Google Scholar v. Web of Science

From the comments to yesterday's post:

ISI/Web of Science (WoS) is " better than Google Scholar by an order of magnitude."

"..my citations are definitely higher on Scopus than on WoS."

"Web of Science has a few errors in my records, though not nearly as bad as Google Scholar.."

"I prefer Google Scholar.. My prediction is that WOS will decline in popularity over time unless it makes drastic changes."

OK, so let's do the numbers.

I compared citation data in Google Scholar and Web of Science for 25 of my publications. (I did not search in Scopus).

I looked at a range of publications in terms of publication date, my place in the authorship order, and type of publication. For 18 of the 25 publications, Web of Science counted more citations, so I definitely like WoS better. For these 18, Google Scholar's citation count ranged between 0-92% of the citations in WoS; the average was 62%.

For 3 of the 25, Google Scholar counted the same number as WoS, and for 4 others Google Scholar counted more citations, although typically only slightly more than WoS (84-92%). There aren't enough data for me to conclude anything systematic based on these small numbers, but I was intrigued by the fact that 2 of the publications that had a higher citation count in GS than in WoS were in topics outside my primary research field.

The publications for which Google Scholar did a significantly worse job of finding citations than WoS --i.e., finding <40% of the citations listed in WoS -- were typically in my oldest publications and in my most recent publications, although there is one paper published in 2002 in a mainstream journal for which GS found <40% of the citations listed in WoS.

These results are not surprising; it is not news that these sites are not perfect at counting citations.

These databases are very useful for doing literature searches, and should be used primarily for this purpose rather than as key data in decision-making about jobs, promotions, and awards. Nevertheless, I have been on committees in which various members exclusively used one or the other of these sites for looking up the publication records of applicants/nominees, and I have seen citation numbers listed in many CVs and in letters of recommendation (typically without reference to which citation index was used to determine those numbers).

To some extent, this is OK. A very high number of citations is impressive, whether it is 250 or 320. For some of my papers with more modest numbers of citations, though, I might as well just make up a number between 5 and 50 than rely on the count in either Google Scholar or Web of Science.

Even so, for my field (or subfield) of the physical sciences, Web of Science is definitely "better" at counting citations for most publications. For those of you who prefer GS to WoS, perhaps you could leave a comment indicating your field. Are there particular fields for which GS is better at finding citations?

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Seeking Perfection

Is your citation record in Web of Science (or the moral equivalent) perfectly correct? Or are there errors?

If there are errors, are they insignificant (not worth correcting) or significant?

If there are significant errors, have you done anything about it? (Or will you?) It is possible to request a data correction using a form provided on the Web of Science website.

There is one particular paper of mine that is particularly prone to being cited in various and sundry ways. In fact, the citations for this paper are strewn about in so many different apparent titles in my citation report that, were the errors to be fixed and the citations combined, my h-index would increase (gasp). There are other errors as well, mostly because authors citing my work used an incorrect volume, page, or year, but most of these errors do not affect my h-index.

Should I try to fix the errors, or, at least, the one that would affect my h-index? Would you, if you were (or are) in this same situation?

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Travelogue: Blogging While Brown - recap #2 - the People and Sessions

I met some amazing people at the Blogging While Brown Conference and I would be remiss if I did not tell you all about them or at least link to their blogs.  But first, a highlight video of the Blogging While Brown.

Ananda Leeke – just a sweet spirit and person, started the conference off on the right note – with yoga.  Yes.  She led all of us early birds on a Yoga and Stress Relief for Social Media Users session.  I had to sit behind the table for the hip-opening exercise because I was wearing a skirt, but it was a great set – learning to live in the moment of right now.  Breathing in and out.

The Technology Review Session with Media 2.0 Leaders and Innovators Cheryl Contee of Jack & Jill Politics, Angela Benton of Black Web 2.0 and Politic 365, and Adam Conner, Facebook – yes, FB itself was a great session. I halted live tweeted and took physical notes.

A few things I learned:

(AC) 300 million of the 400 million Facebook users are non-English Speakers meaning careers in language translation and outreach to non-English global markets is the wave.

(AC) Mobile users are twice as engaged as in Facebook and social media, in general.  They can use text messaging to ask people to join Facebook Fan pages and Causes

(AC) Facebook is now one of the top referrals to websites and is a perfect way to engage people in blogs more.

(AC) A click is not just a click anymore. Thanks to Facebook’s set up you can now install a

(AC) Put a FB Like button on your blog.  I’m still trying to install this (Help!); it’s not showing up.  I really think readers would respond to this. And Facebook can be used to moderate comments.  If I keep getting spam comments, I might resort to this.

(AB) If you’re inclined to make a business of blogging, then consider building a network of websites with each one being a type of forum space around special topics.

(CC) SEO is still important but explore the many options available and utilize all the tools available, e.g. Google tools provides keyword search and popular keyword analytics, and don’t neglect up and coming Search Engines Bing and MINT

(CC) If you have a large blog and lots of traffic, consider Wordpress because it is a more sustainable platform for growing.

(CC) Email is going the way of the Dodo. Tweeting, Facebook, and texting are more popular ways for people to stay in touch, especially for younger people.

(CC) The future of Social media is Mobile.  There is no digital divide in the Mobile Tech World. Becoming more mobile friendly will be key for bloggers who want to stay ahead of the curve.  That’s the new frontier for me, too.

(CC) 25% of the people on Twitter are African-American. Wow! I didn’t realize that.

(CC) Creating more engaging blogs are the future. Recommended tools include Linkwithin – it suggests other related blog posts for readers to read.  Also, video is a great way to enhance a blog and it’s always a hit with readers.  I really like both of these ideas.  I’ll be adding both soon.  In fact, I’ve been getting a lot of encouragement to do video and I’ve been testing some out on the Facebook Fan Page. Would love your feedback.

FTC Blog Advertising Guidelines with Stacey Ferguson, Federal Trade Commission, Division of
Advertising Practices was quite informative.  Basically, all incidences of sponsorship – money, gifts, free services, anything – must be fully disclosed with a blogger is writing about or even tweeting about something. Incidentally, Stacey is also with Blogalicious – A 3-day conference Celebrating Diversity in Social Media this October in Miami, Florida.

Scott Hanselman – we played Scrabble together and finally got a chance to meet in real life.  At the opening reception on Friday he walked right up me and asked me about the Blog Your Way to Antarctica contest. He rocks for an unlimited list of reasons.  He presented an AWESOME presentation – 32 Ways to Make Your Blog Suck Less. I’m still working on adding some of the bells and whistles he suggested. 

The Business of Blogging: BEYOND Ad Networks was also a great session featuring Donna Maria Coles Johnson and The Nichelle Stephens of Pepsi Inspire.  But we end up using Nichelle’s Cupcake Blog as an example to explain business principles that every felt hungry and wanted desperately taste one of her cupcakes…I’m still Jonesing.

I was honored to be a part of session featuring kick butt bloggers/activists Luvvie and Latoya Peterson.  These ladies are amazing. Luvvie outlined how much the Red Pump Project has grown in a little over a year, including birthing an HIV/AIDS Awareness program for the gents called Red Tie Project.  Rock the Red, everyone. Latoya Peterson just blew me away. Racialicious isn’t just a blog about the intersection of pop culture, race, and sexism. No! It is a thesis.

The Town Hall meeting moderated by Shawn P. Williams, featuring Shirley Franklin – former mayor of Atlanta, Chris Rabb and Jioni Palmer - Communications Director for the Congressional Black Caucus, was an interesting forum indeed.  You notice I have no link for Mr. Palmer.  He was the recipient of much ire in the room and on Twitter because of his less than eager acceptance of Social Media as a viable tool of engagement with the public for the CBC.  Yeah, I was hurling a few tomatoes (symbolic tweets) at him as well.  But overall the session was very engaging and informative. The take home message: Social media is a movement and a very important tool for engaging (minority) audiences in the political process.

And no doubt the highlight of the entire meeting was the panel of Break Through Bloggers featuring Baratunde Thurston (he tweet that he liked my talk and I’ve been floating ever since), my Doppelganger Patrice Yursik (you all already know how much I heart her), and Anil Dash (a science policy social media guru who works with AAAS).  The panel was moderated by Lola Adesioye.  I loved all of what they said!

Some more AMAZING people I met at Blogging While Brown 2010 included:

The Danielles:  Wordyless, The Cubicle Chick, and of course the Black Snob (the former 2 ladies plus me made the infamous Danielle’s from STL Trio)

The Danielles from STL (l-r) Me, The Cublicle Chick, and The Black Snob

Another St. Louis Blogger – Glamazini – rocks some amazing natural hair dos and her blog provides hair care insights and book reviews (a recent one of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – a book about science and society. I keep feeling like blogging genres keep intersecting and I Love it).

Hometown bloggers (straight from the M or Memphis Tennessee) Notorious Spinks and Mesha who asked the most provocative question at the conference.

Anjuan Mance – Technology Translator and Minority Advocacy – and just an all-round nice gentleman
Adria - another fab person and Tech Guru.

Adria and Scott Hanselman

And I had a great time hanging out with DC area bloggers: Lola, Leon, my Cyberboo 2000 SkuzeMeWoods, and Fly Black Chick.

 (l-r) Luvvie, Fly Black Chick, and Afrobella

More Blogging While Brown 2010 pictures can be browsed at the official online Photo Album on Flickr. Please check them out.

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Creativity and mental illness

The association between creativity and mental illness is sort of a cliché – but that doesn't mean there's nothing to it. Standard examples given include Vincent van Gogh, Robert Lowell, and John Nash.

There has been a rather large amount of research into the connection, and a large number of biographical accounts of famous creative people who also suffered from mental illness. But the neurobiological details are emerging only slowly. After all, our understanding of the biological roots of either creativity or mental illness remains fairly rudimentary.

However, one recent study does add some tantalizing clues.

Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box: Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related to Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Individuals

Several lines of evidence support that dopaminergic neurotransmission plays a role in creative thought and behavior. Here, we investigated the relationship between creative ability and dopamine D2 receptor expression in healthy individuals, with a focus on regions where aberrations in dopaminergic function have previously been associated with psychotic symptoms and a genetic liability to schizophrenia. Scores on divergent thinking tests (Inventiveness battery, Berliner Intelligenz Struktur Test) were correlated with regional D2 receptor densities, as measured by Positron Emission Tomography, and the radioligands [¹¹C]raclopride and [¹¹C]FLB 457. The results show a negative correlation between divergent thinking scores and D2 density in the thalamus, also when controlling for age and general cognitive ability. Hence, the results demonstrate that the D2 receptor system, and specifically thalamic function, is important for creative performance, and may be one crucial link between creativity and psychopathology. We suggest that decreased D2 receptor densities in the thalamus lower thalamic gating thresholds, thus increasing thalamocortical information flow. In healthy individuals, who do not suffer from the detrimental effects of psychiatric disease, this may increase performance on divergent thinking tests. In combination with the cognitive functions of higher order cortical networks, this could constitute a basis for the generative and selective processes that underlie real life creativity.

Executive summary: There is a correlation between performance on a part of a common psychological test for creativity and a certain property of neurons in a brain structure called the thalamus. The association with mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, is that the same neural abnormality in the same part of the brain has also been found to correlate with various symptoms of schizophrenia.

Let's look at creativity first. It's often defined, to quote from the research paper, as "the ability to produce work that is at the same time novel and meaningful, as opposed to trivial or bizarre". A creative work should be original and unexpected, but it should also be more than just randomly different from the ordinary. It should also impress us as insightful or solve a difficult problem.

So there are several abilities a creative person should possess. They don't necessarily correlate with each other, but all or most should be present for "true" creativity. A creative artist, for instance, should be inventive and original, but also have good artistic skills. As far as the present research is concerned, we're dealing just with the aspect of creativity that comprises novelty and originality.

The psychological test used in this research is called the "Berliner Intelligenz Struktur Test". It's a general intelligence test, and it consists of several parts. One part is the "Inventiveness battery", and the specific ability that measures is called "divergent thinking".

Even within the divergent thinking component, several characteristics can be distinguished. The test may ask, for example, to think of as many reasonable uses as possible for an object like a brick. The characteristics that might be observed include:

Fluency–the number of valid responses; Originality–how frequent the participant's responses were among the responses of the rest of the sample; Flexibility–the number of semantic categories produced; Switching–the number of shifts between semantic categories; and Elaboration–how extensive each response is (if the task involves producing more than single words).

To do well on this test, a subject must be able to quickly produce valid responses that are unobvious and diverse in nature, not just variations on a few themes.

Previous research had established that divergent thinking is influenced by the "dopaminergic" neural system, i. e., neurons whose primary neurotransmitter is dopamine. Specifically, there is a correlation between divergent thinking (as measured by the test just described) and certain variants of the dopamine D2 receptor. The present research further narrows down the relationship.

We've discussed dopamine before (list). It is involved in quite an impressive number and diversity of psychological phenomena, including appetite, addiction, risk-taking, memory, and trust. Some abnormalities of the dopaminergic system are also implicated in pathologies such as ADHD, Parkinson's disease, depression, and schizophrenia (dum-da-dum-dum).

Indeed, because dopamine is involved in so many functions, therapies for certain dopamine-related disorders can cause side effects in seemingly unrelated areas. For example, Parkinson's disease results from insufficient dopamine activity, but treatments that raise dopamine levels can cause other problems, such as pathological gambling, compulsive shopping, binge eating and other impulse control disorders. (Ref.: here.)

The reason that dopaminergic neuron abnormalities have such diverse effects is that dopaminergic neurons are common in a number of specialized areas of the brain. A dopamine abnormality will therefore affect whatever function such an area is involved in.

As far as divergent thinking is concerned, there are two brain areas of particular interest: the striatum and thalamus. Many neurons in both regions have D2 receptors. And interestingly enough, these regions are also linked with schizophrenia. As the research paper notes,

[N]etworks relevant to divergent thinking, i.e. structures and processes in associative corticostriatal-thalamocortical loops overlap to a great extent with regions and networks affected in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Furthermore, dopamine is known to influence processing in these networks and alterations in dopaminergic function and activity of D2 receptors have been linked to both positive and negative psychotic symptoms. Two regions appear to be of particular interest in this context: the thalamus and the striatum. Several studies have shown thalamic D2BP to be reduced in drug-naïve schizophrenia patients. Moreover, D2BP in subregions of the thalamus was found to be negatively related to total symptoms, general symptoms, positive symptoms, hostility and suspiciousness as well as grandiosity.

(D2BP refers to D2 "binding potential", which depends on the number density of D2 receptors and their ability to bind dopamine.)

Based on the known facts, the researchers decided to look for correlations between a measure of divergent thinking and D2BP in the thalamus and the striatum. What they found was that, indeed, there was a significant (p=.013) negative correlation, in a relatively small sample of healthy (non-schizophrenic) individuals, between a measure of divergent thinking and D2BP in the thalamus. There was not a similar correlation in the striatum.

In other words, non-schizophrenic people who had lower dopamine activity in the thalamus tended to have higher divergent thinking scores. This is pretty interesting in itself, especially since other studies have shown lower D2BP in the thalamus to be correlated with higher scores for pathological symptoms in schizophrenics.

What, then, is known about the function of the thalamus? It's a left-right midplane symmetric structure, situated between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain. It has a number of functions, especially as a relay station between the cortex and various subcortical areas. In particular, all sensory signals (except smell) pass through substructures of the thalamus on their way to the part of the cortex that processes them. The thalamus is also thought to be important for regulation of sleep, wakefulness, and consciousness – which makes sense, as it's in a position to control what sensory signals get through.

But why do the dopaminergic neurons of the thalamus have something to do with divergent thinking? The present research doesn't explicitly say anything about that. But the researchers suggest some hypotheses:

Based on the current findings, we suggest that a lower D2BP in the thalamus may be one factor that facilitates performance on divergent thinking tasks. The thalamus contains the highest levels of dopamine D2 receptors out of all extrastriatal brain regions. Decreased D2BP in the thalamus has been suggested, firstly, to lower thalamic gating thresholds, resulting in decreased filtering and autoregulation of information flow, and, secondly, to increase excitation of cortical regions through decreased inhibition of prefrontal pyramidal neurons. The decreased prefrontal signal-to-noise ratio may place networks of cortical neurons in a more labile state, allowing them to more easily switch between representations and process multiple stimuli across a wider association range.

Stated more clearly, perhaps, though less precisely, it seems that lower dopamine activity in the thalamus may allow a freer flow of associations to reach the cortex, which is where higher-level cognition takes place. At the same time, however, if this effect is too strong, the result could be cortical activity that is, pathologically, too chaotic.

de Manzano, �., Cervenka, S., Karabanov, A., Farde, L., & Ullén, F. (2010). Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box: Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related to Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Individuals PLoS ONE, 5 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010670

Further reading:

Creativity linked to mental health (5/18/10)

Link Between Creativity and Mental Illness Revealed (5/19/10)

More brains and bonkers connection: thinking out of a broken box (5/24/10)

Dopamine receptor binding potential in the thalamus and creativity (6/1/10)

Creative madness (8/1/10)

Related articles:

Sugar can be addictive (1/11/09)

Dopamine and obesity (11/17/08)

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An Open Letter to...Nerd Girls

Do I Have What it Takes to be a Nerd Girl? Probably not.

I am a Nerd and I a Girl.  I love Science and believe in STEM outreach to under-served audiences by Many Means Necessary.  I came across a blog post by USA Science & Engineering Festival that asked the question: “Do You Have What it Takes to be a Nerd Girl?”, and my initial reaction was I sure do.

Nerd Girls is an engineering outreach program for girls and young women.  Pretty sweet, huh?  There’s a television show upcoming and this is the casting call for video auditions.

My initial reaction to the video turned my enthusiastic smile into to a frown within 30 seconds. Really?  Young women wearing capes, over sized tortoise shell eyeglasses, and very high heels running down hallways reminds me of a comic book.

Who is this message for? (and bookmark this question, because I’ll be asking other STEM outreach efforts this same question in upcoming posts).

THEIR MISSION

We want to encourage other girls to change their world through Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, while embracing their feminine power.

For girls and young women obviously but what type of young women?  The reference to embracing feminine power gives me a big clue.  The femininity they promote is a very conventional, even sexualized femininity.  And as I watched the video, I really felt like this campaign is not for young women like me: the not so girly-girl types.  So, if I were young enough to audition I wouldn’t.  To me, it is abundantly clear that Nerd Girls is an outreach program for the ‘beautiful ones’ - the charming pretty girls who are prom queen who might hide their smarts.  And you know what? Those girls probably do need role models just like the ones Nerd Girls provides.

But that still doesn’t make me like this program anymore. It sells a trite uni-dimensional version of feminine that automatically eliminates all 'others'. I was turned completely off by it. And yes, I'm responding in a very personal matter.

This is me on a good but average day.

I’m no girly-girl.  Some might describe me as a plane jane or even tom-boyish – mainly due to my preference for jeans or shorts, cotton tees, I love being outdoors, and getting dirty.  Don’t get me wrong. I clean up nicely, very nicely for the right occasion.

I guess this could be my Nerd Girls get-up.

But I’m not rocking high-heels and short skirts and sporting eye make-up on the average day.  That’s not me. 

And in science, there is a mix of us – uber fems, plain janes, and tom boys.   To be a fair feminist science scholar you recognize and embrace the whole continuum of feminine presence, not just the Barbie Doll version of it. That’s why I have a problem with this program; and I'm not the only one my Science Blogging BFF Oyster's Garter agrees.

Conceptually it is a great idea; however, please, don’t pass off this outreach effort for ALL girls/women. Why? Because off the wham I thought it was clear that “The not-so-popular girl, the cute but chubby girl, or even the smart but pimply faced girl - you know – the types of girls who most expect already do well in science and math and proud of their academic prowess” need not apply to be a Nerd Girl.

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I Am A Total Hypocrite

First of all, I'm taking a little break from blogging for a longish weekend -- Friday through Monday. Comment moderation will be sporadic today, and will then diminish to nothing, resuming early next week.

Second, I am a total hypocrite. If someone introduced me in a professional setting as "X's wife" (X, of course, being my husband), I would be really annoyed if that is the first thing people were told about me. In fact, I have been annoyed by this very thing in the past, especially when introduced to an audience just before I give a talk, but also when introduced informally to a group of Scientists at a conference.

But, not long ago, someone introduced my husband to some colleagues at a conference as "FSP's husband" (using my real name, not FSP), and I was amused. Fortunately, my husband was amused as well.

I can sort of rationalize the hypocrisy because the situations are not equivalent. In the past, before "The End of Men"* of course, being introduced in a professional setting as someone's wife could be interpreted as defining you primarily in your role as a wife rather than in your role as a scientist. For example, being introduced as X's wife just before I give an invited talk on my research involves more than mentioning a neutral social factoid about my life; it says "Here is the most interesting thing about this woman. We'll get to her accomplishments in a minute, but for now you should know who her husband is."

My husband has never been introduced before a talk as "FSP's husband", whereas I have been introduced as his wife just before I give a talk.

It's less of a big deal if it happens when being introduced to a group of people standing around a poster at a conference (for example), although it can still be annoying, depending on the people/context. In those settings, spouse-centric introductions happen to both of us, depending on whether we meet a group that is more familiar with his research or mine.

I don't think that I will ever accept this mode of introduction as the first thing an audience is told before I give a talk on my research. If we get to a point, however, when being introduced as someone's spouse really is just a neutral social factoid that is brought up in some of the more informal of our professional interactions, then we can be equally amused by either scenario.

*Oh wait, that doesn't apply to the physical sciences; quote from the article: "Just about the only professions in which women still make up a relatively small minority of newly minted workers are engineering and those calling on a hard-science background.."

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Self-Relegated?

A reader sent me this link and wonders if there is a (reasonable) explanation for the last item in this alphabetical list of categories for abstracts:

• Astrophysics
• Atomic, molecular and optical physics (AMO)
• Condensed matter physics
• Nanophysics and nanomaterials
• Nuclear and elementary particle physics
• Physics and Climate
• Women in physics (KIF)

If you only saw the headings, you might assume that the last category involved discussion of topics relevant to recruiting or retaining women in physics (for example). But no, these are research abstracts, just like the others, although there are only three:

C. Fox Maule(1)
Comparing regional standardised precipitation indices from climate models and observations

Henriette Skourup
A study of Arctic sea ice freeboard heights from ICESat measurements

Karina L. Gottlieb Ph.D.1
Investigation of respiration induced intra- and inter-fractional tumour motion using a standard Cone Beam CT


I looked up the "Network for Women in Physics in Denmark" (KIF) and I can see that they are a section of the Danish Physical Society. It is therefore likely that each category of the conference is organized/sponsored by a different section.

I can definitely see the purpose of having such a section as part of the overall society, but I can't see why there would be Physics research talks, on topics ranging from tumors to climate, in a Women in Physics session.

So I am wondering: What is the practical or philosophical reasoning for having a separate session of talks or posters on such varied scientific topics? Why would someone submit a research abstract to the Women in Physics section rather than the relevant scientific section?

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Off Message

Here is a comment from my teaching evaluations for a medium-sized, mid-level course for majors in Science:

she is so kind and sweet :)

Well, that's.. special. Except that I wasn't trying for a "kind and sweet" kind of impression. OK, maybe "kind" -- I do try to be kind. But "kind and sweet"? No.

I don't mean to be ungrateful, but.. ick.

Sure, the alternative is worse: mean and bitter. But I have fangs and claws! I hiss when annoyed!

Last year I wrote about my surprise when a student hugged me after a final exam, to thank me for helping her (a lot) during the term. I worried that I was getting too "mom-like" and less professorial -- not in the stereotypical sense of being remote and detached, but in the awesome way of being authoritative and respected.

Can someone be "kind and sweet" and authoritative and respected?

The student who thinks I am "kind and sweet" wrote no other comments. Perhaps soon we professors will all have Facebook pages for our courses and, for our teaching evaluations, students can "Like" us (or not).

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Travelogue: Blogging While Brown - recap #1

The 3^rd Annual Blogging While Brown Conference in Washington, DC, June 18-19, 2010 was a smashing success.

My very first highlight was being confused with Breakthrough Blogger and Black Weblog Award Best Culture Blog Hall of Famer Afrobella.  Seriously, two people on separate occasions thought I was her.  Dallas South News Blogger, Shawn Williams was even congratulating me for ‘my appearance in Business magazine’ to which I responded, “What? That’s news to me.  Oh, you must be confusing me for someone else.   That someone is Afrobella – who is THE leading Beauty blogger in Black Blogosphere, if not the entire Blogosphere.  Her fabulous blog has landed her writing and review gigs with Vogue (yes) as a contributor to Vogue Black, AOL Black Voices, and American Airlines’ Black Atlas Web site.

 Yeah, I don’t mind at all being her Doppelganger. (But actually, I think she and my great friend Darcella Craven could be twins. Incidently, people confuse DC as sisters all of the time.)

More great news…

The opening reception and game night was sponsored by CTIA and Comcast.  It was a great time.  I played Scrabble with fellow #BWB bloggers, Scott, Natalie, and Stacy.  We all though playing for fun was just fine until we learned the sponsors provided pretty sweet tech prizes to the winner – An Acer Netbook for 1^st place.  Long story short – I was a beast. I love word games and Scrabble in particular. (Ask any of my friends, one year for my birthday I was given a Scrabble Dictionary.  Love!)  And guess what happened? I won! Yes, competition was pretty stiff.  But I wanted that Netbook.  I listed this on my Graduation wishlist and I took this competitive opportunity as a direct sign from the Universe and the Good Lord Above that this was my chance to receive this gift. 

But it wasn’t without scandal.  I misspell a word – SWIMING.  I wrote the word out by hand a million times but spelling it with 2 ms didn’t look right to me either.  But my amazing opponents didn’t catch it either, someone at the next table called it out. They gave me guff about it – and rightly so.  However, since no one caught it and the word had been played against the decision was to let it stand. Whew! Lucky me and the Netbook was mine, all mine.

The Conference proper was twice as big as last year and I really had a great time.  The topics last year were great but in my mind some of them were a little irrelevant to me.  Not this year.  I was fully engaged the entire time and I really like the addition of the unconference to the mix.  Attendees were able to talk further about topics and network.  Thank you conference planners – Gina, Shawn, Aminah, Elizabeth, Cheryl, Shalon and everyone else.

It was a great experience!  Tomorrow I’ll talk all about my presentation about Science and outreach to under-served audiences.

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Basic Training

When I was a grad student, I participated in the usual seminars and journal clubs at which a group of students +/- faculty read and discussed journal articles. Typically, the group would take each article apart in great detail: text, figures, tables, everything.

I was fascinated by this. I found it intensely interesting to scrutinize a paper in extraordinary detail and argue about it with a group of people with different points of view and personalities. It took me a while to gain enough confidence and knowledge to jump into the discussions, so in my early grad years I listened much more than I spoke, but later I got more comfortable contributing to the discussion.

These discussions were not for the sole purpose of tearing everything down and determining that everyone (else) was stupid. Of course any paper can be criticized, but in general we found something worthwhile in most papers. Some contained fatal errors, and I admit that it could be fun to find these, but most papers, despite their flaws, have something of interest. We were certainly highly critical of the articles, but (at least, for me) the main purpose of these discussions wasn't to attack and destroy.

I learned a lot from these discussions of journal articles, and so, as an assistant professor, I looked forward to teaching seminar courses or leading other such discussions with my own graduate students and postdocs. I wanted to show my students how to look closely at a paper and extract its essence, evaluating the data and ideas, and how to be critical of methods, assumptions, and interpretations.

And my students hated it. They hated that every week we criticized a paper and tore it apart. They found the experience deeply depressing.

I altered my approach a bit with later journal discussion classes and groups. I tried a more balanced approach, so that it was obvious that these articles had content of interest, otherwise we wouldn't be discussing them. Students still hated it. They didn't want to read the articles in as much detail as I was asking them to do, and they didn't want to be so critical. They thought I was being too mean.

When I moved to a different university, the culture of my new department was a bit more serious and I had more success with students who enjoyed detailed journal article discussions, but I have never again found the type of stimulating environment that prevailed at my grad school in this particular respect.

That's actually OK with me. Now I am satisfied with a much less intense and critical discussion of articles. I'm happy if we focus on the core concepts and interpretations, and if everyone learns something from the reading and discussions. You don't have to take apart every sentence and figure and table to get a lot out of this type of exercise. If an article makes us think and leads to interesting tangential discussions, that's great.

I wonder, though, if students who don't participate in the attack-dog style of journal reading are learning less about how to put a paper together, and are not as prepared to review manuscripts if they end up in an academic career after graduate school.

The intense paper deconstruction in which I participated as a graduate student was a great education for me in terms of the mechanics of what goes into a paper and how best to construct a solid paper. But maybe there are other ways to learn this skill; perhaps just by diving into writing and getting a lot of feedback is just as (or more) effective.

And as for learning how to review: Perhaps reviewing skills can be gained in part by looking at reviews that others do of one's own submitted manuscripts.

I know that journal clubs are alive and well at many institutions and I think that is a good thing. I don't believe that the culture of attack-and-destroy for these discussions is harmful and instills a culture of aggression and contempt. I think that intense experiences with criticism and discussion of published work can be extremely valuable training for intellectual development and acquisition of knowledge about how things are done (e.g., the mechanics of putting together a paper).

However, I no longer think, as I used to, that such experiences are critical to graduate or postdoctoral training. That is, I think students and postdocs do need to learn how to be critical -- to question assumptions, examine the evidence, think about other interpretations -- but there are other ways to get there.

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Blogging While Brown about Science

Blogging while brown about science

View more presentations from Danielle Lee.

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I'm here in DC and I'm Blogging While Brown

Hey there! I'm here in DC and the conference is off to a great start.  Last was opening night and Saturday the talks start.  In fact, I just went through my presentation again.

This is just a quick post to let you know to expect more. Actually, I'll be live blogging and tweeting the whole time, so if you want a blow-by-blow of the conference then go to Twitter. (You don't have to join just to read what everyone is saying). Or you can see that I'm saying at my Facebook Fan Page.

Links are below.  Come back!

Urban Science Adventures! © Facebook Fan Page

@FeteSociety - that's me on Twitter

@BWBConference - Blogging While Brown Conference Twitter

#bwb - the hashtag to read what everyone is saying on Twitter at the Conference

Wow...the sessions have been amazing: The Future of Blogging, new FTC Guidelines and How to Make your Blog suck less.
And in preparation for my talk, I uploaded my talk, which is link-heavy - full of great resources about STEM outreach via social media. Sneak peak here.

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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.

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FSP Check List

After writing about general academic issues in The Chronicle of Higher Education for the past year or so, I wrote a column specifically about being a Female Science Professor. Predictably, there are a mix of negative and positive comments, but most are positive, much like the comments to posts on that topic here in the FSP blog.

The first comment to appear in the CHE re. my column, however, was a classic one: men in other fields have it hard too, a woman has won a Nobel Prize in physics so women physicists "ain't all that rare", and I should "shut up".

In the column, I picked almost at random a few example incidents to mention about my experiences as a Female Science Professor. In the comments, there are examples of other sexist incidents, all of which I have also experienced. This gave me the idea to make a list of all the ones mentioned -- and ask blog readers to add to the list -- and then we can check off the ones we've personally experienced. Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form.

Here's what I've got so far:

__ Someone who has read your papers and doesn't know you assumes the papers were written by a man.

__ Someone mentions that hiring/including women might involve a lowering of standards.

__ Someone refuses to believe a woman is a professor (extra credit if disbelief persists after being told unambiguously that a woman is a professor).

__ A particular person (student or colleague) routinely and aggressively questions the knowledge/expertise/authority of a female professor but does not do so with male professors.

__ Someone assumes that your co-author is your adviser rather than a colleague, even though you have been out of grad school for quite a while.

__ Someone says, contrary to the data, that in fact women aren't all that rare in your field because they know (or know of) at least one.

__ The men in your field are simply known as scientists or engineers or researchers etc., but you are typically referred to as a female scientist, female engineer, female researcher etc.

__ When you are in the department office, visitors assume you are an administrative assistant (extra credit if people, including students, command you to do a task for them without even asking if this is your job).

__ Someone tells you that you shouldn't complain about sexism because men have difficult lives too.

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Gray Matters

Whenever I write a post with "gray" in the title, some people think I am going to talk about hair, but no -- to me, "gray" signifies the mythical "gray zone" in which your grant proposal is neither awarded nor declined.. yet.

I have been talking to various colleagues recently, as some of us await decisions about various proposals. I recently got one grant for which I am very grateful because the science is going to be very cool and the grant will help support a new graduate student. I am, however, in limbo about another proposal that I submitted quite a long time ago, long before the grant that was just awarded. I expected to hear by now, but I have not.

How do I know I am in a gray zone and not just impatient or delusional?

My own personal definition of the phenomenon of being in the gray zone is a situation in which others who submitted to the same program have already received word that their proposals were awarded or declined, but others have not heard yet. If some already know about their proposals and I don't know anything yet, my proposal is in a gray zone.

I know that such regions of the grantosphere exist because I have been in the gray zone before. Sometimes I emerge with a grant, sometimes I don't.

Obviously being in the gray zone is not as good as getting the grant funded right away and not as bad as being definitively rejected, but is there any point in being hopeful whilst waiting to hear from NSF?

Colleague #1 says there is no hope, there is no gray zone, and anyone who hasn't heard yet isn't going to get the grant. There's probably just some administrative reason why the official "We regret that.." e-mail can't be sent out yet.

Colleague #2 says that we have hope, there is a gray zone, and perhaps the program officers are trying to find a way to fund our proposal.

I veer between these points of views every 12 minutes, but I tend to agree more with Colleague 2. Now I just have to decide whether to contact the program officers and see if they have any information for me now, good or bad, or whether I want to continue to wait and hope for the best.

If you have been in a gray zone with a proposal, did you contact a program officer to extract information because the waiting was too agonizing, or did you just wait (and wait) because you'd rather live with the hope of getting the grant than hasten your knowledge of the rejection?

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Summarily Rejected (reprise)

A reader writes with a query about some manuscripts that were rejected without review; in one case the summary rejection was sort of understandable, but in the other, not at all. Summary rejection was a topic of a post last summer, but it is a perennial topic. In fact, I recently recommended rejection of a manuscript without review.

Why did I do it?

I don't do this often, but in this case the manuscript failed to cite or even mention (e.g., in a cover letter) a paper with a similar title published by the same authors in another journal last year, it was a matter of minutes to compare the two and see they were essentially the same, and, as if that weren't enough, it was a poorly written paper with conclusions unsupported by the inadequate dataset. I think that decision was quite reasonable.

Other situations involving rejection-without-review, like one described by my correspondent, are more difficult to understand, especially if the editor does not explain the basis for his/her decision to reject without review. Editors should explain the reason(s), even if it is as simple as "We can only publish 0.2% of the manuscripts we receive, we glanced at yours and weren't immediately gripped, end of story."

If you think a particular rejection-without-review is completely unwarranted given the interest-level of the paper and the fit with the journal, then it's worth trying to argue with the editor in a clear and calm way. Marshall your arguments for why your manuscript should at least be reviewed, and give it your best shot.

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iCollege U?

Knowing that I am interested in how higher education is perceived by those outside academia, and in particular the depiction of higher education in the media, a friend sent me a link to a video of an interview on The Daily Show. In this episode from last week, the governor of Minnesota had this to say about what we need to change about how the government spends taxpayers' money:

For example, higher education.. Do you really think in 20 years, somebody's going to put on their backpack, drive a half hour to the University of Minnesota from the suburbs, haul their keister across campus, and sit and listen to some boring person drone on about Econ 101 or Spanish 101?

No, of course not! In 20 years we will all have personal jet-packs so we can fly from the suburbs to our classes and jobs!

Actually, no one said that. In fact, Jon Stewart said, Isn't that was college is supposed to be?

Governor: Yeah, partly. Partly.

(various jokes about how college is supposed to be boring or students will just party and never want to graduate)

The governor continued: Is there another way to deliver the service other than a one-size-fits-all monopoly provider that says "Show up at 9:00 on Wednesday morning for Econ 101"? Can't I just pull that down on my iPhone or iPad whenever the heck I feel like it, from wherever I want, and instead of paying thousands of dollars, pay $199 for iCollege...

There followed a somewhat incoherent and disjointed discussion involving public vs. private options, the governor's repetition of his statement that there is a "one-size-fits-all" system run by a bureaucracy, and his wish that we could "put the consumer in charge".

This is strange on so many levels. I think it would be great if a college education were much less expensive and easily accessible to all (without massive student loans), but somehow I don't think this governor is proposing to increase state funding for his university to allow for tuition decreases.

But let me be more systematic so that I don't drone on and on like I do in my Science 101 lectures. Here is a list of the things I don't like about this grim depiction of the travails of 21st century college students:

• the emphasis on the (implied unreasonable) physical effort and time involved in attending a class. Even if we expunge from our minds the vision of an otherwise able-bodied student lying on the couch in the rec room of their parents' suburban home, unwilling to do more than push a few buttons on some awesome later generation of iPhone, and instead imagine someone with work/family commitments that make commuting to a campus difficult, does Governor Pawlenty think that even today there are no other options for that student?

• the gratuitous insult that implies that instructors "drone" to passive audiences, making it not worth the effort to attend a course in person. You can't even fast forward when someone is speaking to you in person, in real time!
  

• the implication that it is obnoxious for a university to expect that a student will show up at a particular time and place for a class. I have heard that some companies expect their employees to do this as well, but maybe that's just a vicious rumor.

• one-size-fits-all? Where does that come from? What does that even mean in this context, especially in a statement that implies that, in the future, no one will physically want to travel to a campus to take classes? There are many options in higher education today, not just public vs. private, but also within public university systems, and even within a single university. There are online courses and other forms of distance learning, there are large classes and small classes, there are lectures and seminars and independent study programs. There are day classes, night classes, and summer classes. There are typically multiple sections of intro classes. All of these are potentially quite interactive, including the online courses, providing students with a wide range of options.
  

• Put the consumer in charge of what? That's a buzz phrase -- let's empower the people (who will pay lower taxes), not the big institutions (that suck up all our tax money and give nothing back)!
  

Public universities should provide high-quality education to students, and should keep costs to students and taxpayers as low as possible. There should be constant efforts to improve teaching and the overall educational experience for students. Some of that push to improve comes from the needs and demands of the "consumer", so if that is what it means to put the consumer in charge, I can agree with that. If it means that states can squeeze the budgets of universities because consumers don't want to pay more for a course than they do for an iPhone, then I start to disagree.

And I don't agree that there is a monolithic University bureaucracy that has only one idea about how to educate its students.

All that aside, I do hope that the governors of our states realize that there is more to a university than how it lectures to undergraduates, important though that part of a university certainly is. I hope they realize that the research and teaching missions of a university are intertwined, that there are real people teaching those courses (only some of whom drone), that there are discoveries and innovations resulting from the efforts of those people (including some students), that some courses do require physical participation by real 3D students and professors in real time, and that perhaps businesses and other organizations seeking to hire graduates of our great institutions of higher education will prefer that their new employees are willing and able to haul their keisters into work at a specified time and place.

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Selected readings 6/13/10

Interesting reading and news items.

Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future

These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account.

Anticipating the first steps beyond the Standard Model

Physicists’ knowledge of elementary particles is encapsulated in the Standard Model of particle physics, which currently describes almost everything we’ve seen. Yet there is compelling evidence that the Standard Model cannot be the complete description of nature. For example, despite all of its successes, the Standard Model describes only 20 percent of the mass of the Universe. Eighty percent of the mass is known as “dark matter,” which we have never directly observed and know next to nothing about. [Symmetry Breaking, 6/3/10]

Could DZero result point to multiple Higgses?

What caused the DZero result’s large deviation from Standard Model predictions is just as earth-shaking a mystery. The answer could point to the completion of the Standard Model, missing only the theorized Higgs boson particle, or the creation of a new story line for a host of new particles in the saga of how matter in the universe behaves. In their quest for a full explanation, scientists debate whether they are simply missing a chapter in the Standard Model or if they need a sequel that goes beyond the model, potentially including extra dimensions or a theory called supersymmetry that would double the number of known particles. [Symmetry Breaking, 6/4/10]

What is a "law of physics," anyway?

Why should nature be governed by laws? Why should those laws be expressible in terms of mathematics? Why should they be formulated within space and time? These were the questions posed at a fascinating workshop two weeks ago at the Perimeter Institute, the sequel to a workshop held at Arizona State University in December 2008. ... The bottom line is that the organizers had better start planning on more sequels, because the questions seem as intractable as ever. [Scientific American, 6/4/10]

What a shoddy piece of work is man

The human body is certainly no masterpiece of intelligent planning. The eye's retina, for instance, is wired back to front so that the wiring has to pass back through the screen of light receptors, imposing a blind spot. Now John Avise, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California at Irvine, has catalogued the array of clumsy flaws and inefficiencies at the fundamental level of the genome. His paper ... throws down the gauntlet to advocates of Intelligent design, the pseudo-scientific face of religious creationism. What Intelligent Designer, Avise asks, would make such a botch? [Nature News, 5/3/10]

Illuminating the brain

Now though, advances in a five-year-old field called optogenetics are convincing these scientists to crack open molecular-biology textbooks. Using a hybrid of genetics, virology and optics, the techniques involved enable researchers to instantaneously activate or silence specific groups of neurons within circuits with a precision that electrophysiology and other standard methods do not allow. Systems neuroscientists have longed for such an advance, which allows them their first real opportunity to pick apart the labyrinthine jumble of cell types in a circuit and test what each one does. [Nature News, 5/5/10]

The code within the code

95% of the human genome is alternatively spliced, and that changes in this process accompany many diseases. But no one knew how to predict which form of a particular gene would be expressed in a given tissue. "The splicing code is a problem that we've been bashing our heads against for years," says Burge. "Now we finally have the technologies we need." [Nature News, 5/5/10]

European and Asian genomes have traces of Neanderthal

The genomes of most modern humans are 1–4% Neanderthal — a result of interbreeding with the close relatives that went extinct 30,000 years ago, according to work by an international group of researchers. [Nature News, 5/6/10]

Linux vs. Genome in Network Challenge

A comparison of the networks formed by genetic code and the Linux operating system has given insight into the fundamental differences between biological and computational programming. The shapes are very dissimilar, reflecting the evolutionary parameters of each process. Biology is driven by random mutations and natural selection. Software is an act of intelligent design. [Wired, 5/5/10]

Complex Life Traced to Ancient Gene Parasites

Mysterious gene structures called introns that help make complex organisms possible are descended from DNA parasites that infested bacteria billions of years ago, according to a new study. ... The findings fit the notion that group II introns flourished in the early Earth’s heat, and were ultimately co-opted into their hosts’ genomes. [Wired, 6/9/10]

The Magical Mystery Tour

Cassini, the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, has revealed intricate details of the gas giant planet and its moons -- but many mysteries remain. Six years ago, the Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn and taking detailed images of its ring and many moons. While the Cassini-Huygens mission has helped answer questions about this planetary system, it also has revealed new mysteries for scientists to puzzle over. [Physorg.com, 5/5/10]

Peptides may hold 'missing link' to life

Scientists have discovered that simple peptides can organize into bi-layer membranes. The finding suggests a "missing link" between the pre-biotic Earth's chemical inventory and the organizational scaffolding essential to life. [Physorg.com, 5/6/10]

Physicists study how moral behaviour evolved

A statistical-physics-based model may shed light on the age-old question "how can morality take root in a world where everyone is out for themselves?" Computer simulations by an international team of scientists suggest that the answer lies in how people interact with their closest neighbours rather than with the population as a whole. [Physicsworld.com, 5/5/10]

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Mean Women

Quite often, I get e-mail that goes something like this:

"A female professor/supervisor was really mean and unfair to me. What's up with that? I thought women were supposed to be really nice and supportive because there are so few of them/us. How are women ever going to get ahead in science/engineering/math if some women are really mean?"

Some of these complaints are from young women who are disappointed that they had a negative experience with someone they hoped would be a mentor.

Some of these complaints are from men who note that if women want to be respected, we had all better start behaving better (because of course every single woman is a representative of all other women).

Is there really any mystery here? Some women are jerks. Men do not have a monopoly on jerk behavior. The existence of male jerks has not stopped men from succeeding.

I wish there were fewer jerks in the world and I am not defending female jerks or condoning their behavior or lacking empathy for their victims, but at the same time I think it is unwise (and not quite fair) to expect all women to be nice.

I also think that the belief that successful women "pull up the ladder" so that younger women cannot attain similar levels of success is a myth based on assorted anecdotes of not-nice behavior by some women.

I think that I am overall a somewhat nice person, but that doesn't mean I am consistently nice, or that I am nice to everyone. Does my lack of total niceness mean that I am an obstacle to the progress of women in science? Does anyone believe that the only way women will attain increased representation in the sciences (for example) is if every single female scientist is super nice to everyone all the time?

A related question: Does anyone really believe that the world's problems will be solved when there are more female leaders? I think there should be more female leaders of the countries of the world, but only because women make up ~50% of the world population and because some women are fully capable of being in charge of a country. I am not under any illusions that world peace will automatically ensue once more women are presidents and prime ministers.

When more women are given the opportunity to be in positions of power, whether over countries or academic science department or even over individuals in scientific research groups, a wrong will have been righted -- i.e., the systematic denial of opportunity to people for reasons unrelated to their abilities or qualifications -- and maybe some things will get better. Maybe there will be fewer unfair barriers to career opportunities and advancement for women in STEM fields, and maybe academic culture will overall be improved for everyone when there is more diversity of experience and opinion represented in these fields.

Maybe. Just don't expect all women to be "nice", either nice according to a universally accepted unisex definition of the term or nice according to a more restricted perception for how women should behave.

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Renewal

When submitting an NSF proposal on a research topic that is closely related to work done in a previous or soon-to-expire grant (i.e., essentially a continuation of a research project), the options are:

- Submit a complete, new proposal. Of course you need to be very clear in the project description why new work on the same or closely related topic is justified and compelling, but otherwise the new proposal is administratively distinct from the previous one. This is reviewed just the same as proposals on entirely new research.

- Submit an Accomplishment-Based Renewal (ABR) proposal consisting of up to 6 reprints of publications that resulted from the original project in the past 5 years (2 reprints may actually be preprints) and a summary (max 4 pages) about the new research proposed.

I like writing proposals, but I can see the appeal of assembling 6 reprints and preprints and sending them off with a short summary of the transformative new research (+ all the usual forms and information about "human resources" and so on). My impression, though, is that ABRs are quite rare in my field. Perhaps the program officers don't like to go this route because it's better to have a full-scale review to back up decisions. (?)

The obvious advantage of the ABR is, of course, the time it saves. You write 4 pages of new research rather than 15 pages, and you send a bunch of reprints and preprints instead of writing a Results of Prior NSF Support section in the project description of a 15-page proposal.

In the NSF Grant Proposal Guide, PIs are "encouraged" to discuss renewal proposals with the program officers and are "strongly urged" to discuss ABRs with the program in advance. I have a feeling that this is code for "No matter how great you and your research are, you definitely need to discuss this with a program officer before packaging up your awesome reprints and bypassing the full proposal route."

So, my fellow NSF supplicants, have you submitted a renewal proposal, how close was the new research to the old research, which route did you go, and how successful were you?

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On Fecundity

A letter in the 3 June 2010 issue of Nature addresses "The role of mentorship in protégé performance". That sounds sort of interesting. I'd like to know ".. the extent to which protégés mimic their mentors' career choices and acquire their mentorship skills".

Those are two very different things, though. I can see how you could determine whether protégés follow the same career path as their advisers, but you need some assumptions to go from those data to interpretations about acquisition of mentorship skills (or lack thereof).

To address these issues, the authors (Malmgren et al.) used a large database that has tracked mathematicians and their academic "genealogy" for centuries. Despite the massive database going back to 1637, the authors analyzed only the years 1900-1960 because these data were deemed "most reliable" and this range allows the tracking of a few generations.

More recent data would be interesting to consider as well, if possible, particularly to see if the culture of academic math departments has changed. Or perhaps nothing changes the culture of math departments; the authors concluded that, despite the occurrence of some world wars etc. in the 20th century, there were "no systematic historical changes" evident in the database.

The research was designed to evaluate whether protégés "acquire the mentorship skills of their mentors". This is done by studying mentorship fecundity. I am not sure that fecundity necessarily relates to "mentorship skills" or "mentorship success", but that's how it was defined.

A brief aside: This may be a seminal paper, but I wish there were a different term that could be used than fecundity to represent the number of protégés a mentor trains. I also wish there were a better term than "protégé", although I know that technically the word is used appropriately in this paper. Advisee and mentee aren't great words either, but somehow they seem more professional to me. Or, if protégé must be used, can I be called a patron rather than a mentor?

Anyway, what we all want to know is:

Can you predict the fecundity of a mathematician?

Well, it's complicated, but you can write an equation! Also, you can make an analogy with parents (= mentors) and children (= protégés), such that a protégé's graduation date is their "birth date". I'm not sure why this new terminology was introduced, as the original concepts of mentor, protégé, and graduation date are not that complicated, but so it goes.

The results, which aren't actually explained in the paper, are "three significant correlations in mentorship fecundity", which I will condense into two:

1. Protégés of mentors with low fecundity (< 3 protégés) had more protégés than "expected".

2. The protégés of early-career mentors are themselves more fecund than "expected" and are more fecund than protégés who are advised by these same mentors later in their careers; i.e., fecundity might be influenced by the adviser's career stage.

The first interpretation did not surprise me, although one has to be clear about what the "expected" fecundity of protégés is before deciding if the result is greater or less than expected. The second one is more surprising, but whether it has any meaning depends, of course, on the methods and assumptions of the study.

It's a rather strange study and we can pick away at it, but is there anything to be learned from it about the influence of mentors on the later careers of their mentees? I doubt it, although I think the motivating question of the study is an interesting one, and perhaps impossible to study in a meaningful and quantitative way. To be relevant to modern mentorship, such a study would also have to track career paths that veer from math to engineering, or to any of various other interconnected disciplines.

And, because being a successful mentor doesn't have to mean that we clone ourselves and produce academic children who mimic our careers, perhaps there would need to be a different way of measuring the quality and success of mentorship than simply counting up the numbers of academic children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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