Jargonauts

My daughter is involved in a particular extra-curricular activity that has an incredible number of special terms, abbreviations, acronyms, and other words and phrases that are incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Just like Science! I have learned some of the terms, but there always seem to be more that I don't know. And no, this extra-curricular activity has nothing to do with athletics of any sort, so my ignorance is not related to my lack of interest in sports.

I will never learn all of this new activity-specific language, and that's fine. This is my daughter's activity, and it would actually be quite weird if I started hurling around the relevant acronyms in conversation.

When we were en route to visiting some relatives this summer, I said to my daughter "You know, you're going to get asked about Activity, and you should try as much as possible to avoid jargon and describe it using words that they will understand."

She was silent for a few moments, thinking about this, then said "You're right, but I'm not sure I know what is jargon and what isn't anymore. I should practice."

So we pretended that I was Great Aunt Milly and I asked her about her recent Activity activities, and my daughter started talking about this, trying but failing to avoid jargon. I listed the incomprehensible words she had just used, and she tried again. This time I made an obnoxious beeping sound whenever she jargonized, and then we both started laughing too much to continue for a while.

Later, we tried again, and she did much better, and by the time we were surrounded by Great Aunts and Not-Great Uncles, she did an excellent job of talking about her Activity, and our relatives were able to ask her questions instead of lapsing into stunned silence, which is what some people have done when she's gone into full-jargon mode in other conversations.

It occurred to me that I could use some help de-jargonizing my own descriptions of my work. I can easily give a 101-level description of my research, but in some cases (e.g., elderly family members) that doesn't work very well, probably because even the most science-phobic undergraduate has recently had some science in high school, whereas some of my relatives have not thought about even basic science concepts since Eisenhower was president.

So I started thinking about all the different 'levels' at which we need to talk about our general or specific fields of expertise; in this example, I will use Science:

- Great Aunt Millies: total non-scientists who don't know even the most basic words that we don't really consider jargon because they aren't particularly specialized are incomprehensible in this context.

- Non-scientists/non-students who can handle the basic vocabulary of science, either from K-12 classes or from watching shows on TV (or reading science fiction?) or maybe from some technical experiences related to their job of hobbies.

- Non-science faculty and administrators who read our internal grant proposals, award nominations, or other documents that are supposed to be jargon-free.

- Students in introductory-level Science classes (if not at the beginning of the term, by the end..).

- Students in more specific classes in Science.

- Science faculty or administrators who are in our department or our institution but who aren't in our specific field of research AND science faculty, students, and others who attend our invited talks at other universities (if the talks are supposed to be oriented to a general Science audience)

In grant proposals to programs in our field and certainly in articles in journals, we can typically go wild with the jargon because the people reading our text will understand these terms, although even here it is possible to go too far and use complex terms where a simpler one would suffice.

What about talking to the media? For those who aren't science journalists, I think it's best to go with the Great Aunt Milly level of simplicity, and for science journalists.. it varies.

My last experience with the media was with a science journalist who seemed to know the basic jargon of my field. Nevertheless, I kept having to decrease the Science level of the conversation because, although he knew vocabulary, he didn't really seem to know what these words actually meant in terms of processes or interrelated concepts. Although we talked for a long time and I asked him to repeat back some of the essential points (a suggestion that seemed to annoy him, perhaps understandably), the result was kind of bizarre. In fact, as I was trolling around the science news headlines, I overlooked the article about my research because the headline had absolutely nothing to do with my research. Only once I started getting e-mail about the article did I realize which headline referred to my work.

Clearly I need more practice de-jargonizing my Science speech. Fortunately, I know exactly the right person who will help me with this, most likely by making obnoxious beeping sounds when I use jargon, but that's OK.. that technique actually seems to help a bit.

Avalanche of Useless Science

In a post last winter, I discussed whether papers that receive few or no citations are worthwhile anyway. I came up with a few reasons why they might be worthwhile, and noted that the correlation between number of citations and the "importance" of a paper may not be so great.

In an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week, several researchers argue that "We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research". In this case, "research" means specifically "scientific research".

How do they assess what is low-quality ("redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor") research? They use the number of citations.

Uncited papers are a problem because "the increasing number of low-cited publications only adds to the bulk of words and numbers to be reviewed."

There you go! A great reason to turn down a review request from an editor:

Dear Editor,

I am sorry, but I am going to have to decline your request to review this manuscript, which I happen to know in advance will never be cited, ever.

Sincerely,

CitedSciProf

What if a paper is read, but just doesn't happen to be cited? Is that OK? No, it would seem that that is not OK:

"Even if read, many articles that are not cited by anyone would seem to contain little useful information."

Ah, it would seem so, but what if the research that went into that uncited paper involved a graduate student or postdoc who learned things (e.g., facts, concepts, techniques, writing skills) that were valuable to them in predictable or unexpected ways? Is it OK then or is that not considered possible because uncited papers must be useless, by definition? This is not discussed, perhaps because it is impossible to quantify.

The essay authors take a swipe at professors who pass along reviewing responsibilities: "We all know busy professors who ask Ph.D. students to do their reviewing for them."

Actually, I all don't know them. I am sure it happens, but is it necessarily a problem? I know some professors who involve students in reviewing as part of mentoring, but the professor in those cases was closely involved in the review; the student did not do the professor's "reviewing for them". In fact, I've invited students to participate in reviews, not to pass off my responsibility, but to show the student what is involved in doing a review and to get their insights on topics that may be close to their research. It is easy to indicate in comments to an editor that Doctoral Candidate X was involved in a review.

Even so, the authors of the essay blame these professors, and by extension the Ph.D. students who do the reviews, for some of the low-quality research that gets published. The graduate students are not expert reviewers and therefore "Questionable work finds its way more easily through the review process and enters into the domain of knowledge." In fact, in many cases the graduate students, although inexperienced at reviewing, will likely do a very thorough job at the review. I don't think grad student reviewers contribute to the avalanche of low-quality published research.

So I thought the first part of this article was a bit short-sighted and over-dramatic ("The impact strikes at the heart of academe"), but what about the practical suggestions the authors propose for improving the overall culture of academe? These "fixes" include:

1. "..limit the number of papers to the best three, four, or five that a job or promotion candidate can submit. That would encourage more comprehensive and focused publishing."

I like the kernel of the idea -- that candidates who have published 3-5 excellent papers should not be at a disadvantage relative to those who have published buckets of less significant papers -- but I'm not exactly sure how that would work in real life. What do they mean by "submit"? The CV lists all of a candidate's publications, and the hiring or promotion committees with which I am familiar pick a few of these to read in depth. The application may or may not contain some or all of the candidate's reprints, but it's easy enough to get access to whatever papers we want to read.

I agree that the push to publish a lot is a very real and stressful phenomenon and appreciate the need to discuss solutions to this. Even so, in the searches with which I have been involved, candidates with a few great papers had a distinct advantage over those with many papers that were deemed to be least-publishable units (LPU).

I think the problem of publication quantity vs. quality might be more severe for tenure and promotion than for hiring, but even here I have seen that candidates with fewer total papers but more excellent ones are not at a disadvantage relative to those with 47 LPU.

2. "..make more use of citation and journal "impact factors," from Thomson ISI. The scores measure the citation visibility of established journals and of researchers who publish in them. By that index, Nature and Science score about 30. Most major disciplinary journals, though, score 1 to 2, the vast majority score below 1, and some are hardly visible at all. If we add those scores to a researcher's publication record, the publications on a CV might look considerably different than a mere list does."

Oh no.. not that again. The only Science worth doing will be published in Science? That places a lot of faith in the editors and reviewers of these journals and constrains the type of research that is published.

I have absolutely no problem publishing in a disciplinary journal with impact factor of 2-4. These are excellent journals, read by all active researchers in my field. It is bizarre to compare them unfavorably with Nature and Science, as if papers in a journal with an impact factor of 3 are hardly worth reading, much less writing.

3. ".. change the length of papers published in print: Limit manuscripts to five to six journal-length pages, as Nature and Science do, and put a longer version up on a journal's Web site."

I'm fine with that. It wouldn't have any major practical effect on people like me who do all journal reading online anyway, but for those individuals and institutions who still pay for print journals, this could help with costs, library resources etc.


Let's assume that these "fixes" really do "fix" some of the problems in academe -- e.g., the pressure to publish early and often -- so what then?

"..our suggested changes would allow academe to revert to its proper focus on quality research and rededicate itself to the sober pursuit of knowledge."

Maybe that's my problem: I enjoy my research too much and forgot what an entirely sober pursuit it should be. I guess the essay authors and I are just not on the same page.

Ask a Scientist

The Chronicle Review (the magazine-like part of The Chronicle of Higher Education) recently asked a group of "scholars and experts" to comment on stress in the lives of academics, using the Amy Bishop incident as a springboard for the discussion; i.e., what role might stress related to the tenure process have played in this tragedy?

The scholars and experts included:

• a writer and PhD candidate in English literature
• the chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education
  
• a professor of international politics
• a professor of English
• an assistant professor of public policy and political science
• an assistant professor of sociology and women's and gender studies
• a PhD candidate in anthropology
• a dean of a School of Arts & Sciences
• a professor of management
• a professor of history

Clearly there was an effort to consult a wide variety of academics associated with the US system of higher education: professors and administrators, tenured professors and tenure-track professors, professors at universities and professors at small liberal arts colleges, even some PhD candidates who have no direct experience (yet) with the stresses of being on the tenure-track. Many of these people had thoughtful insights; I was interested to know the opinions of sociologists and anthropologists and others.

Even so, Amy Bishop was an assistant professor of biology. Does it seem odd to anyone else that there were no biology or other science professors in this particular group of academics commenting on the incident? I looked up the chancellor and the dean and learned that their field of expertise is psychology, so perhaps they come the closest, but that's not the same as getting the opinion of someone who has recently experienced the tenure process as a scientist.

I realize that a biology professor would not necessarily have any more insight into the general implications of the incident than those who provided comments in this piece in the Chronicle. And I still stand by my overall view (shared by the PhD candidate in English literature) that the murders were the actions of an imbalanced person with a rage problem (and a gun), and the tragedy was therefore not a direct result of the stresses of academia in general or the tenure evaluation system in particular.

Still, I think it is strange that in an otherwise diverse group, not one is a science professor with direct knowledge of what it is like to get tenure as a scientist today at a university. Consider how bizarre it would have been if an English professor (for example) had committed a heinous crime that may or may not have been related to the experience of being an English professor, and the only people asked to comment (in a particular series of essays) were science, engineering, and math professors.

I also think it would have been illuminating to read, for comparison, the thoughts of a scientist recently denied tenure. With all due respect to the PhD candidates and literary scholars who wrote thoughtful essays for the piece, surely the Chronicle could have found some current or former science professors -- ideally in the life sciences -- to comment?

I don't want to perpetuate an "us" (scientists) vs. "them (non-scientists) mentality, but often when I read about academia, in the Chronicle and elsewhere, the point of view of non-scientists is the only one represented. This gives a very incomplete view of academia and the lives of academics, in general and in extreme cases. Although we have much in common as researchers and educators, there are also significant differences that, at times, merit consideration.

In Which I Discover That I Am A Parasite On Society

My daughter's class is learning about Jobs People Do. The class has created an imaginary city and, after being presented with a list of possibilities and job descriptions, each child gets to choose 3 jobs they think they would like to do in their city.

The other day, my daughter told me that she was interested in being mayor, attorney, or DJ, and she listed for me what her best friends chose as possible professions (reporter, gift shop owner..). At some point I interrupted and asked "Didn't anyone want to be a scientist?" She told me that this was not an option. Scientist was not on the list of possible professions. "Why not?" I wondered aloud.

My daughter said she asked her teacher (yes, the same teacher) this question and he replied:

"Because scientists don't contribute to the economy or society."

OK..

The next day my daughter told me that she had narrowed her employment choices and had decided to run for mayor. I asked her what her main issues were, and she said "Well, for starters, we will restore science to its rightful place."

I would vote for her. A kid who quotes Obama, supports science, and knows exactly what her constituent/mother wants to hear would surely make a good mayor of an imaginary city.

Law & Science

News articles and editorials about Obama's possible Supreme Court justice candidates show how much has changed for women lawyers and judges in recent decades. Reagan apparently didn't have a lot of options for women candidates when he selected Sandra Day O'Connor. Clinton had more options when he selected Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but the pool of possible women candidates was still small.

Today that is no longer the case. Obama has a wide range of choices among highly qualified women and men representing diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

If Obama selects a woman to replace Souter, it will be particularly interesting because less than 2 years ago Souter was quoted as saying that all the "top" applicants for law clerks that year were men. I was skeptical about this and used the incident to discuss the concept of "top" applicants in general.

Why has the number of women reaching the upper levels of the legal profession changed so much in the past 20 years but the same is not the case for science and engineering in academia, government, or the private sector? The number of women students has increased tremendously, but the ceiling or the leaking pipeline or whatever symbol you want to use to explain the lack of women full professors, deans, directors, presidents and so on still exists for women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

Maybe there are so many differences between law and STEM that the question is pointless, but it caught my interest that one male dominated field changed so dramatically and another has not changed nearly as much.

Is part of the answer, at least in terms of comparing law with the physical sciences, that the legal profession has many more options and available positions, creating more opportunities?

When positions at a certain level are limited (Supreme Court law clerks and justices), however, and women are no longer the "top" candidates as often as men, do the differences between law and science diminish?

Mostly I am wondering, if it is reasonable to make any comparison between law and science, whether there is something we can learn from the evolution of the legal profession in recent decades that would help increase the number of women who choose and succeed in professions involving science, technology, engineering, and math or whether the differences are intrinsic to each field.

Professor-Student Update: Penultimate Goal

It seems like it has been a while since I wrote about my adventures taking an undergraduate language course, perhaps because, after three years with the same professor and the same core group of students, we are definitely in a routine in which not much surprising happens. A lot of learning has been happening, though. Earlier this year I traveled to a country in which this particular language is spoken, and I found to my intense happiness that I have made progress even since my trip last summer.

But at the end of this academic year, I will have reached the end of the line in terms of taking undergraduate courses in this language, and my options are limited for taking courses on literature and culture in this language. I may hire a private tutor because I don't want to lose what I've learned so far -- my abilities in this language are still quite precarious.

It will be a sad moment for me when I take my final exam and complete the class, especially with no further classes to look forward to in the fall. And I will miss our little group that has been together for 3 years.

These three years of intensive language courses (4-5 days/week) have taken a lot of time and energy. The effort, however, has definitely been worth it for me because of the immediate practical effect of learning how to communicate in a language that is useful to me for many reasons and because it exercised my brain in different and interesting way.

So there is much to feel good about, but I have not yet attained my Penultimate Goal: I want to give a complete scientific talk in this language.

In the classes I've been taking, we don't learn any science jargon, so I've had to acquire that by reading the scientific literature and asking questions of colleagues who know this language. Little by little I have been acquiring the words and skills I need to speak Science in this other language, but it's going to take a lot more work to be able to give a coherent talk. It might take a year or three, but that's my next goal.

And then I would like to become fluent in this language. Fluency -- the Ultimate Goal -- may, however, be unattainable given my advanced age, limited time, and lack of opportunities for immersion in the language. But that's OK. Any progress I can make en route to proficiency in the language will be worth it for me.

Corrosion Monitoring of Nude Mice Metaphysics

It will come as no surprise to some readers that I am rather fond of strange and possibly even humorous literary contests, such as those that reward people for deliberately writing awful prose in the style of certain famous authors. You can even buy a compilation of The Best of Bad Hemingway.

Some awards are not so nice and reward people for deliberately writing awful prose in the style of non-famous and unsuspecting persons, e.g. applicants to graduate programs. And some awards are for writing that wasn't supposed to be bad, but is. I don't know if there is an academic equivalent of the Bad Sex in Literature Contest, but the Broader Impacts section of some NSF proposals is a possibility.

There is also an award for the "Oddest Book Title of the Year", the Bookseller/Diagram prize, sponsored by The Bookseller magazine. I like the concept of this award, but I am not impressed with the typical result, which is to choose an obscure technical/science publication that sounds weird to the non-technical/non-science reading public. I suppose these are the publications that best fit the criterion that the book not have been intentionally given an odd name, but I don't like the science-is-weird implications.

The winner this year, based on internet voting, involves a technical report generated to evaluate a certain size and type of dairy container. Other candidates are similarly technical, and in my opinion there is nothing strange about them except that their intended audience is rather specialized; e.g. The Large Sieve and its Application or Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring. What is so odd about those? I find it a bit alarming that a publication on corrosion monitoring would be seen as bizarre.

Similarly Baboon Metaphysics may seem somewhat strange as a title, but the topic of consciousness in primates is not so odd.

The belief that technical-sounding things are bizarre and therefore probably irrelevant is dangerous thinking. It can lead, for example, to suspicion and disapproval about how federal funds are spent; e.g. the recent infamous incidents involving rants by politicians about bear DNA studies and volcano monitoring.

This science-is-weird trend is a tradition for this particular Odd Title award, though. The first winner, in 1978, was for Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice. Anyone who even glances at certain general-interest science journals and magazines from time to time knows about nude mice and why they are useful in biomedical research. This is not weird, irrelevant fringe-research.

I would find an Odd Title contest more interesting and less alarming if the eligible titles weren't chosen so much out of techno-ignorance. I realize, though, that fiction books may be deliberately given a strange title, and therefore they aren't quite as unselfconsciously odd.

Perhaps a compromise might be novels with names that appear to be technical manuals, e.g. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Marina Lewyck), which I read a couple of years ago, primarily because of its title.

Matchless

Some scientists need Science Stuff (equipment) in order to do their research and train their graduate students in the techniques they may need for their careers. Science Stuff can involve zippy new machines that do new things that couldn't be done before, zippy new machines that other people have but that we want to have as well, and zippy new machines that replace similar but old/malfunctioning equipment we already have. To get Science Stuff, we write equipment proposals to programs that fund big-ticket equipment items.

When writing a proposal to acquire research equipment, it is advisable to get matching funds from one's department and other academic units (i.e., a school or college within a university). I don't know about other funding agencies, but NSF does not require matching funds (cost sharing) for some equipment proposals, but good luck getting an equipment proposal funded without them.

Cost sharing is viewed by funding agencies as a sign of "institutional commitment", and typically involves actual $$, not just the commitment to provide space for the equipment, even renovated space. Many institutions have a standard formula for how cost sharing is shared among the various academic units; i.e., so much from the department, so much from the college/school etc.

Or, I should say, many institutions used to have a standard formula for calculating cost sharing. Now the formula would look something like

(department share of matching funds) * (Dean-level share of matching funds) * zero = zero.

Matching funds are hard to come by in these days of economic crisis. It appears that NSF will have funds available for equipment, thanks in part to the economic stimulus bill, but scientists at public universities may have a hard time getting matching funds because universities are in budget-cutting mode, not cost sharing mode.

If researchers at public universities can't get matching funds, perhaps only those at financially less desperate universities will be able to write successful equipment proposals. Perhaps my public university colleagues are being pessimistic and paranoid, but the lack of matching funds may well be a reasonable concern.

Will NSF continue to require-but-not-require matching funds, or will NSF take pity on matchless researchers?

My university has been severely limiting commitments for matching funds lately, and some administrators recently suggested that only those faculty who chip in some of their own (non-grant) funds will be eligible for consideration for matching funds.

This doesn't mean that we dip into our own bank accounts and sacrifice our kids' college education in order to get more scientific equipment, but there are only a limited number of ways that we can acquire non-grant funds. Examples include funds that are:

- associated with an endowed chair (either a lifetime endowed chair or a temporary (folding) chair;

- provided by a wealthy patron;

- added to a personal research fund as part of an award for outstanding research, teaching, or service, either as a one time infusion of funds or on a recurring basis;

- added to a personal research fund as part of additional administrative duties (such as being an academic advisor) that are time-consuming enough to involve additional compensation;

- part of the microscopic amount of indirect costs that, at some institutions, trickle back to the PI's department, where a small fraction of the small fraction is put in an account for the PI to use for research-related expenses that grants are not allowed to cover but that are essential for the research;

- remaining from a start-up package. Some of my colleagues try to make their start-up funds last for many many years because of the occasional need for such non-grant funds; and

- acquired through various legal/ethical but somewhat devious means; e.g., PI salary that can be put in a different accounting category and that by doing so is designated as non-grant funds and that, if the PI chooses not to use this money for salary, can be used for research-related expenses that aren't otherwise covered.

I am feeling fortunate to be in a secure job, and the world (and my research) will certainly survive if I can't acquire more scientific equipment for a while. This post is meant only partially as a complaint about the possibility of scientists at public universities being at a disadvantage relative to colleagues at other institutions.

Mostly it is a list of the ways that we can acquire and use research funds that are not tied to a particular project. These funds have always been important, and perhaps now are becoming essential to keeping individual research programs afloat.

It Takes a Village Idiot

An essay titled Want to Engineer Real Change? Don't Ask a Scientist appeared in the Washington Post on 25 January, but I just saw it today.

The essay by a distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, Dr. Henry Petroski, highlights examples in which science was useless for progress, but engineering was transformative. People didn't need science to invent steam engines or airplanes, only engineering. Thermodynamics might explain how things work, but it hasn't been necessary to understand thermodynamics to make important engineering advances. And so on.

I am sorry that Professor Petroski's feelings were apparently hurt that President Obama mentioned science and not engineering in his inaugural speech, but that doesn't seem sufficient justification to attack science.

The essay is remarkably narrow-minded and short-sighted. Or perhaps I am the one who is narrow-minded and short-sighted, as I would have thought that it was obvious that we need both science and engineering.

A world with scientists but no engineers would be just as limited as a world with engineers and no scientists. It is pointless to set the two communities in opposition, as if one has been important throughout history and one has been comparatively useless.

The essay doesn't deserve any more discussion, but I will just mention that when I showed it to a colleague and said something along the lines of what I wrote above, he said that my conclusion that we need both scientists and engineers was like saying that everyone is special and so I must be an it-takes-a-village-ist who thinks that we should all have a seat at a nice round table etc. etc.

OK.. maybe.. I get the point (and the H Clinton reference), but I don't think that recognizing the importance of both science and engineering is a uniquely feminine point of view.

My colleague went on to say that my everyone-is-special philosophy betrayed my liberal-artsy roots. OK.. maybe.. and maybe my colleague will now be inspired to write an essay about how science has been responsible for many major advances in civilization but poetry has gotten us nowhere. Or he could write about how the second law of thermodynamics has been more important for civilization than the collective works of Shakespeare. The possibilities are endless.. and idiotic.

Non-Linear Life & Science

The current graduate education system that requires long hours over many uninterrupted years works well for some students (and their advisors), but it is perhaps not the best system in some? many? cases, and it is not 'family-friendly' in a systematic way for those students who are not the stereotypical unmarried monomaniacal types.

There has been discussion about how the (for some people) unappealing aspects of this system might be one reason for the lack of diversity in science. Let's assume for the following discussion that diversity is a desirable thing and that we want to find effective ways to encourage more people to become involved in, and stay in, scientific and related careers.

Efforts to date to encourage women and others to become (and stay) scientists, engineers, and mathematicians have had some success, in some fields more than others. I don't need to look at the numbers to know this. Early in my career it was not unusual for me to be the only -- or one of very few -- women at a conference session (or a faculty meeting). Now I see more women in my professional life, though most of them are students and postdocs, and it is rare for me to be the only woman in a room of scientists though it still does happen.

But progress has been slow and insufficient. The efforts to date have focused on such things as eliminating the worst, most evil and overt forms of discrimination and harassment, and on encouraging -- rather than actively discouraging -- women and members of other underrepresented groups from being scientists.

Can we conclude that this isn't going to be enough, or has there not yet been enough time? Perhaps I am impatient, but I think it isn't going to be enough.

That brings us to the issue of whether/how the academic system can change -- perhaps in dramatic ways -- to make it a truly diverse, representative environment.

So now let's assume for the sake of further discussion that one way to encourage a broader representation in the sciences is to make the system more flexible. From what I have seen in recent years, my male grad students and postdocs are just as interested in having a 'life' as my female students and postdocs, so people of all sorts may well be interested in changes to the system.

Even in the best of circumstances, a graduate student's academic program takes time and involves a lot of hard work. Most students need time to learn how to do research, many take classes, and some teach. Research is not a linear activity. And then there are the writing issues..

As a result, the typical time for a science Ph.D. is in many cases already longer than the average grant or guaranteed support from a department, so advisors and students already need to put together various sources of funding to keep the student supported (and eligible for healthcare benefits) for the duration of a Ph.D. program. Adding to the time-to-Ph.D., for however good a reason, can be difficult for all concerned.

Despite these difficulties in the current system, I have seen successful situations in which graduate students (male and female) with families have managed to balance life and academics without going (too) insane. In some cases, an agreeable situation is worked out between the student and the advisor and/or department in terms of how the student will manage their academic program. If these arrangements involve reduced work hours and prolonged time to degree, it's easiest if the student is in a well established or large research group. It can be more difficult for all concerned if the advisor is a tenure-track faculty member and/or has a small group.

I've mostly been talking about graduate students, but of course postdocs and tenure-track faculty face similar challenges. For example, I was able to work something out with my department chair re. teaching load when my pre-tenure daughter was born (I didn't take any maternity leave), and that turned out to be all I needed. Even so, I think it would be better for all concerned if faculty felt free to take parental leaves and/or stop the tenure clock, without concern that this would in fact have a negative impact on the tenure decision.

Maybe the current system does allow most people with families to manage somehow, but even if it does, word doesn't seem to be 'out' that it's possible to have a family and an academic life at any phase, from student years to faculty position. And even though it is possible, it can be very difficult and perhaps it doesn't need to be quite so difficult.

So, can Academia change to make Science more appealing to more people, and if so, how?

First, a selfish answer: In the sciences, one of the main issues is how the funding system would have to change. Without changes in the funding system, I don't think much else can or will change. That is, if I am still expected to write annual reports on my grants and be extremely productive in order to get new grants to support new students, it would help me, as a PI, if the funding agency and my department/university were prepared to help me help a student or postdoc who needed time and/or support for important non-academic life events and activities.

That's my point of view as a senior person with a kid whose age finally has two digits in it. When I was younger and had a baby/toddler, I was often tempted to write in my annual and final grant reports that I did such-and-such research and I took care of a very young child. I never did, but if there had been a separate box at the time for "Other information that may be relevant to the evaluation of your research activities", I would have included this very relevant information.

And if there had been supplementary funds that people with families could apply to for help with family situations (e.g. childcare) during the summer, when we are not paid by our universities, I would have definitely applied. The amount of summer salary I could raise from grants in rare cases approached but never exceeded the amount I spent on childcare so that I could do the research I was funded to do.

Another part of the solution has to be increased access to high-quality affordable childcare centers that employ well trained, sufficiently compensated care-givers. Such centers are expensive -- more expensive than can reasonably be supported by the fees parents pay. And if it's difficult for faculty parents to afford these places (assuming their kids even get in), it may be difficult or impossible for student parents, even with a sliding scale fee structure.

These places also need to be more flexible to accommodate different preferences and needs in terms of amount and timing of childcare. At some centers, even if your kid gets in before they start college themselves, you typically have to send them full-time, with no interruptions or you lose your spot. But some families would prefer part-time, and some would prefer summers only, and various other combinations. It's not currently feasible for the centers to be this flexible.

Would it be worth it to a university or state or country to help people get the childcare they want and need when they need it and to make other changes necessary to make the family/career balance more possible for more people?

It wouldn't be economic if you just crunch the numbers, so it would have to be worth it in terms of the benefits to the community and society to increase the ability of people -- whatever their personal situation -- to acquire degrees and manage their careers. It would have to be worth it, despite the 'upfront costs', to increase diversity and to encourage more people to pursue careers -- such as those involving science, engineering, and math -- that benefit society.

Scientifiques avec Quelques Frontières

A conference being held next year in a certain country is making an effort to attract scientists from around the world to participate and therefore to make the conference as international as possible. I am on the organizing committee, though my role consists only of helping organize one small part of the conference. In fact, my role thus far has consisted of having my name on some lists, as all the text I have written has been ignored in favor of text written by two men with whom I am supposedly working on some organizational tasks. (My text was better, but whatever..)

Last week I was reading some of the conference literature, which makes an eloquent case for science not knowing political boundaries and how we should all come together and talk about science and learn from each other and it will be wonderful and so on. That's all nice, but in the midst of the glorious prose about science and scientists knowing no political boundaries was a phrase that went beyond using "he" as a convenient pronoun. The phrase stated without ambiguity that we the scientists are men.

I wondered what I am doing on the organizing committee of a conference that explicitly states that scientists are men.

I decided to investigate the origin of the statement. That men-are-scientists/scientists-are-men statement was in the English version, but the same sentence in the conference information provided in another language didn't specify gender and referred to scientists as "people". It was only in English that we scientists were men.

I emailed one of the main organizers of the conference, a long-time colleague with whom I don't always have the best working relationship but with whom I communicate on a semi-routine basis, and asked him about it. I said that it looked strange to me that, in a paragraph whose main purpose was that science knows no borders, there was an explicit statement that scientists are men. Science knows no political borders but it knows gender borders? Didn't this undermine the conference philosophy? Was that really the intention of the organizers?

My colleague wrote back immediately to explain that the text had originally been written in English, and he had translated it into the other language and had changed "men" to "people" in that language but not in the original text. He said that since I called his attention to the issue, he would change the original English text, which had been written by someone else who will probably be annoyed at having his words altered, and he would make sure that the conference literature was modified accordingly.

It wasn't a big deal, but I'm glad that science will know no gender borders in the conference literature.

Zincists

Next week I may pursue further the topic of Who Should Organize Department Seminars: Faculty or Students? but today is Friday and I want to talk about zinc.

An oft-quoted remark by Tina Brown, upon becoming editor of The New Yorker in the early 1990's, relates to her decision to destroy The New Yorker's classic tradition of publishing articles such as a "50,000-word piece on zinc." When my husband read that quotation many years ago, he promptly canceled our subscription and wrote a scathing letter oozing with contempt.

I remembered this eventoid when I saw a headline in The Onion this week: Candidates Annoyed to Have To Take Stance on Zinc Mining

What is it with zinc? Why has zinc become code for obscure and insignificant, or even boring? Why not antimony? Why not vanadium?

Before continuing with this discussion, let me first say that I have no particular stake or interest in zinc, scientific or otherwise. I have never taken money from zinc lobbyists or zinc special interest groups, I do not take zinc supplements when I get a cold, and I am equally fond of many other elements.

I have a hypothesis about the zincists, though. First of all, the former editor of The New Yorker may well have been anti-science in general (and/or anti-essays involving topics other than celebrities) and, when she needed to articulate her new editorial philosophy, she mentioned a sciencey-themed article on a topic that sounded obscure to her. Zinc as a topic has the power of being not so common that people won't get your point (e.g. imagine how ineffective it would be to rail against iron, oxygen, silicon, calcium, sodium, potassium, gold, silver, or carbon etc.). Similarly, some elements are rather infamous, so being anti-uranium, anti-arsenic, or anti-mercury, for example, has other implications and therefore these elements don't serve the purpose of signaling that a topic is irrelevant and uninteresting.

There has probably never been an article in The New Yorker on yttrium, and perhaps not even gallium, though I have not checked the archives. That doesn't leave much choice in terms of elements, if that's your choice for a code word category to equate with boring. Zinc is perfect in this respect because everyone has heard of it, but it's not too common. It also has a very succinct and zippy name. For that reason, the element praeseodymium is less effective as a rhetorical device.

Brown went on her anti-zinc spree in the pre-zinc supplement days, so perhaps her statement wouldn't pack quite the same punch today as it did more than 15 years ago. Maybe today people would want to know where their zinc comes from. Maybe today people are more aware that, alleged cold remedy aside, zinc is essential for life.

Maybe, maybe not. I am feeling cynical about this now that The Onion, a venerable publication that is actually only worth reading for the headlines, is taking a swing at zinc.

As long as the presidential candidates themselves don't actually go negative on zinc, I suppose the situation is not so bad. It's a slippery slope, though, from being against studies of DNA in bears in Montana to being a full-fledged zincist.

Where's the Science?

Every once in a while, a commenter remarks that this blog is not a Science Blog but is instead an Academic Culture Blog. Some commenters politely request that there be more scientific content (though some understand that this would be an anonymity-compromising move), and some are rather more rude about it, acidly noting that there is no scientific content whatsoever in this blog, as if this will be painful news for me.

This is not a Science Blog. It is what it is because I don't feel like blogging about scientific topics, however fascinated I am by my research field. There are many science blogs, but this is not one of them. Even if I could retain my anonymity to some extent and blog about science, I would not.

Perhaps my lack of interest in blogging about science relates to the issue I discussed the other day with reference to whether blogging is a good use of one's time. Blogging is sort of a hobby for me, and I like that I have an outlet for discussing academic issues other than those directly related to specific research. I also like that I can contribute my perspective as an academic inhabitant not otherwise well represented in the blogosphere - a senior FSP.

I am fascinated by the academic ecosystem, and am particularly interested in issues that aren't typically discussed much, if at all. Some of these are generic academic issues, some are specific to science (and perhaps engineering/math), some are specific to professors at research universities, and some are specific to Female (Science) Professors -- or some combination of those elements. I also write about random things, mostly about family and cats.

There are some very interesting issues related to research, teaching, and life as a professor in my specific research field, and these I don't discuss because of my wish to remain semi-anonymous for now. Even these issues, though, are related more to academic culture than to the science itself.

Even if I have no wish at this time to write a Science Blog, I'm glad that other people write such blogs.

Maybe part of the problem for me is that I don't have a clear sense of what my purpose of writing about science would be. I have zero interest in blog-lecturing about research topics. I find most explanatory/lecture blogs boring, though I'm sure that others find them interesting and I am glad that this is so.

I would be slightly more interested in writing about Science in the News, but there are many such blogs and other sites that do just that. I'd have to feel rather strongly that I had a new perspective to add to the discussion before I would blog about scientific news.

Maybe someday I will run out of things to say about academic culture and will turn my attention to another hobby, perhaps even Science Blogging .. or emu farming .. or creating designer graph paper (and graph-paper themed apparel). For now, however, I am still finding things to discuss and am interested in reading (most of) the comments and posting random cat pictures.

I Like Feeling Stupid

Earlier this summer I read the excellent essay by Martin A. Schwartz in The Journal of Cell Science (May 20, 2008, doi: 10.1242/10.1242/jcs.033340) on "The importance of stupidity in scientific research." He describes how even very smart people might not enjoy research because they don't like feeling "stupid" all the time. Some of us who love research and the academic life, however, are used to feeling stupid and may even enjoy it in a weird way.

In this case, feeling stupid means that you are placed in situations in which you don't know something (or anything). That's what research is all about. There are things we don't know but want to know, so we try to figure them out. It is rare that the path to the solution, if there even is a solution, is a simple one of following obvious step A and then obvious step B. It is easy to feel stupid when you spend a lot of your time working on difficult problems that you might not ever be able to solve. Some people hate that feeling of being lost and confused (= stupid) and others find it interesting and accept the frustrations as a natural part of doing research.

I like the way Schwartz puts stupidity in the context of the discovery aspect of scientific research. His last paragraph is particularly good:

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

I was also struck by his point that we as advisors (and the academic system in general) don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to view this type of "stupidity" in a positive and constructive way. I think he's right, but it is challenging to teach someone this.

When I read the essay, I immediately thought of several people I thought might be interested in reading it, including some students who might benefit from this perspective. For example, I know one hard-working and talented student who says he feels stupid much of the time. He is working on a very difficult problem that has no real end to it in the sense of a simple elegant solution that explains everything. Even so, his research is very important in its own right and has made some significant advances in our understanding of the problem. Just as Schwartz describes in his essay, this student also asked a more senior researcher how she would solve the problem he is working on, assuming that someone else must know the answer. The answer: I don't know.

I was reasonably confident that he wouldn't interpret my sending the essay as a backhand way of telling him that I think he is stupid, so I sent him the article. He liked the essay, thought it was interesting, and understood that I sent it to him as encouragement, not disparagement.

I have not yet sent the article to some of the other people I think should read it. If someone is profoundly lacking in confidence and has shown irrational tendencies to interpret neutral comments or interactions as devastating criticism, how would such a person react to being sent an essay on stupidity? Even if I sent the essay as part of an email to a group and not to targeted individuals, I think it would still be taken the wrong way by some. That would be stupid, but perhaps there are other ways to get the same point across without actually using the s-word.

Rock Star Scientists, II

Yesterday's post and some of the comments reminded me of an incident I had completely forgotten about until now:

Many years ago when I was a young FSP, I spent summers at the university where my husband was a postdoc. This was back in the days when we needed physical access to libraries that contained bound volumes of journals, and internet access was rare outside of academic institutions. Fortunately for me, my husband's institution gave me a desk, an internet connection, and access to the library during my extended visits.

Late one night, I was sitting in a big, comfortable chair in the small library that was in the department, alone and reading journal articles. On this particular day, I was taking it easy because I had injured my back somehow (I don't remember how and have not ever injured my back in the years since, so it was a one-time bizarre injury thing). As I sat and read, in walked an Extremely Famous Scientist who was famous for the excellence of his research and for using his work to improve life for all of Humankind. In fact, he was more than just a Famous Scientist, he was a Science Hero, and there are not many of those. I taught about him in my classes. And as if that weren't enough, he was also well known for being a very kind person.

When I encountered him, he was also very ancient and frail. He looked around the library, saw that I was the only person there, and walked over to me. I was thrilled to have the chance to meet him. After apologizing for interrupting my work, he said "The trunk of my car is filled with many very heavy books and I am not allowed to lift anything. Would you be willing to carry them to my office for me?".

It was like something out of a Greek myth in which a random god appears and asks a mere mortal to do an impossible task, like carry an anvil up a mountain. If the mortal fails, he or she is turned into a sad type of tree or a loathsome invertebrate. Was I being tested?

Why did I have to have an injured back on that day of all days? Any other day I would have been able to help him easily, but on that day, I wasn't sure I could carry a trunk-load of heavy books from the parking lot to his office. Carrying the journal volumes from a library shelf to my nearby chair had been an effort.

But how could I say no? Every person on Earth benefits every day from his research. Could I really say "No, sorry, I can't help you with your books, but thanks for saving the planet and its people."?

I said "I'll be happy to help you" and got up to follow him out of the library.

Just then, the gods relented and, although I had not seen another person for hours, two grad students appeared at that moment and offered to carry the books. The Science Hero thanked me graciously for being willing to help, and I collapsed in my chair, immensely relieved.

Why had I been willing to risk further injury and possibly fail at the task he required just because he was a Famous Scientist? If a random Big Shot had wandered into the library and asked me for help carrying books, I probably would have explained about my injured back and declined to help. In this case, however, the Big Shot was someone who had done more than just be a brilliant scientist, and I sincerely wanted to help this person.

What about other types of famous people? What if my fellow artist Paul McCartney had asked me to carry heavy books? I think I would have said no. I think I lack the capacity for routine celebrity worship. Some evidence for this is the eternal struggle I have with my book co-author, who reads this blog (sometimes? always? perhaps I will find out now?) and who is much cooler than I am and who likes to insert mainstream cultural references into the book; e.g., mention of popular movies and famous movie actors. Even though I ultimately accede to his superior knowledge of popular culture and his instincts for writing books that people might actually read, in the text drafts I can't help deleting "Brad Pitt" and replacing him with "Orhan Pamuk", even if I know the change is temporary.

Now, if Orhan Pamuk asked me to carry heavy books from his car to his office..

Rock Star Scientists

Earlier this year, I made a compelling case for how science professors are like rock stars. I was reminded of this today as I walked near campus with my daughter. We passed a person who was singing a Beatles' song to himself, and my daughter asked me:

"When you're in a cafe and you see someone reading that book you helped write, I wonder if you feel the same way that Paul McCartney does when he hears someone singing one of his songs."

I, for one, am convinced that we feel exactly the same, despite a few differences in Paul's and my situations with respect to our artistic creations. (One example: people sing his songs by choice.)

I assured my daughter that Paul and I share this experience. Perhaps I did so because I want her to value scientific creativity as much as other kinds.

Perhaps I want her to know that if her rock band, which practices about twice a year, doesn't work out, there are other appealing options in life.

Perhaps I wanted to make up for the fact that, much to her disappointment and disbelief, I don't have a favorite Beatle. She asks me every few months, but the answer is always the same. Although she continues to hope, I figure that if it hasn't happened yet, I am unlikely to acquire a favorite Beatle at my advanced age.

Mostly, however, I knew that she would know I was joking if I compared myself to the Beatles, and that we would have fun talking about the analogy between musical and scientific artistes. Now if only I could get the rest of my family to believe that I might be as creative as my cousin who majored in Ethnic Dance more than 10 years ago and who has a favorite Beatle.

Science Performance

Last year, I wrote about a team of Chemistry professors and students who did a show at my daughter's school. This year it was a group of Physicists, and they did a similarly spectacular job of entertaining and teaching.

Just when I think I can no longer be entertained by seeing a banana or a balloon immersed in liquid nitrogen, I see one of these shows and am amazed. I am not amazed by the experiment itself (though fortunately the kids are), but by the energy and charisma of the scientists and the way that they explain things in a simple, clear, interesting, and fun way. The outreach work that these scientists do is extremely important.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for scientists who 'perform' for school kids and others, spreading the word that science is fun and interesting and blasting apart the stereotype that all scientists are quiet, strange men who never leave their labs.

The chemist who did the show last year is a woman (though not a full-time professor). This year, the lead scientist was a male associate professor, but he brought a group of students, including one female student. I am glad that the kids who saw both shows will have seen both men and women being Scientists, and, with all due respect to the women who do this important work, I am glad that elementary school outreach programs are not entirely the domain of part-time female adjuncts. My cynical bias, which arises in part because I happen to have my GENDER LENSES on (again), is that this type of activity will only be valued if Male Science Professors are active participants as well.

The essential element of putting on a successful science show for kids (or anyone) is to have the right personality and the ability to explain the science clearly. I do not have the personality or voice volume for this kind of high-energy science outreach. I have on occasion given short talks or told a story to an elementary school class, but these tend to be low-key events involving discussion, conversation, and only occasional goofiness.

I don't do these school visits to get outreach points on my annual report -- talking to kids about science has its own rewards, and I of course especially like visiting my daughter's class and school. It's a good thing that I don't need the 'credit', though, because volunteering at a school is something that moms are just expected to do. When my husband visits the school, he is treated like a celebrity who is doing something very special -- taking time out from his busy day of important work.

Even so, whether the scientist is low-key me, an exotic dad, or a charismatic physicist playing with dry ice in the gym, I think kids should see and get to know scientists and Science.

Worst Insult

In the 20 June Chronicle of Higher Education, Jerome Neu, a scholar of insults, was asked how academics insult each other. The (vague) answer had to do with subtle insults about intelligence and "other things that may not be such points of pride elsewhere."

Does the fact that I don't know what those other points of pride might be mean that I am stupid? Go ahead and insult me, just be subtle about it, please.

In fact, I can make some educated guesses about the academic PoP's. Perhaps those points of pride involve the number and funding level of your grants; the value of your h-index; the impact factor of the journals in which you publish; and the ranking of your department/institution. I can think of others -- e.g. the quantity and quality of your honors and awards; the presence or absence of a personal administrative assistant; and/or the make and model of the espresso machine in your office -- but these might not be quite so specific to academia.

For those in the humanities, there are probably all sorts of subtle insults one can attempt based on the prestige of one's book publisher or the number of digits in one's Amazon.com sales rank.

Sometimes the gender, seniority, and other characteristics of the insulter dramatically influence whether a particular insult is effective.

Last year I had the evil pleasure of watching my most obnoxious colleague be verbally eviscerated by a not-subtle insult at a faculty meeting. If I had made the exact same statement, my colleagues would have labeled me as hysterical and mean, but it was devastating and effective coming from a distinguished senior colleague (who has several offices, an administrative assistant or two, lots of grants, and who recently won a major award).

The obnoxious colleague, previously described in this blog in the context of his offensive behavior towards women faculty and students, had been given a position of responsibility, and was poised to wreak havoc on some important aspects of the educational mission of the department. He presented his ghastly plan, and a few of us started to object to certain features of it, but our objections were swatted down. Then the Distinguished One proclaimed to the Obnoxious One:

You have a 19th century view of science.

And that was enough to kill the plan.

Sexism-Driven Science

There are surely untold numbers of excellent scientists who are sexist, but I know of at least one example in which sexism is resulting in Bad Science. I should say at the outset that I am not enraged, outraged, or even upset about this. I am rather entertained because the sexism-driven science is becoming absurdly bad, to the detriment of the scientific reputation of the Sexist Scientists, and I think that is a fair outcome of their behavior and actions.

The (vague) details:

A particular international group of scientists do not like a certain part of my research. I have maintained outwardly cordial relationships with them, but there have been some rough patches over the years. For example, one of them is the notorious pay-per-reviewer I wrote about last year at about this time. They have engaged in some sneaky behavior to find out what my recent research activities are -- they could just ask me and I would tell them, but I suppose that wouldn't be as much fun. They have written some 'attack' papers, mostly in low-impact journals. And I have heard some rather unambiguous rumors from more than one colleague to the effect of "International Professors X, Y, and/or Z hate you", even though I have not even met some of them in person.

Well, if they don't want to be my friends, then I don't want to be their friend either. Oh wait! We aren't in first grade anymore! I forgot for a moment.

I am reasonably sure that they hate me and my work because I am female. Circumstantial evidence: They do not similarly hate my male colleagues/coauthors who work closely with me on this research and similar topics, nor do they hate other male scientists with whom they disagree on various scientific topics. They focus their hate and anger on me specifically.

I have not done anything personally to attract such negative feelings. I have, however, published research that perhaps they wish they had thought of first. Or maybe my publications offend them for some other reasons. I really don't know. I just know they hate me and my work, and the best explanation is that it offends them that I am female and have published a lot on a certain topic.

Oh well, so I can't be universally loved and respected by all. Lucky for me these guys are not very influential or even particularly good scientists, although they are not non-entities either. And they are very busy in their dislike of me.

I was thinking about this situation recently because a colleague emailed me after attending a small international meeting at which my name "came up quite a bit" in discussions. My colleague did not provide many other details, except to say that he got upset by some of these discussions and attempted to leave the room. He had to be convinced to stay. It would have been nice if he had challenged the rude people to a duel, but perhaps the fact that he expressed his severe discontent with the tone and content of the discussion somehow registered with these guys.

I can afford to be bemused rather than upset about the situation because it has very little effect on me. I am enjoying this part of my research immensely (for scientific reasons) and have continued to receive funding and publish my work. I suppose that sounds smug, but a more accurate word would be "contented". I love my work and am happy with how it has been going so far.

I can also afford to be bemused because the work they have done in response to my research has become increasingly bizarre and desperate over the years. It's as if they are willing to propose anything as long as it is different from my ideas and observations, even if what they propose is not based on data and/or violates the laws of physics, thermodynamics, and reason.

For example, if I say that there are purple kangaroos hopping around on Jupiter, they will say that there are green kangaroos hopping around on Jupiter; or that there are purple kangaroos, but not on Jupiter, they are on an extra-solar planet that has yet to be discovered; or that there are purple creatures on Jupiter, but they are definitely not kangaroos, they are bandicoots. If I provide absolutely solid and reproducible documentation of the purple Jovian kangaroos, they say that in fact they knew there were purple kangaroos and knew it before I did even though they didn't get around to publishing this fact, but I am still wrong about the mechanism by which the kangaroos hop, the average height of the hops, and the shade of purple of at least a few of the kangaroos. And furthermore, even though I didn't say anything about the effect of kangaroo hopping on Jupiter's orbit, if I had said something about this topic, I would have been wrong.

I therefore conclude that sexism is driving them mad and that this is dramatically decreasing the quality of their research and that, in this case, sexism is the cause of bad science. If only it were so in more cases.

Note: Comment moderation will be sporadic this week, but I will get to all comments as time permits.

Science + Education = ?

A proposal deadline is looming, and I'm submitting two proposals. One is for equipment, and that proposal is straightforward to write, albeit a bit dull. The other one involves a project that merges science research with science education in a way that goes beyond tacking on some 'broader impacts' to a proposal that is 99.9999% science research.

The challenge is to write it so that it doesn't sound like either part is weakened by the other. The co-PI is a science education professor, and we have a record of collaborations that have resulted in science education publications, including teaching modules that are used in science classes. In theory, there should be no doubt that we can do the integrated research that we propose.

I think the proposal looks pretty good, but I am somewhat skeptical that it will fly, in part because it is hard enough to get any proposal funded. Furthermore, a previous proposal with some engineering colleagues was shot down by education experts because we came across as obnoxious. We got review comments like "Who do they think they are.." (writing about educational activities when they are just professors who don't know anything about education) and "Just because they build it, doesn't mean anyone will come." (how special: a sports analogy and an insult all in one).

I have those negative comments circling my head in cartoon thought balloons as I write this new proposal, but I think both aspects of the proposed work are very interesting, important, and feasible, so I see no reason not to try to get at least a pilot study going.