Blogging and Tweeting in Lectures

We had a long discussion about the impact of blogging and tweeting during conferences at the Biochemical Society and the society is developing a policy to say what participants will be allowed to do. There was a strong feeling from the academics present that they did not like it and found it disrespectful to the speaker.

I find when people take photos of every single slide with flash photography annoying but people certainly do it and often because they are attending a meeting in a language that is not their first language. They take the pictures so that they can try and understand the talks later. So we have to think about inclusion and participation.

The academics are also worried about intellectual property, but if you are publishing there is no patent and copyright always remains with the authors. We just have to sign away those rights to journals so why do we object to people who are attending our talks. We have to accept that they will do it and this might change the way we present our work slightly. Academics are not rewarded by money. They live off ego and kudos (see the arguments over open source software by Eric Raymond for the same view in programmers). IT IS AN OBLIGATION to make research PUBLIC. Einsten did not make a fortune out of copyrighting relativity. He became famous because of relativity. So I do not think the I.P. arguments have any sense.

What does make sense is not distracting the speaker and being careful about personal comments like ratings of talks. These can cause offence and so should be done carefully (although I did this myself at a conference). So long as you sit at the back and do not annoy too much with the sound of the keyboard I think we have to accept this is going to happen more often in the future. If the BBC uses it at the World Economic Forum at Davos then why are we being so high-minded in restricting it in scientific meetings?

Inspirational Music

Heitor Villa-Lobos Choro Number 10.

This was unexpected, it is a an exciting and inspiring piece of music they just played on the Last Night of the Proms. It is very stirring and happy and a little bit crazy.

Duet Bizet's Pearl Fishers.
Libertango - Astor Piazolla

Drug Death Statistics

Metro story;

Deaths have "soared by a fifth".

There were 235 deaths in 2008 compared to 196 in 2007. Well an increase of 39 deaths nationwide is hardly soaring. But a politician has to wade in:

"Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lambsaid that the figures were horrifying and showed the government's heavy-handed approach was not working."

Apparantly the toll of damage is immense and the cost to the NHS is enormous, but I would like to see some numbers.

The total deaths for illegal drugs rose 11% to 2928.
Heroin and morphine deaths rose from 829 to 897 from 2007 to 2008.
Cannabis deaths from 12 to 19 from 2007 to 2008.

This makes Ben Goleman's point that using numbers is better than percentages as cannabis would be over a 50% increase.

The last line made me smile.
"Drug deaths remain dwarfed by those from alcohol, put at nearly 9,000 in a year."

I wonder what the toll of damage and the cost the NHS is of alcohol related problems.

Wasting Talent

Evolution is something we should always have in the back of our mind but we should always also remember that it can be horribly wasteful and inefficient. We should learn the positive lessons from the world about us but we should do our best to avoid the negatives.

In particular the social sciences should not try too hard to mimic evolution. That especially means politicians who should do their best to reduce the effects of natural selection.

Our biggest waste is talent. We fail to identify what we need and who would be best to meet that need. We all work too long and too hard when we could work less and be much more productive and efficient because we do not optimise. Take women who have had children and the flexibility of the work force. We waste all of that knowledge and experience because we have not adapted our working practices to meet what is needed. We can change where and when we work, how we work, what hours we work, we can change our economy, we can do whatever we want. We just have to think bigger and we have to use the opportunity of the current down-turn to realign what we do.

Is Biology Teaching Just About Facts?

I just read an article in The Scientist that made me see that there is a long way to go before biology will be taught properly. The article is called "Facts First" and the tag-line is "In my youth, I designed a cell biology course that I thought grad students would love. they hated it."

This is written by a senior US researcher who had responded to complaints by students that they hated the "rote memorization" of courses. To replace it he devised a course based on concepts and not the textbook facts. He expected students to enjoy learning how to think but the response was very negative in their feedback and the course was withdrawn and they returned to rote learning.

Stories like this make me want to scream. These are grad school students. If you are a post-graduate and you need to be spoon-fed facts you should not be there. If you are planning an academic career then you might make a PhD and you might make a post-doc but you will never ever get any further because you have no initiative. You can be directed but you cannot direct so you will never be able to initiate research.

The problem for the students is that they are pushed out of their comfort zone if they have to think. In the UK at the minute this is particularly galling. Students come from a background where the facts are not the main focus but when they get to under-graduate level they often find themselves being forced into the rote learning style. So that all of the good work of secondary education is lost. By the time I see them at masters level they have lost all their ability to think for themselves. I teach students who have fist class degrees from top institutions whose criteria for getting this degree specifies this level of synthesis and understanding, so why can't I see it in any of them?

Ultimately in the case described in the article should they have listened to the student feedback? The proof of teaching is the outputs. If the course was not properly aligned so that assessment had not been changed to reflect the new style of teaching then the students had a point, but with the appropriate assessment in place the next test of output is how effective they are at getting jobs and having successful careers. Sometimes students cannot appreciate the pain they have to go through for the gain in the future.

I would argue that most of those who were negative about the course and who want to fall back on facts will not have very successful careers and that their employers will not find that they are independent workers, and will find they have to spend a significant amount of time and resources on skills training. These are the hidden costs of taking the rote learning approach.

What is happening to the Bumble Bees?

There have been several articles about the problems bees are facing for example this one from the Guardian last year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/27/society.conservation1

There are more cases of empty hive disease but I was not concerned that there was a problem when all the Bumble Bees were buzzing around the Dandelions in the garden but then I started to notice bumble bees struggling.

They were on the ground crawling along the pathways as they sometimes do when they are cold and when they want to sun themselves to restore their energy. But these bees just sit there or crawl unhappily and often they end up stepped on or run over. So there does seem to be something going wrong as I have seen three bumble bees with these sysmptoms in the last week. I am wondering if anyoen else has noticed anything?

Perhaps the Greatest Statement About our Place in the World

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..." 

John Donne – Meditation 17 - Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

We should never forget our place in society and we should never forget our duty to mankind. We are the trustees of our children's future and we should not allow the self to engulf our wider views. We are a social ape and that is our strength and our weakness, but it is something that none of us would give up, the free and open society is what most of us strive for. Nobody should believe in their own self-importance, all of us are created equal and each of our lives contributes such an infinitesimal, but nevertheless significant part to our world. Donne was so prescient and it is so ironic that he called it an Emergent Occasion, as now we are starting to appreciate mergence and how everything is connected to everything else.