This blog is usually concerned with the intersection of science and policy, but I write it within several miles of the U.S. Capitol, hence I can’t resist to link here to Christopher Hitchen’s recent piece reviewing fiction about my home town.
Hitchens, recently diagnosed with cancer, remains one of the most intelligent writers of our time. And he really is funny, too. For loyal readers who aren’t from Washington, his piece gives you a flavor of its famous contradictions. Enjoy.
A National Academy Panel visited the subject recently and a news report is here. Money quote:
Panelist James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan, suggested that the country needs a national education policy that encompasses its research universities. “Most countries have one, and it usually includes a statement about creating X number of world-class research universities,” Duderstadt said. “Our emphasis has always been on providing access. But maybe we should have a national policy that says we need to have a certain number of global research universities.”
Hat tip to my Mom, Dr. Marianne E. Olds, from the New York Times on-line. Images are here.
My parents used to tell me that, as working scientists, they far preferred the badly delivered talk replete with lots of excellent data than the reverse. Although, I think we would all agree, the optimal would be a superbly delivered talk filled with brand new, highly significant results that are unexpected within the current paradigm.
Too often, in my experience we have the worst of all worlds: virtually no data delivered in an uninteresting manner. It seems to me this is a matter of training: we should mentor trainees to turn down speaking invitations unless they have some real new data and we should teach them to prepare to deliver talks well (e.g. don’t read your slide deck to the audience).
Here on Nature Publishing Group’s web site. The other day, several of us were discussing the future of bioengineering. This is one vision that is really quite compelling. Christina Smolke’s group at Stanford published the work in Science (Culler, S. J., Hoff, K. G. & Smolke, C. D. Science 330, 1251-1255).
Tomorrow is the day that, here in the US, we celebrate a holiday called Thanksgiving. Other than the preferred food (turkey which I find sort of bland), it’s a wonderful occasion to silently appreciate all the small and large things that actually are going well. There are many of them, not least, for me, is the pleasure of communicating with readers, new and old, here. Thank you. And Happy Thanksgiving!
Not surprisingly (it’s Thanksgiving week here in the US) the current edition of The New Yorker is on food. If you get a chance, be sure to take in Burkhard Bilger’s piece, “Nature’s Spoils–The Delights of Fermented Food”. Two of The Biological Bulletin’s editorial board members, Lynn Margulis and Margaret Mcfall-Ngai, are quoted extensively. I’m using an email interface into blogger, so I can’t
link to the actual article (the link is to the abstract) and since it’s current, my guess is that it’s
still behind the firewall. Nevertheless, for loyal readers who take
The New Yorker, it’s a real treat.
Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail’s editorial in Nature is here. Hat tip Harry Erwin.
Money quote:
How can we ensure that such research is encouraged today? Curiosity-driven research requires that creative scientists work in an environment that encourages interactions between researchers and collaborations across different fields. But such attributes cannot and should not be orchestrated by structured and weighty management, as creative minds and bureaucracies do not work harmoniously together.
As we prepare to take delivery of Krasnow Phase II in the Spring, the Institute will have approximately 55 thousand square feet of dedicated research space. We’ll have superb wet-labs, core support facilities and instrumentation clusters to support the bench-top science that is so important to our research program. But we’ll still have a center, one department and one of our top laboratories scattered around the campus. It will be time to build the wing that will not only bring those key academic and research elements under one roof, it will also provide Mason’s Institute for Advanced Study with a superb state-of-the-art auditorium (although really simulatorium should be the correct word since this facility will enable the presentation, in real time of multiple computational models), faculty offices and teaching labs for the academic programs that we participate in.
When Phase III is done, Krasnow will have all it’s faculty, trainees and students under one roof. It’s my belief that by creating that proximity, we will further facilitate the trans-disciplinary science that has become part of our identity. The new wing, off the south end of the Institute will take us up to approximately 75,000 square feet. We’ve received our first gifts to enable this effort and I’ll keep loyal readers posted on our progress.
Here’s the link from today’s NY Times on-line. So what’s my take? Well, for one, I’m very proud to work at a very affordable public university. But I do recognize that in the current economic environment, colleges have to raise tuition (and this is particularly true for public institutions) if they want to continue to deliver a quality product (and avoid, to use Fish’s term, academic malpractice).
But there’s a larger issue–the competitiveness of US institutions of higher education is a key national security asset of this country. We need to recognize that, especially as we go through the process of seriously discussing what government should do.
Discoverers and Discoveries 