You know how academic service duties are inequitably distributed by gender?
Of course you do. Who can do something about it? Deans! Here is how.
“I don’t like to write hypotheses.”
What would you do if you’re an experienced university lecturer with a PhD who has been teaching for years, and then you discover that the university is paying more money to your graduate TAs, who have less expertise, less experience, and are doing less work? If you’re like Amanda Reiterman of UCSC, you’d quit.
If you’ve been assiduously clicking through on every link I’ve ever share here and at Small Pond over the last five years1, then you must be familiar with Dr. Colin Purrington’s most worthy and honorable efforts to save people’s lives, as well as some of their money, by working against the proliferation of one company’s snake oil bunk nonfunctional mosquito trap. There’s a new substantial profile of this work of his in Undark that is an excellent and valuable read.
NSF just released a 37 page report on how their investments into broadening participation are going. I haven’t read it yet, so I haven’t formed thoughts about it, but thought you would want to see it, right?
I thought this was a fascinating article on the origin of the German cockroach, which is a common structural pest all over the place. Since it’s basically known from being a pest and not anywhere in the wild, where did it come from? The answer is that it diverged very rapidly as a pest species.
The ghosts of new atheism still haunt us.
You mean you can do qualifying exams that are something other than hazing? This is a valuable read if you’re in a department that does these things.
This piece of investigative journalism about how 3M hid critical information about PFOS is jaw-dropping.
Are universities that trade in social capital having trouble selling their degrees when you can get the education elsewhere at a fraction of the cost? The answer is yes, if you believe this article in Forbes. (More curious about my thoughts on this phenomenon? Here.)
Science communicator Dr. Raven Baxter (“Raven the Science Maven,”) expereinced a horrific textbook case of racial discrimination in housing, and the story appeared in NY Times. She was about to buy a condo in Virginia but then the buyer told her agent to pull out of the deal when they discovered she was Black. Just imagine how often this happens to people who don’t have the public visibility as Dr. Baxter does and we never hear about it, this is enraging. (Meanwhile, I thought she was out here in California as Director of Diversity Initiatives UC Irvine but apparently she moved on some while ago? It’s hard to keep track of folks now that I’m off twitter, I guess.)
Meanwhile, a guy with a science-y tiktok account (Darrion Nguyen) ended up inventing all kinds of data for peer-reviewed publications and recently got caught.
By the way, yes I have noticed it’s been a little quiet in the Science For Everyone main office, I’ve been away on some work-related travel and had stuff goin’ on. Back to business this week!
which is absolutely nobody