Weekly Report #9

Our hero is trapped ok?  Trapped in a hospital bed.  You are going to have to save the world and all of human civilization on your own for once.

Baby Stuff:

The munckin is healthy, aside from a few sniffles, and he is a dancing machine.  He likes to break dance.  As in, he rolls around on the floor while the music plays.  What a nut.

Catchment Stoichiometry:

Yay!  I'm going to  be guest editing a special issue of freshwater biology on Catchment Stoichiometry.  Whoo!  Of course, this is all a little weird because a year ago I'd never heard the phrase, and I've really only thought about it at all for like 6 months and I honestly don't really understand how my co-guest editor or many of the authors are thinking about the subject.  I feel a little in-over-my-head in terms of my own development of the idea.  But maybe that's how everyone thinks when they are doing something totally new.  

Basically, this is a great chance for me to improve my CV despite working in a deadend job that doesn't value research at all.  And I don't think the special issue would have happened at all without me, so I feel good about it.  Yay science!

Sickness:

I used over 110 hours of sick leave last year.  I don't have any left.  One of the three of us has been sick (or wisdom teethed) since before thanksgiving.  Right now we're all just a little sniffly, so maybe we're finally past it.  

Basketball:

So one of my friends who I thought I could reliably know what was going on in the NBA told me the other day that he hasn't been following the NBA this season.  "I'm just more into NCAA hoops" was what he said (approximately).  I've heard this from a lot of people I know.  The thing is, I don't really get it.  I mean, I understand the appeal for college hoops.  There's no entertainment experience that is more viseral for me than watching the Jayhawks play basketball.  I feel like a little kid again, and increasingly that's a rare sensation.  I certainly don't get that with any other basketball experience (although I also get it with the Chiefs).  But unless the Jayhawks are playing, the predominant emotion I get when watching regular season college hoops is "awkward".  That's because they just don't play the game at a particularly high level 99% of the time. The appeal is that they play so hard, and when the games start to really matter (conference and NCAA tournament) it's pretty damned appealing to watch people try so hard.  Kinda like watching a whole bunch of game 7s in the NBA.  

 However, most teams in the NBA play a lot harder in the regular season, especially during the first and last quarter of the season.  And they don't play so stupid.  With all the restrictions on the NCAA teams in terms of practice time and studying, there's no practical way for those guys to learn to play together in a season, or usually even two seasons, so what happens is you get the odd teams that have stuck together for odd reasons winning it all (e.g., Kansas wouldn't have won last year if Rush had gone pro, and he only didn't go pro because he got injured in the pre-draft camp)  or you get teams that just have an overwhelming talent advantage taking control in the tournament (North Carolina a few years back, or even Syracuse with Warrick and 'Melo).  Meanwhile, the coaches are emphasizing a very few ideas, and they are primarily inspiring effort.  In college, you can fix everything with more effort.  In the pros, that doesn't work, because, aside from a few very miserable teams, there just aren't that many mistakes.  Those guys are paid to go out there and know exactly what they should be doing.  They spend 40-50 hours a week, all year long, trying to get better (not counting the games), and they are under immense public scrutiny to play better.

So yeah, I prefer the pro game, at least until March Madness, but I like basketball wherever I can get it.  I just can't imagine preferring the college version.  

Unless the Jayhawks are playing.

Economy:

I'm skeptical.  I don't really know if I like Obama's 'stimulus' package.  I just don't think it will work and I think it will make everything worse in the long run.  Parts of it are good.  Parts of it are awful.  Maybe I just need to read up a little more.

Anything else:

Oh probably, but I can't think of it now.

I can ride my bike...

There's only 5 months down in 2008, and we already have a winner for the "Best Song of 2008" award. This one is, of course, in the running for All Time Greatest Song Ever award, which I will be handing out when people quit making music.

Meanwhile, here's the Flobots with Handlebars....actually you're going to have to type that into google, because I'm sending this post via email, and i can't embed video or links in the ole email...or can I? I also like this song, although I think the singer is trying to be weirder than she really is...how weird can you be with perfect studio editing? If you listen to the song without the video, it doesn't sound weird at all, but I still kinda like it. I think this is me admitting that I've been listening to too many absolutely hideous radio stations since I moved to the middle of the country. Pretty much anything sounds amazing when your options have been Metallica, ANOTHER spin of "Life is a Highway" or that stupid Alicia Keys song again (just shoot me). If there's one thing the main-stream music radio stations have got down, it is how to turn a perfectly fine song like this one into a reason for me to drive my truck into a ditch. Other good music? What, there's other good music out there? How about the fact that I still think Jack White has resurrected Kurt Cobain (girl....you got those hands...that heal!)?

I'm alone right now, in the center of the country, with wife and child slightly to the left on the map of USA, but I will soon be soaring over their heads and moving slightly N, to arrive at the home state of Mormon-ville. Aside from inland salt waters, that's about all I know about where I'm going, so I guess I don't know anything. Oh, and I still haven't practiced my talk...so lucky people in my audience. Fortunately, my talk isn't until the last day...so no one will be there anyway.

When I'm alone, I tend to play the music really loud, and I just started up another song...you know how volume is on youtube (variable from song-to-song)...wow. I almost got knocked out of my chair....that was a little too loud.

Other stuff

- What, I've been away from Webcomics for too long? I'm just going to point you at this bit of awesome (that everyone's probably already seen), this surprising poignant bit of observation, of course the cool three-parter from Penny Arcade, I'm kinda interested in trying this sometime, I think this is about the whooping cranes, and is probably pretty honest. And I know its the in thing right now, but here's another comic about the semi-hilarious war between hang-glider pilots and helicopter pilots.
Of course, nobody is more scornful of cliche than I, and this is why.

- The NBA. I'm torn, I really am. On the one hand, I've hated Kobe Bryant for so long I'm not even sure I remember why it began. Oh yeah, it was when he was such a whiny baby over the course of his entire career. On the other hand, I hate the Spurs tremendously. There's nothing I wanted to see more in their first round series against the Suns than Shaq accidentally breaking Tony Parker's hand in five places ala Bobby Jackson. But no...we couldn't have that happen, could we. And then we couldn't have the most exciting semi-finals imaginable with a Derron William/Chris Paul matchup. And we couldn't even get the Paul-Kobe supermatch. No...we have to watch the freaking Spurs and Lakers, again. And frankly, the Spurs are huge underdogs. I don't know how they managed to beat the Hornets, cuz I didn't get to watch those games, but they've got no shot at all against the Lakers.
Which sucks, because nobody else has any chance against the Lakers either, unless Tayshaun Prince suddenly turns back the clock 3 years.
So who am I rooting for now? The Spurs and Pistons? Excuse me? The worst Finals imaginable. A Finals that would remind everyone why every summer I decide: That's it, I'm done with the NBA. A Spurs are, in general, a crime against basketball, and the Pistons are borderline ridiculous. So I guess I'm rooting for the Lakers-Celtics matchup, which would bring out so much 80s nostalgia that I might have to ignore the Finals anyway.
Did this ramble get anywhere? No, probably not. I guess I'm rooting for the Lakers, because Pau and Lamar have always been awesome, and it would be cool if they ever got recognized for how good they are (not to mention Farmer).
But let's just keep this straight Spurs. There was a time when I was in your corner, when I rooted for your team against the dreaded Lakers, when I believed your triumph meant the chokehold of the NBA dark ages was over. But you spoiled that by turning Bruce Bowen from a solid defender to a cheap-shot artist, when the Duncan face became more important to your success than anything else, when you hired Robert f***ing Horry. While the Lakers are like some kind of damned vampire that can't be killed, only wounded, you are more like a zombie. You are hard to kill, but that doesn't mean you're alive.

In Milwaukee, at SETAC

Someone has tickets to the Milwaukee Bucks game!

K always drives. He also parallel parks...really close to the curb.

The main ceremony was supposed to take place at 6 30....Central Time.
Oops.

Here I am, in Milwaukee. Looking up, at a mirror.
This was even a little weird in real life.

I'm in Milwaukee. Attending SETAC.

The Colts are on....

I drank a beer and three glasses of wine.

I ate some food.

I registered and got a neat bag of stuff.

I don't believe in organizations and their ability to cause change....but hey, this is kinda fun.

K and D are here. I'm way more drunk than them.

Boston Sucks.

Good morning Saturday

What I did this week:

1. Drove to Topeka and sat in on a committee that is deciding what to do about reservoirs and sediment and available water in KS for the next 50-70 years. And by "sat in" I mean "participated". I ended up meeting a ton of interesting people, but it was a long meeting.

2. Staying in Lawrence and got to see my...uh...niece. Wow, I just realized my sister's baby is my niece. That's weird, but I guess not really. Anyway, she's 3 weeks old but still very tiny.

3. Went to Kansas City and looked at Redbelly Snake habitat. Which consists of oak-hickory forest with steep gradients. In 105 degree heat. That was a hot, sweaty, exhausting experience, but a lot of fun.

4. Went to see a play starring a college friend.

5. Read Harry Potter 4.

6. That's probably enough.

I'm thinking it would be really cool to record notes and a review of each of the restaurants I visit while on this job (only visiting local stuff) and call it "Threatened and Endangered Food."
I think that'd be fun.

Today it is back to the birthing class. Yay. After last week I've been telling people that if I saw that video in November...well...I wouldn't be pregnant.

5 questions you had better know the answer to...

...if you want me to take you seriously as a scientist. This if from an article in the Guardian, about scientific illiteracy. Here are the questions:

Q: Why does salt dissolve in water?
Q: Roughly how old is the earth?
Q: What happens when you turn on a light?
Q: Is a clone the same as a twin?
Q: Why is the sky blue?
Q: What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

Now, I say 5 questions because that last one is totally bogus. You could have been very good at science for years and completely understand the basics of thermodynamics yet not remember which law is which.

I have no problem answering all these questions (in fact, the very article described above does a piss-poor job of answering some of them [and they are wrong about the twin one!]), but anyone who works in science should really have some kind of understanding of what the right answer is to each of these.

At the very least your answer better be better than some of the people they interviewed for this article (on ions):

Kirsty Wark Because it's less dense.

Daisy Goodwin It forms
another compound. The only reason I know any of this
is because I've been
testing my daughter on her GCSEs.

Uh, your daughter is failing! But hey, Daisy Goodwin works on poetry anthologies and Kirsty Wark is a newscaster. Check out the reply of Robert Winston, who is a "Human fertility expert and science TV presenter" (a former medical researcher):

It's to do with ions isn't it? Let me just work it out. It's to do with the way
sodium and chloride ions, um. Do you know, I'm not sure I can really explain it.
I can't remember now from my physics years ago.

Yeah, you work on biology. Even more, you work on physiology (of a particular organism). You're telling me you don't understand how water dissolves things? You do realize that your organism of study is 80-odd percent water?

How about these replies:

(Age of the earth)

Susan Greenfield Oh blimey. Well, I know that human beings have been going for
about a million and a half years, so ... I'm just grasping here. Something like
60 billion years or something like that, but that's a grasp. I'm not a physical
scientist and it shows. I'm probably not scientifically literate.

(why is the sky blue)

John O'Farrell My daughter explained this to me the other day. She is in
Year Seven. It's to do with blue being the dominant colour in the colour
spectrum.

Kirsty Wark Because it's a reflection of the oceans on the planet. No idea
apart from that. I think the sky is blue because... the rain clouds obscure the blue, and the blue is a reflection... because of the sunshine. Fuck! I don't know! Why is the sky blue?

Seriously? People don't know this stuff? And John, your child is probably failing too.

Ok, first of all. My friend M and his wife L (and their baby C) got me what is, to this point, pretty much the most amazing baby gift we have recieved. Little Alton has a shirt that contains the answer to the question: "Why is the sky blue?" courtesy of M, L, and C (have I sent you guys a thank you yet? Gosh, I hope so! THANK YOU!!). I'll admit, as I have previously, that this is exactly the kind of question that I'm worried could throw me off my guard when my own child is asking me for the first time. However, these people are being asked by an adult, given some time to think, and that's the best they could come up with? Reflection off the ocean? I've lived in Kansas, and I can assure you the sky is blue there.

Secondly, I hate to hold people up to ridicule, but this is exactly what is wrong with western civilization and, indeed, the world. We are all idiots. 90% of people I've met in my life only know how to do a handful of things. Even 'jack-of-all-trades' people who do mechanical odd-jobs often don't seem to have the faintest clue why something works. Scientists seem to be among the majority here. Are we really being served well in society by producing engineers that can't understand any biology? Or biologists who literally can't do 1st year calculus?

Anyway, it is late and I'm tired and a little intoxicated so I should probably stop here. But seriously, from now on, if you can't answer basic questions about the world, then I'm not counting you as a real scientist.

Happiness...quantified.

So in light of my earlier post about the nature of happiness, I found this study by British researchers to be interesting. Essentially they figured out the money-relationships-happiness equation. As in, to have Y happiness you need X money or Z relationships.

Weird huh?

The Upside to living at a Biostation

The roller coaster has upswings.

Tonight was one of them.

In actuality, this whole week has been one of them. I interviewed for a job that would pay great, and get me out of the academic muck. But beyond that, tonight was a fish-fry.

The maintenance manager at the station is an Oklahoma good-ole' boy. Except that he's cool and amazing. He caught 25 catfish last week when he could have been working (screw that!) and tonight he fried us up a feast of venison, catfish, gar, hush puppies, tater tots, and drunken chicken. Plus he had some 'drunken onions' which were, I think, marinated in vinegar and maybe alcohol.

The onions were amazing. The chicken was amazing. The hush puppies were terrible, don't eat them. I'll eat them for you (this is my way of saying that they were so good I want them all to myself). The beer was good (2 kinds of home-brew). The company was astounding. All good people.

I almost want to cry it was so much fun.

Tot means dead in german, so tater-tot is 'potato dead'...which seems appropriate.

There were other German words I learned, but I can't remember them.

Did I mention I'm drunk? Off a combination of tequila, wheat beer and home-brew. I haven't felt this relaxed in quite a while.

The facilities manager down here is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. He's honest, loud, friendly, guitar-playing, cooking fiend, etc. Reminds me of my buddy B from grad school. I miss the grad school field station. I feel like going back, because that was some really good times, but this field station in Oklahoma is pretty good too.

Less card games, more tequila, but damn. This is why I like field stations.

There are upsides to this whole profession!!

Sitting in the library

The summer has exploded into activity. After months of hard work in isolation, suddenly I'm in charge of a pair of undergraduates, in charge of planning experiments, and still trying to get finished with my own stuff.

Here's some thoughts:

1. I have an undergrad working for me who is very full of herself. She's certain that A) she's the shit and B) her rich boyfriend will keep her from ever needing to work. She's interested in science because it will be "A reason to get out of bed in the morning."
If you're rich and you want a reason to get out of bed in the morning, work at a f***ing soup kitchen. Seriously, I can't imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be more fulfilling.

2. The prof I work with most closely (who routinely drives me insane), has been astonishingly nice lately. Frankly, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. He hasn't insulted anyone to their face for most of the past 2 weeks. Do I forgive and forget?
You may have heard the old saying: "Women forgive, but never forget. Men forget but never forgive."
That's a load of crap. Not only do I not forgive, I write things down so I don't forget.

3. Boston slipped to #5 in the NBA draft. That's great. I've throroughly enjoyed having a city to hate. Thanks Boston.

4. If you've never taken a green fluorescent light and dropped it into a lake at night, and then seined up whatever showed...well....you should. That is AWESOME. I may do this fifty times this summer.

5. I'm working on an NSF grant. This is almost guaranteed to fail on the first attempt, but everyone agrees that it is a good idea. So I'm writing it anyway. If I were to get an NSF grant that would go a long ways towards proving my value as a scientist. Of course, even if they did fund it on the first attempt (unbelievably unlikely), I wouldn't find out until probably October/November....if I'm lucky.
The subject of this grant? The Zeroeth Law of Stoichiometry (homeostasis).

6. I'm sitting in the library 'watching' the undergraduates who are here for the summer class session. The station is packed, and there is all kinds of craziness occurring. Officially it is a dry campus for this two week session, but I'll let you in on a little secret.
This coffee mug next to the computer here?
That's not coffee.

Career Crossroads

The wife and I were discussing the future today. Having a child makes me want to plan out a little further ahead than the next ten days or even the next ten months. We've talked, and we're thinking we want to be in one place from K-12 (and then for the love of monkeys, we're moving somewhere).

Where I'm at now doesn't have long-term security. I can probably maintain my position here for as long as I can write myself grants to pay my salary. That might be a long time, that might be just the length of the original appointment.

(random note here...I love the the "Wise LeBron" commercials)

So clearly I need to be investigating longer lasting positions. Everyone is always at a potential crossroads. You can always decide to quit and do something new. Or you can always decide to move. There are always options.

Having said that, the combination of Alton's birth and being sick of working with a jerk is really forcing my hand.

I figure there are 3 options available to me, and the possibility of a fourth.

Option 1: The Research Track.
Right now I'm sorta on this path. I have a dozen publications. I have about 4 more on the way in the near future, and I have a half dozen more with various collaborators. The idea here is to try hard to make some of these publications really good ones, to finish this NSF grant and get it submitted, and to crank out another 5-6 papers this year (possible).
In a perfect world, the NSF grant would be successful, I'd be very competitive for a top tier research position (probably at an academic institution, but who the hell knows). This would result in my working my tail off for years in order to build the kind of CV that my advisers would be thrilled to see representing their labs.
More likely, I'd continue to be haunted by mixed success. Several papers, but none of them really that good, and I'd do some kind of middle-of-the-road job that is good but not great.
On the downside, I might totally run out of ideas, suffer a mental break, etc. That's entirely possible.

(another random note: I LOVE the spell checker in Firefox)


Option 2: Education/Outreach
While a slightly less popular option around the research community, this is still pretty respectable. Looking hard for a job at a primarily teaching institute (liberal arts college?), doing a little research on the side, mostly just teaching a handful of classes each year and taking the summers relatively easy (just doing research then).
This has all sorts of possibilities, depending on the institution and the situation. I'm not sure what the best case scenario is here, but it is probably teaching 1-2 classes a semester, and doing collaborative research with friends at bigger institutions in the summer. That actually sounds pretty good.
The down end of this is probably getting into a situation where I teach 3 classes a semester and never have any time to think about research in an institution that doesn't have it.

(Another Random Note: The 4th quarter of this Nets-Cavs game has seven minutes remaining and neither team has made a field goal. As Dick Stockton just said: That's amazing.)

Option 3: "Practical" Ecology
Maybe this should be called "out of academia". This is the option where I go for a government job or a job with someone like the Nature Conservancy. The idea here is that those kinds of organizations should have good scientists involved. Environmental policy, advocacy, etc. I don't really know where this goes, or where it leads. The pay seems good though, and it doesn't seem to require nearly the time commitment that the academic track options have, so maybe I could actually start learning things that don't relate to science (hablas espanol?).

These are the options I'm really considering. I guess there are lots of other options too (go to law school, Barnes and Noble, restaurant). I'm not necessarily ruling those things out, I just think right now Options 1-3 are more plausible (and require no loss of 'pride').

(another random note: The NBA suspended 2 Suns players. This is the worst possible decisions the NBA could have made. To be clear, the NBA is now enforcing the rules inconsistently, because Bruce Bowen, Baron Davis, and Jason Richardson have all hit people, sometimes in the groin, in these playoffs. None have those players were suspended. Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudamire got up off the bench when the most important player on their team was hip-checked into a table, never got close to the players on the court, and were suspended for a critical game 5 in the playoffs. Great. The NBA sucks.)

So I'm not sure which way I'm going to end up going here.

Tonight I went fishing.

8 fish in half an hour. Only 1 that was bigger than a foot in length though.

Random thoughts

I'm a little too tired to think effectively. I'm trying to get stuff done and make progress, but right now all I can think about is going back to bed.

I have a lot of acid-washing to do.

But the thing is, if I don't get it done now, it will just get worse.

And by the way, it is a beautiful day here. Sunny, warm, slight bit of breeze. Makes me want to shoot hoops or just sit outside and read.

The Golden State game last night was lame. I was happy about the result, but bored with the fact that the game wasn't even close. Oh the other hand, when Baron Davis dunked over Kirilenko I yelled out loud. That was one of the most impressive dunks I have ever seen. Just, wow.

Iodine kills Daphnia eating poor quality food more than it kills daphnia eating high quality food. Now I'm looking at growth rate. Growth rate involves staring through a microscope for 2-3 hours. That is just astoundingly annoying. I better get some interesting results.

I have songs playing in my head that I've never heard. That makes it sound weird, but what I mean is that I keep hearing the lyrics to “Don't Ask Me” by Ok Go being performed by KISS. Ok, that still sounds pretty weird. I swear I haven't been taking drugs, but I am starting to wonder if I'm getting enough sleep.

In other news...ok, there is no other news. I'm just drained and avoiding going back to the acid bath.

Color blindness, infinite recursion, and the total destructions of...nevermind

Things I've been thinking about:

- I use the word color-blindness to describe my eyesight a lot of the time. That's because that's the word that was used to describe it to me, however, I'm not actually color blind. I just can't distinguish colors very well. This guy has put together a post describing, pretty amazingly well, exactly how this kind of color-blindness actually affects vision. I think you can assume everything he is saying with regards to his vision is pretty much exactly the same as me. So if you were wondering.

- Anytime I bitch and moan about my job situation, or anytime I did about my graduate school situation, then there are inevitably people who come out of the woodwork to tell me: "Yeah, every job is like that." Or "That's just how it is." Or "You'll get that anywhere."
I'm constantly amazed that people tell me this. I mean, if that's true, then the world isn't worth saving. If the density of complete and total jackasses is so high that practically everyone knows someone at their job who is such a jackass that people from that job go home every night and feel miserable about their lives, then there's no point in caring!
I don't want to make the world a better place for people if that's what people are.
Why would I?

- The Mavs: Lost in the first round. Only the second time in the last, what, 8 years that's happened. This isn't like the Finals last year, when the officials clearly were incapable of making a good call. For the most part this series was called pretty fairly, but that might be just because there weren't any real close games. At this point I don't know if I can watch anymore NBA. That first round was exhausting.

- Ever thought about how many objects you can keep track of at one time? This is an interesting article about a study where they did just that. For the record, I could keep track of 4 at a time...I'd like to see where I top out at (4 was not difficult).

- Ha. Did anyone hear about Digg's users basically revolting? Couple of interesting stories here and here.

- Alright, I gotta get back to the research. I haven't had time to think this week, and of course we still don't have an internet connection in the house. Yay.

The Crux of my Desire

Ever since I left Winfield I've had kind of a hard time being happy. What follows is basically me thinking aloud.

crux (krks, krks)

n. pl. crux·es or cru·ces (krsz)

1. The basic, central, or critical point or feature: the crux of the matter; the crux of an argument.

2. A puzzling or apparently insoluble problem.

In this case, the crux of my desire is merely finding that which I desire.

What do I desire?

I was once, even as recently as 6 months ago, driven entirely by the twin desires of being happy on a personal level and doing useful science.

Have fun, think hard, solve interesting problems.

Right now, I'm not so sure. These days, I'm not sure what is driving me, but having a child is throwing this whole thing out of wack. I've got new desires. Little Alton is going to need things. Not the same way I need a beer after a long day, but real, genuine need.

And between my wife and I, we've got to figure out a way to give it to him.

Suddenly I desire money. Like, a lot of it, relatively speaking, or at least a constant supply of it.

Shit.

I left graduate school too early for this desire. I intentionally took a job working on stuff I'd never worked on before. That was so that I could re-invent myself into working on questions I actually found interesting. I was really, really sick of working on DOM dynamics.

That's fine, and that works out great if I can afford to slum it for a few years while figuring out and publishing a series of projects that establishes my credentials in this new area.

Unfortunately, we can't keep slumming it. Our expenses are going up, way up. Health care costs alone are going to break us if we don't get more income. I mean, we can live really cheap. We worked it out last month, and our combined rent, car (gas and insurance), student loan payments, all our utilities and all our groceries is less than 50% of my income after taxes.

Yet we still found ourselves confined to our house, eating through everything in our freezer and going without bread and milk for the last six days of the month in order to preserve our budget.
Why? Because we have to spend a ton of money on medical expenses, we eat out too much, we go places, and we just generally don't stick to a budget very well.

So here I am, looking around for another job, one that will be pretty much guaranteed for the next 4-5 years. And what am I supposed to look for? I'm already slipping out of the DOM game. I'm not yet up to speed in toxistoichiometry, and I don't know a fricking thing about fish (which seems to be the job of choice right now).

I'm looking at teaching positions, but seriously who thinks I can teach? Let's see some hands. Oh wait, I'm not seeing any hands. I mean, sure, my CV looks like I should know something about teaching, but I really don't. I'm not bad at it, but I'm not really good at it. The most I can honestly say is that I put a lot of effort into it (I can't even put into words how much work I've done on this invasion biology class). I like outreach activities, but again, the best I can say is that I put a lot of effort into it.

Apparently this is what having a kid will do to you. I have no desires anymore that do not revolve around securing a relatively stable situation for my kid. Science? Really? Science? I'm supposed to still care about frickin' science?

I'm torn apart right now. I do not know what I'm supposed to do, or how.

Where have I been?

Like the fist of an angry god (I like to think Thor), the fierce Oklahoma weather struck down my ability to interact with the world three days ago.

That's right, lightning strike took down our internet connection.

Right now we're limping along on connections in the library and the office, but dang, I hate not having the use of the internet for recreation.

HELLO! We don't have a TV!

Ok, I'm being told that yes, we do have a TV. Apparently its that thing I use to play video games. Wait...really?

Ok, yes. That's a TV. I thought it was an arcade.

Hmm.

See without the internet I can't think. I know, kinda weird.

SO ANYWAY!

Stuff:
- Plaster casting. Ant hills. Scientists. I hope you know where this is going. And need I point out that there are pictures!

- Fark.com. Let me just inform those of you who still visit that sight: IT SUCKS! Not only does the the new site design look awful, but apparently anything you post in a fark comment is copyrighted to Fark (including pics).
Seriously people. There are better link aggregating sites out there. Like, for instance, reddit.com.

- I'm drinking a lambic beer brewed in St. Louis and infused with strawberries. I'll admit, I thought I hated lambics, but this one is pretty good. Plus, we've spent all the money in our budget for this month, and we have no other alcohol in the house except Guiness. Frankly, I don't know if I can handle a Guiness right now.

- All kinds of research spinning up. Toxicity testing with snails and daphnia, snail egg viability, toxistoichiometry with pesticides and pharmaceuticals, and more stupid fish LC50s. Groan. Nevertheless, progress being made. I'm basically just doing whatever I want now.
I'm going to write an NSF proposal. I know, that's bold, and damn near insane. I mean, the odds of me being successful are essentially nil. The effort will be enormous. Plus, I don't really have a great idea that doesn't involve toxicology (which NSF won't fund).
Nevertheless, I need to take a shot at some big-time grants, mostly for my own sanity. I've spent a ton of effort this year writing grants that didn't end up even getting submitted. That's frustrating.

- The NBA- God Orlando is awful. Kirk Hinrich is the best defender in the league under 6-5. Steve Nash is the most important player in the league. The Spurs are in real trouble (although they'll probably make it out fine). The Mavs are in quasi-trouble, only because people will continue to ask why Dirk doesn't put up ridiculous numbers. The Bulls look really good, I can't see them not making the Finals. There's no way the Pistons can beat them, there's no way the Cavs can beat them. Jersey, on the other hand, might be able to beat them (weirdly enough).

- And in case anyone missed it: The universe is a little less empty now. We have, officially, found another planet, outside our solar system, that falls within the habitable zone. That's right, the possibility exists that this planet could support life.
Humanity: You have a goal.

Jobs and such

(yeah, a drunken post)

Anyone have a job for me?

I only ask because I hate the world of employment. I don't want to work at all.

This isn't because I don't like to work actually.

I just have problems swallowing my ethics enough to work with some people.

I realize I'm going to have to do that, but at least if I'm going to have to do so, then maybe I can get a job working somewhere that I don't have to work all day long, all weekend long, all the time.

I understand now the appeal to farming. Imagine, working for yourself! Answerable to only yourself, motivated only by your own needs....That's starting to sound pretty good.

Except, of course, that I'd make an absolutely horrible farmer. I can't do it. I know this about me.

So barring my miraculous transformation into a farmer (maybe an aquaculture farmer? Anyone want to help with startup capital/ideas?), I need to find a job I can tolerate.

If I'm going to work with bastards, I want to at least have one of the following two things:

1) The ability to walk away from the job at the end of the day guilt free. You know, like when I worked at a book-store or as a waiter. When you leave work, you leave work! Imagine that!

2) Well-compensated. I don't know if anyone noticed, but graduate school doesn't end up giving you a particularly high reward in terms of hourly wage. You're going to get a job where you work all the time and get paid mediocre wages. Unless you get a tenure-track position, when you'll work all the time an get paid more money than you'll have time to spend.

I'm depressed... Thank goodness the sun was out today or else I'd be really depressed.

So send me those job offers. I'm available for the right price...

And if I can get a job writing, then I'd be infinitely happy.

Scientific Misconduct (Part I)

Ok everyone. As I'm sure many of you are aware, I like to write. I write a LOT. As in, I write this blog, another blog, dozens of poems, short stories, and little snippets of randomness every day. This is in addition to the grants, papers, and proposals that I write in my work. I'm trying to channel this writing into somewhat productive outlets that incorporate both learning and teaching. I'd like to make a career out of writing.

Towards those ends I present my first ever Popular Science article. I decided upon the topic of scientific misconduct because I find it a fascinating subject (I can go into that more later). However, I'm not just publishing this here for fun, I want feedback. Ok? Seriously. I feedback. I have little way of knowing whether my writing style here is good, bad, ugly. Whether non-scientists will find it interesting and whether scientists will find it appropriate. I really need to know if this is any good. If it isn't any good, I need to know that too (and why). So please, please, let me know what you think. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Feedback please!

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The use of the scientific method has, to put it succinctly, completely revolutionized the modern human experience. However, the underdiscussed backbone of this method is its dependence upon two critical components: A larger scientific community and a generally honest set of scientists. The larger community is necessary to provide critical review and to duplicate results. The honest individuals are necessary to prevent tremendous amounts of time and effort from being wasted running down dead ends.

These two critical components have, on occasion, broken down. The primary question is: What can we learn from these cases of scientific misconduct?

Scientific Misconduct by Individuals

In 2001, Jan Hendrik Schön (along with Hong Meng and Zhenan Bao) published a paper demonstrating that a thin layer of organic dye could be used as a transistor at the molecular scale. In this paper Schön claims “The fabrication of monolayer transistors and inverters might represent an important step towards molecular-scale electronics.” The paper is compelling, offering demonstrations of molecular structure and transistor characteristics of the materials he used.

Unfortunately, the results were a complete fabrication. In an editorial published along with the retraction of this paper, Nature questions what was going through Schön’s mind when he decided to fabricate his results.

“Was he trapped in a spiral of expectations that could only be fulfilled by deception?” (“Reflections on scientific fraud”, Nature, 2002, Vol. 319, p 417)

In the case of Schön’s work, the first hint that something was suspect came when someone noticed that the figures from several of his papers were identical. Following a lengthy investigation by Bell Labs (Schön’s employer), Schön’s was fired, his co-authors were exonerated, and journals were informed of the results. At the end of the 127 page report detailing these findings (which is no longer available through Bell Labs website), Schön responds to these findings:

“Although I have made mistakes, I never wanted to mislead anybody or misuse anybody’s trust. I realize that there is a lack of credibility in light of these mistakes, nevertheless, I truly believe that the reported scientific effects are real, exciting, and worth working for.”

The case of Jan Hendrik Schön is probably the most extreme form of scientific misconduct available to an individual, but it is certainly not the only form. Scientific misconduct generally falls into one of three larger categories: Fabrication, plagiarism, or ethical misconduct.

Fabrication such as that practiced by Schön has been rarely reported. Data on misconduct is scarce, but of 30 cases of scientific dishonesty reported by Denmark, just 2 were labeled ‘fabrication’ (Riis, 2001, J. of Clin. Pathology). A survey of just over 3,200 scientists being funded by the National Institutes of Health found that 0.3% had falsified data and 6.0% had failed to present data that contradicted one’s previous research. Even within the category of fabrication, often the kind of fabrication taking place is not as severe as that seen in the Schön case. Take, for example, the case of Dr. Robert Millikan.

Dr. Millikan was a physicist born in 1868 and prominent throughout the turn of the century. His greatest claim to fame is the oil drop experiment he did that established, once and for all, the charge on an electron. The experiment consists of balancing a small droplet of oil between a manually adjusted electrical field and the gravity of the earth. Since the gravitational field is known, and the electrical is known, the charge of the oil droplet can be calculated. What Millikan found was that the charge of the droplets was always a multiple of a single value: The charge of an electron.

When Dr. Millikan originally published his results, another scientist, Felix Ehrenhaft, published contradictory results suggesting a charge smaller than the electron charge existed. Millikan returned to the lab to obtain more precise results, and that is exactly what he got.

As it turns out, those precise results were partially the result of subtle data manipulation. Millikan measured close to 175 drops over the course of several months, but he reported the data of only 58 and claimed they were measured over 60 consecutive days. Some of the 175 could be legitimately removed due to obvious malfunctions in the machine used to conduct the experiments, others seemed to be removed solely to reduce the error in his final measurement. That these drops had gone unreported was not discovered until years after his death and upon closer examination of his lab notebooks. Millikan’s motivations were clear: He wanted to establish his reputation as a premier scientist. By selectively choosing the data he presented, he reduced his error by an order of magnitude and dismissed the objections of other scientists. In this case, his theories and results have proven accurate.

Another example of scientific misconduct demonstrates just how difficult it is to ascertain whether or not anything inappropriate has occurred. Gregor Mendel is commonly called the father of modern genetics. He lived in the latter half of the 19^th century and raised pea pods in a garden in his monastery. Mendel’s primary contribution to science is the description of how traits are inherited. In 1865 Mendel published “Experiments on Plant Hybridization” in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brunn, a minor journal in Moravia. For the next 35 years it was almost completely ignored, then in 1900 Carl Correns rediscovered the work and forced other scientists to acknowledge its significance. Gregor Mendel’s place in history was firmly establish over a decade after his death.

Almost immediately the scientific community noticed that the results Mendel got were too good to be true. W.R.F. Weldon, in a 1902 paper, noted using the newly developed χ² test revealed Mendel’s results to be astonishingly close to the predicted values. In 1936 R.A. Fisher (in Annals of Science), showed rather convincingly that Mendel’s data must have been altered in some way. For the past 70+ years the debate has continued. Various explanations both plausible and apologetic have been put forth, from an eager-to-please assistant to selective acquisition of data to random chance. A review by Fairbanks and Rytting in the American Journal of Botany (2001) noted:

“There is substantial disagreement about his objectives, the accuracy of his presentation, the statistical validity of his data, and the relationship of his work to evolutionary theories of the day.” (p. 737)

Fairbanks and Rytting conclude that no real evidence that Mendel conducted misconduct exists, but this is far from a universally accepted interpretation. Other recent cases of fabrication can be similarly difficult to uncover. As authors Montgomerie and Birkhead lament in their 2005 article entitled “A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Misconduct”:

“Indeed it should be possible for a clever scientist in our field [behavioral ecology] to fabricate all of their data without raising even the slightest suspicion...” (p. 21, Bulletin of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology)

Clearly, data fabrication is a problem of unknown extent upon which the scientific community can find little agreement. However, fabrication is hardly the only form of scientific misconduct that has been uncovered.

(Stay tuned for part II “Plagiarism” in the near future)