurant and getting free meals every shift) then you can double up on your time. Another great use of your part-time job is to use it as an applied study of what you're interested in for a career.

Engagement. Most of the complaints that I hear about higher education (e.g., teachers not teaching enough, students not learning, etc.) come from a misunderstanding of what college does and is for. In my experience this misunderstanding is addressed above in the time management section, that college is limited to the 39-65 hours per week going to class and studying for class. Before describing other aspects of engagement, engagement starts in the classroom. If the material isn't something that you're interested in, engage in the basic/broad skills that underlie every course. No, teachers do not spend only 3 or 13 hours a week working, no, students do not spend 40 hours a week "going to college" and spend the rest of it partying. To me, some of the most important parts of college come outside of the classroom and studying for class in the form of engaging with something. This could be engaging with the material that your learning in an applied way like an internship or research experience. This could be from the club or extracurricular you join. While a number of people note that they need to work as many hours as possible to even have the ability to attend college, I counter that unless your jobs are helping you in someway (e.g., allowing you to study, reduce spending in some area or preparing you for your future employment) you should cap study at 20 hours per week. Students should take every opportunity to engage in their interests as possible and also check what their college offers. Most colleges offer a number of hidden gems that are sometimes not widely advertised. These gems range from assistance with courses (e.g., writing/math centers, tutoring), help finding jobs (e.g., work study, alumni foundation) and preparing for your future. Earlier I noted that college students studying 10.3 hours, working 2.85 hours and sleeping 8 hours a day still have 3.8 hours a day to participate in extracurriculars and have fun. These ~4 hours are probably among the most important in college and the part that separates successful from unsuccessful use of your time in college.

Look for and ask for help. College is hard and it is almost impossible to do by yourself. The blog noted the "hidden curriculum" of college and while it is difficult for some people, its important to reach out. In a limited version of this advice, I always urge students to visit office hours at least once. In a broader version, colleges have a number of avenues to help you find help. In courses you can either reach out to the professor or in larger sections, the TA. In your dorm you can reach out to your RA/JC and outside those domains, you can often find offices for health and academic support. I had some difficulty transitioning academically and reached out to two of my professors first semester to help me in their courses. Colleges and Universities may even have special organizations set up to help people. At the University of Iowa I was a mentor in Critical MASS which helped students after they faced trouble or problems in order to help them find things they were interested in or helped them achieve goals.

These suggestions are fairly broad but can help lead to more specific advice. I'd be interested to hear what other people suggest would help students transition to college. Relating back to the FiveThirtyEight blog, I'd suggest students who have good time-management are willing to engage, and who are willing to reach out for help would have the best chance for success.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

BrainSonic

BrainSonic measures the electrical activity of your brain allowing you to change your behavior based on your brain's activity. Paired with the BrainSonic smartphone app you'll be able to decrease stress, changing not only your emotional state, but over time your emotional traits and increase attention helping you remember and accomplish more. Just make sure you hold still while using our headset so you don't introduce any eye, muscle or heart related artifacts in the signal ruining our patented algorithm that extracts information from our 8 channels of electrodes. Use the promo-code "Engaged" to receive 10% off your first headset.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

International Science Research Journals

International Science Research Journal (ISRJ) is an online publisher of the world's highest impact, most cutting-edge research. As a leader in open-access (OA), ISRJ caters to only the most interdisciplinary, highest-impact research. While keeping the highest editorial standards we have the fastest peer-review guarantee with a maximum turnaround time of 24 hours. We have a lower acceptance rate (on first submission) than Nature or Science (although upon second submission there is an almost 100% acceptance rate). For only the low rate of $400 to submit, $100 for each figure, $50 for each appendix, $25 for each author, and $10 for each affiliation you can submit a manuscript. Also note for each citation you give to the journal you receive a $5 discount on your submission fee, which reminds us that our impact factor is 46.4.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Brain Learning Institute

The field of education is a largely untapped resources begging to be milked year after year for profit. Currently only textbooks are able to run rampant in the sector with massive profit margins that can be kept high by releasing new editions or locking the actual use of book (e.g., submitting problem sets) behind DRMs and paywalls. While education is slow to change and adapt on a large scale, pseudo-neuroscience/education evangelists are trying to find ways into education through gimmicky technologies and promises. At the Brain Learning Institute we work to inoculate educators and administrators from neuroscience snake oil salesmen by debunking neuro-ed myths. No more 10% myth, no more left/right brain learners and no more learning style differences. By making an investment early, you can avoid the pain of buying into false neuroeducational practices and products.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

March Madness


March Madness not only brings us 64 games of drama filled college basketball, but the opportunity to hear about how psychological principles apply to even the most fun events in our lives. Below are a few of the most common concepts that we'll encounter over the next two weeks.


Superstition
Your unwashed lucky jersey, a pregame meal of Skittles and a steak, a ridiculous coordinated handshake a pigeons spinning in circles all share something in common: superstition. There is a tendency to infer causality between closely occurring events with positive secondary events (e.g., winning a game, getting a food reward) more likely to cause a repetition of the first event (e.g. not tying your shoes) in the future, while negative secondary events (e.g., losing the game, not getting food) are more likely to case a decrease in repeating the first event in the future. Operant conditioning breaks a behavior down into tiny reinforceable pieces. B.F. Skinner explored conditioning and reinforcement in his study of radical behaviorism. With pigeons and rats he was able to shape behavior through different types of reinforcement applied on various schedules. In sports we can see the principles of behaviorism in rituals developed by athletes and fans alike. Even picking brackets may be influenced from year to year when you win your previous seasons bracket by choosing which mascot could beat up the other.

Lesson: Unless you make the game winning shot, almost anything you do will have little effect on the outcome of the games you watch or the teams you cheer for



Hot Hand
The hot hand fallacy is the false belief that previous success in a random event will lead to a greater chance of further success. In basketball, the hot hand fallacy is that after a player hits two shots in a row, they will be more likely to hit the next shot. Instead of viewing the probability of a player making a shot over the long-term, people are more likely to view smaller sequences of hot and cold streaks (i.e. clustering illusion). More broadly humans are constantly finding patterns within random sequences (Gilovich et al., 1985).

Lesson: Don't give the ball to the career 29% shooter who's hit 4/5 for the last shot over the career 47% shooter.



Underdogs
So called Cinderella teams may be the most exciting parts of the annual March Madness. These "bracket-busters"seeds 9-15 (we can't include 16 as they have never beat a 1 team) can place their school on the map, from the 1985 Villanova Wildcats, to the 2006 George Mason Patriots, and capture a place in America's favorite narrative. However, even if we like the narrative, the odds are not in the favor of Cinderella teams. Ignoring the issues of human rankings of teams we see that the better team usually wins.

Lesson: Yes teams ranked lower by humans win games, but win we look at statistical rankings of teams, the better team usually wins.

So as we finish filling out our brackets we can be reminded of the psychological issues that interface with all aspects of our lives or just sit down and watch some basketball.

Monday, March 16, 2015

"Lack of critical thinking in strike"

In college I avoided English classes like the plague. After my first year writing course, I only took one English course and it took place during Interim with the topic covering protest in American literature, comparing and contrasting literary authors and American singer-song writers (i.e. I listened to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and analyzed how their lyrics spoke to themes found in Steinbeck and Ellison). When approaching a critical analysis of any piece or idea you can generally take one of two tracts, a surface level and a deep level. Although not always true, the track you take is often dependent on your experience with the piece or idea. In a recent article in The Star on the strikes occurring at York University and University of Toronto, the author comments on a lack of critical thinking, but appears to come at the issue so far removed from it, that in their analysis citing a lack of critical thinking, they miss all of the deeper issues that with critical analysis would be revealed.

I've never heard of the author of this article before, Martin Regg Cohn, but he is a political commentator for the Toronto Star. Wading through the article, its hard to find his point. Under the title is a subtitle: "Labour strife has exposed fault lines in university faculties — byzantine hierarchies where part-time teachers toil in classroom sweatshops." while a caption for the included photograph says: "While a hardy band of low-paid contract lecturers bear the brunt of teaching, a coddled elite of tenured professors are among the best-paid on the planet — while teaching fewer courses than ever, and sloughing off research duties." and the article concludes: "But as other sectors adjust to upheaval — from manufacturing to media to hospitals — we should demand greater accountability and clarity from universities. It’s not just students who deserve a better deal, but part-time teachers, too. Listen to the canaries in the ivory tower." What I pull from these comments is that Mr. Cohen believes that Universities have created two classes of workers with tenure-track faculty riding high hogs with no teaching responsibilities and zero cares about research output while contract faculty perform all of the teaching. He cites a "hallowed" rule that tenure-track faculty divvy their responsibilities 40-40-20 among research, teaching and service, that some professors hadn't published or received funding in 3 years and were well compensated. Taken together I understand this piece as a diatribe against tenure-track professors, however, as the title suggests, Mr. Cohn lacks critical insight into the issues underlying the environment from which these strikes are arising.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've written about these issues before (here and here) with the gist suggesting that we need to re-think how we evaluate and reward research output and reconsider or come to an agreement on the roles of universities/colleges, in particular research universities in society. Without the private sector respecting a PhD for the general skills it provides (similar to the general skills that a liberal arts education provides), there will continue to be a glut of PhDs who are hoping to work towards a tenure-track position, with few other options. As long as there is pressure to enroll as many PhD students as possible in order to produce as much as possible, we'll be unable to escape the cycle of enrolling more students and turning out too many PhDs. Mr. Cohn and others deride faculty for their apparent unwillingness to teach, but faculty at R1 institutions receive little to no reward for teaching (in the narrow sense of teaching in classroom). Even outside of Universities, few people talk about the best teaching institutions unless they're high school guidance councilors. Most of the time that colleges are mentioned for their prestige or impact, the reference is to their research output not how many classes their professor taught that semester or how high their ratemyprofessor.com ratings are.

We can look at these strikes on the surface and make very little contribution with our comments, tenure track professors don't teach enough, tenure track professor only work 9 months a year and are paid too much, TAs, contract faculty are only working part-time, why are they expecting full-time wages. Or we can look past these surface issues and try to understand why colleges and universities value research output from their tenure faculty, why they rely on cheap options to teach every expanding classes and why little will change without massive overhaul across the private sector, government funding and the research culture.

Monday, March 9, 2015

International Women's Day

Yesterday was International Women's Day and like most of society, I'm late to recognizing women. IWD is meant to empower women and raise awareness about the prejudice and hardships that women implicitly face based on their sex. In science and academia women face a number of issues that are slowly and hopefully successfully being addressed.

My wife and I have a unique perspective on these issues as we have the same educational background albeit slightly different research agendas. When I finished my PhD and went to take a postdoc, there was implicit belief that she would move with me and finish her final year of her PhD from afar. When we said that she wouldn't do that the next question was whether she was looking for postdocs or jobs in Toronto for when she finished. Finding a job in academia is hard, finding jobs for academic couples near each other is very difficult and finding jobs for academic couples in the same field is likely impossible. With these issues if we look into these couples and their difficulties we likely see that for women have the more difficult job search in the couple.

In the midst of the difficulties applying for jobs I recognize that as hard as it is for me, my wife faces a number of biases both within and outside of academia. All of her thoughts and actions carry certain connotations that are generally viewed negatively. It also seems like she has to work twice as hard to get half as much back. With a full competitive fellowship, multiple first author publications (with a clear research plan that can be carried out with undergrads) and experience teaching at two different small liberal arts colleges, she seems like the perfect candidate for a tenure track position at a liberal arts college, or as visiting professor or as a teaching postdoc. I don't think about it too much but I wonder if I had been a female if my experience through grad school would have been different, would have applying for postdocs been different and would apply for tenure track jobs be different.

In my own supervision of research and some of my engagement work I have worked to advocate for women in science. I'll continue to fight for the rights and treatment of women in science and recognize my own implicit biases and advantages as a male scientist, while doing my best to not discount that differences in sex are leading to two very different experiences in science.

Roman Research Institute 25th Anniversary Conference

The conference began a little slowly on Monday morning so I guess it wasn't just the attendees with a case of the Mondays. Sitting in one of the meeting rooms I was surrounded by hundreds of professors, clinicians, postdocs and graduate students and although the print was tiny and it was difficult to read, I found few if any community groups or members represented amongst the crowd. As the introductory speaker began I couldn't help but wonder what the cause of the lack of community members was. Was there a lack of interest from the public, was the registration fee too exhorbinate, or are conferences one of the last bastions of the ivory tower where we academics can hob nob with each other, speaking in our jargon and buzzwords without the care or need to translate our speech. As I look to the next three days of the conference I'll think about the role of conferences in academia, in science and in society at large.

Conferences were originally a way to exchange thoughts and ideas and bring academics together to debate and collaborate. In the 21st century, conferences feel like an outdated and outmoded function. Communication across the globe happens continously and instantly, waiting to get together on a specific day in a particular place doesn't fit with our capabilities today. However, that might be symptomatic of what I suspect conferences are actually for, the amorphous term, networking. Gathering people in fun or exotic locations with the excuse of a meeting allows big players in science to get together and meet outside of the conference itself. It allows them to introduce their trainees to their colleagues and protect their inner circle. Trainees at each level are either in the game and trying to figure out a way through networking to claw their way to the next notch on the totem pole to tenure or out of the game and trying to have fun at the bars or local attractions.

Since networking is likely why conferences still exist in their antiquated form and the exchange of ideas is just a consequence, I can understand why community members are not present. As science begins to turn to the public directly for funding (i.e, crowdfunding), perhaps science needs to reconsider how much they value how conferences are run in their current form. Taking money from the people and not working to make conferences accessible will lead to the public abandoning science and leaving scientists stuck like Rapunzel in their ivory towers. Even though I'm guilty of the problem of one way communication with this blog, my twitter and if i start my podcast, we have to figure out how to communicate with and listen to the public as we look to the future of science.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Reviewer Etiquette: Just because you're anonymous doesn't mean you need to troll

scienceblogs.com

Peer-review may be the cornerstone of the scientific process as it is the gate through which both forms of scientific currency (publications and grants) must pass. Peer-review serves as the quality control system in which all scientific discoveries and ideas are scrutinized and and vetted by other experts. Peer-review is meant to make scientific communication trusted, but peer-reviewed work isn't necessarily correct or conclusive, even if it has met some standard of science. After the peer-review process is over and a paper/grant has passed through the gate, it doesn't mean that the process is over, science must deal with it somehow either through responding with commentary, other related studies or replication attempts. However, it often seems as though peer-review is treated as the final say, that flaws are magnified and if the paper doesn't meet some arbitrary standard or give the anonymous reviewer enough citations then it is the end and that idea or that study is stopped dead in its tracks right then and there.

In general the responsibilities of reviewers are to:
  • Comment on the validity of the science, identifying scientific errors and evaluating the design and methodology used
  • Judge the significance by evaluating the importance of the findings and how/where the findings fit in the literature (including identify missing or inaccurate references)
  • Determine the originality of the work based on how much it advances the field
  • Recommend that the paper be published or rejected. Editors don't have to heed this recommendation, but most do (this also varies by the number of reviewers rounded up - sometimes the decision needs to be unanimous, sometimes if the reviews are split another is brought in to break the tie and sometimes the editor makes the decision regardless of the reviewers)
In single-blind (where the authors don't know the reviewer identities) and double-blind (where neither reviewers nor authors know each other's identities) post-hoc (as opposed to pre-registration) review tend to have a few problems

1) Focusing on methodology when the study has already been completed
Pre-registration would seem to solve some of the most frequent reviewer requests, methodological issues, including adding new conditions, new controls or becoming obsessed with the fact that an experiment was run a particular way that they don't quite like. This change would take care of the first responsibility of reviewers, correcting errors in the design and methodology before the study even takes place. 

2) Lack of responsibility/accountability for reviewers
The removal of reviewers being blinded to the authors and readers may help change the level of constructiveness of the comments made in reviews. A tumblr aggregates some of the reviews that don't appear to fall into any of the responsibilities I mentioned above. Removing the veil of anonymity should help to improve the dialog and impact of the review process (here and here). We may even give more significance and value to reviewing. Review is a service and valuable contribution, but given little value in the eyes of the determination of your impact as a scientist. Often it seems as though review is passed off to trainees whose only experience evaluating the literature comes from lab meetings and reading groups where group think causes everyone to dump on the papers and nitpick the papers into oblivion. By naming reviewers (as the Frontiers family does) we give reviewers acknowledgment and accountability. We could go even further and note what they contributed to the study and figure out ways to evaluate the impact that individuals make as a reviewer similar to how we use authorship on papers to evaluate impact.

In the end, peer-review is not the end of the process but just a part of the process that extends far beyond a paper being published. By giving more responsibility and reward for review we should improve the process and remove the "me against the world" feelings shared by both authors and reviewers.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

QuantaBox

Each month, QuantaBox sends you science and neuroscience related schwag. You can choose among various Quanta delivery schedules from Alpha, Beta and Theta depending on how much or how long you want your QuantaBox. If you don't want something in your QuantaBox send it back in the competitive antagonist box. QuantaBox, just the right key for your lock of science interests. Mention EngagedBrain and receive your first month free!

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

Is a Strike == a "Labor Situation" == a "Labor Disruption"? Only when they're framed the same

globeandmail.com
I've recently noticed I use a lot of parentheses in writing and I think its a side-effect of years of academic writing. Sometimes I wish I could represent parens in speech outside of talking under my breath. One place I recently noticed a lack of verbal parens where there should have been has been in the discussions of the strikes by CUPE 3903 and CUPE 3902 at York University and University of Toronto. Cheryl Regehr, Provost and Vice President of the University of Toronto, recently wrote in the Huffington Post (with a great response from a UofT graduate TA here) that teaching assistants rejected an offer of raising their hourly wage to $43.97 but forgot to add that with that increase in hourly pay their total hours changing (decreasing from 205 to 180). Without the information in that paren we can only see the TAs/contract faculty as greedy, unappreciative and spoiled brats. When you do the math the TAs suddenly don't look so greedy. Now TAs make $42.05 with a 205 hour cap for $8,620.25 while the proposed package is equal to $7,914.60, otherwise know as a $700 decrease! 

globeandmail.com
Regardless, the point the TAs/contract faculty are making is that UofT could offer $15,000 with a 1 hour cap or $60,000 with a 0.25 hour cap, or $247,355.32 (the pay of Provost Regehr) with a cap of 0.06 hours, but the problem is not the pay per hour. The problem lies in the cap of $15,000 in funding which is less than the poverty line for a single adult in Toronto. But I also suppose this $15,000 funding package is where the real problem lies. A number of people question whether a "part-time" job really deserves to be paid at a "full-time" rate, especially when the TAs are already being paid to go to school.

nationaladjunct.tumblr.com
Last week brought us National Adjunct Walkout Day and was quickly followed by these strikes highlight systemic problems in academia. Its hard to find data for attaining tenure-track positions that encompasses R1 institutions, primarily undergraduate institutions and community colleges, but the figure is likely much lower than how many want to. Although I don't have the exact figures, it seems like the number of students who think they can "go pro" and those who actually do are in line with college athletes' perception of their ability to go pro and those that actually do. Although a PhD should not only be seen as a path to working in academia, it is often the carrot used to attract students and outside academia a PhD is generally not viewed overwhelmingly positively. Broadly, the goals of Universities are to create and disseminate knowledge and that occurs through three avenues, research, teaching and engagement. Previously, I discussed some of the misperceptions of the goals of Universities and I see some of those issues creeping up in the strikes. 

1) We're training too many PhDs
Early booms in research funding drove up the need for labor to complete research grants which spiraled into the need for a large number of cheap trainees to put out ever higher and higher amounts of research in order to compete for more grants in a shrinking pot of money. Or put another way, we've created a system where tenure-track faculty, in order to be competitive for grants and tenure, need large labs of highly motivated trainees because without high output their labs can't progress.

In a similar vein, reduced funding at the federal and state(or provincial) levels increased the need for Universities to find alternate avenues of funding which led to increases in the number of students, in particular foreign students (as well as an increase in their tuition costs). This led to the increased need for more cheap instructors to teach the increased number of students. With the number of tenure track positions holding steady and an ever increasing pool of PhD graduates, with few equivalent positions outside of academia we've created an underclass of highly educated individuals with no where to turn except for part-time teaching work while holding out for a tenure-track position. 

2) What is the role of Universities and Colleges and what are students hoping to get from a college education
In Scott Walker's latest brush with education in Wisconsin we see some of the misperceptions of what college professors do. As I stated earlier the role of higher education is to create and disseminate knowledge. The triumvirate of higher education, research teaching and engagement map onto those rules with research to creation and teaching/engagement to dissemination. Across the scope of higher education we see the emphasis of creation and dissemination skewed to smaller or greater extents towards one role or the other with R1 institutions skewed towards creation and primarily undergraduate and community colleges skewed towards dissemination (with a number of institutions not fitting into this broad generalization). At large research institutions, teaching, defined narrowly as teaching a course, is generally viewed as a secondary responsibility. From the outside, that might be surprising, but when you look at how tenure is assessed (emphasis on research productivity, i.e., papers/grants) and how administration assigns instructors to courses (with over 60% of courses taught be non tenure-track faculty) we see why faculty at large research schools focus on research (which also involves teaching). 

While we recognize the value of a highly educated populace, a number of people question whether college is simply expensive job preparation. We're less than a week into the strikes at UofT and York and if you check the strike related hashtags on twitter (#WeAreUofT, #YorkUStrike, #CUPE3903, #CUPE3902) you find a mix of support from the TAs/CF and others in solidarity with a number of undergraduates either posting that they're mad about the strike and want to go to class or posting about the fun things they are doing in their "time off." Like the misperceptions of what Universities/colleges are for there are misperceptions about what students should be doing in college. If you go to college and simply attend class, take exams, write essays and work a part-time job then yes, college is simply job preparation, but in that case, probably not very good preparation. If on the other hand going to classes seem like a small part of your college experience because you're working, taking internships, participating in extracurriculars (whether its sports, music, drama, or student clubs) and challenging, stressing and growing, then college is both (excellent) job preparation and for creating a highly educated populace. 

In the end, both of these issues come down to how we as a society value higher education. Do we feel that investment in the research of colleges/universities and in the education of our populace as a whole is a worthy investment? If we don't value the research or Universities/colleges or feel that private industry will make up the difference then we should continue defunding higher education. If we think that our populace attaining higher education is not a worthy investment then we should pass the costs of attending both secondary and post-secondary onto only those who choose to attend. However, before we make those decisions we have to get everyone on the same page and understand what higher-education does and why it does it as well as agree what attending secondary and post-secondary schooling actually does for students.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Neuro-Behavioral Consultants

Are your underpaid and overworked employees not productive enough? Are you relying on conditioning schedules and have they figured out that you always use variable ratio? Well spruce up your 20th century behavioral methods with some 21st century neuroscience. Play your employees nucleus accumbens like Mozart with our scientifically validated work incentives and motivation techniques. We're not going to give you any of the mumbo-jumbo consultant speak like you'll get from other firms, no we're going to give you arcane scientific jargon that will only be loosely related to to any of the high-level cognitive processes that we say we'll be changing. Our understanding of neuroscience will help companies understand the emotional and subconscious aspects of decision-making, and formulate strategies to improve productivity and subjective well-being. Mention the keyword EngagedBrain to receive a discount on "dopamine" our initial meet and greet package.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

False Memory vs Constructive Memory: A case study of BW

Source
Subject BW is a 55 year old male with 12 years of education plus 18 college credits. For the past 34 years he has been employed in journalism. His case was brought to attention when his dramatic first-person story that he’s told and retold since 2003 of being in a helicopter near another helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq suddenly morphed into a different story where his helicopter was the one that was hit. In the aftermath of this change in story he was suspended from his job, with all signs that he will be fired. Previously, I showed that everyone's stories change over time, where details are changed, details are added and details are omitted (Kurczek, 2014). Everyone has heard of fishing tales where the fish gets bigger and bigger every telling, but not everyone tells their story over and over again on camera. I've since seen story after story after story about false memories and while I was impressed with the slate article (except for the blatant plugging of their book), I can't see why false memories keep being brought up.

Episodic memory, our memory for the events we experience in life is inexorably linked with episodic narrative, how we tell the stories of our memories. However, does the episodic narrative of an episodic memory constitute the entire memory? Stories are altered by the contexts that we are in including the people that we are telling our memory to (your friend versus your parent versus a research assistant) and the time (i.e. how much time you have to talk and how long its been since the experience). Is someone lying because their narrative of their memory changes in different contexts? This is not to say that contextual changes mean that instead of a helicopter in front of you getting hit be a RPG its all of a sudden your helicopter, but makes the point that our memories are inherently labile, constantly going through changes as they are disused or updated in subsequent re-experiencing. Few people's lives are documented as news anchors, politicians, and celebrities (the other cases highlighted in the slate article) so our own fibs, embellishments and misremembered events are brought to light and to shame at the same frequency. BW's downfall, as with previous politicians stems from our perceived belief that they be trustworthy, how can you trust anything someone says when one of their memories appears to be a lie? In the future we may be able to go to the tape, but for now we just have to understand that (almost) all of our memories are flawed and constructed from bits and pieces of what we perceived to be the experience and (un)motivated remembering and forgetting of the experience in the time since.

P.S. How does one become a quoted expert, do you have to write a book or something? Considering that my dissertation included a chapter on narrative and memory and how narratives change over time in healthy individuals and individuals with amnesia, I think I may have been of service in this case. I guess this blog will have to do for now

VTA Marketing

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Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.

Buffet Attitudes: Everyone's a special snowflake

The recent measles outbreak has highlighted the emerging trend of picking and choosing what you want to believe or what you trust. In teaching the scientific method, one of the first tenets that is taught is skepticism and questioning everything, but it looks like we've taken that a little too far. I first came to the thought of buffet attitudes through my experience with craft beer. In my view, the rise of craft beer (along with unique tastes in other aspects of life, like food, music, etc) is closely linked to our teachings to young children in the late 80s and early 90s, that everyone is special (thanks Barney and Southpark!). Politicians are somewhat dumbfounded by millennial behavior as their beliefs appear to be more liberal (particularly in social issues), yet are more likely to call themselves politically independent. Likewise, millennials are less likely to be religiously affiliated than previous generations (in some areas of religion this has previously been termed Cafeteria Christianity). Common across these trends is the "buffet attitudes" where younger adults are picking and choosing what they want and what they like rather than buying into beliefs or attitudes wholesale. In terms of cognitive biases, "buffet attitudes" may be called cherry picking, figuratively referring to selectively choosing points that affirm their beliefs and refute beliefs they don't hold while ignoring those that don't support their beliefs.

However, contrary to this trend toward special "snowflakness" is the pull towards wanting to be categorized in as part of a group. As Invisibilia recently discussed, when given a chance we'll often jump into one category or another and once in that category fiercely defend it (see the The Robbers Cave; Sherif, 1954; 1961 for some of my favorite social psychology experiments on group affiliation). A recent study in PLoS found that when your social identity (the group you feel you belong to) is threatened by scientific findings, you may come to devalue the findings. More broadly this speaks to a trend in science denialism (here and here).

This begs the question, how do we as scientists move to educate the general public on decisive issues? Putting out research in pay-walled journals doesn't seem to work and neither does trying to communicate that work through traditional public outlets such as radio, magazine or newspapers. Individual blogs, like this one, may have a readership that can be counted on one hand and all of these previously mentioned outlets assume that by simply putting information out there, the public will be able to parse it. We already know from the anti-vaccine movement that just putting research out there won't work (especially when one study that supports a particular position is completely fabricated). Science is built on multiple investigations from many different perspectives, theories and motivations and with the evidence summing to provide evidence that certain ideas are incorrect and other ideas are not incorrect as of yet. Because of the sea of publications each year,  it is almost impossible to wade through the evidence and form an informed conclusion about almost any issue, especially when the most accessible avenues for researching scientific issues does so through false equivalencies and "controversies." It seems like many of the problems with science communication stem from issues with how the methods of science is taught. Humans carry out science and humans are messy creatures with their own thoughts, beliefs, wishes, desires and needs. We present science as this noble and true venture that is without influence or problems instead of the complex and sometimes chaotic enterprise that it is.