nanopolitan

IQ, Richwine, Harvard

2013-05-23T18:24:00.001+05:30

The Richwine affair has generated some fantastic commentary not just on the man's Harvard PhD thesis, but on the broader topic of "IQ and Race". Some links:

Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic: The Dark Art of Racecraft.
Will Wilkinson in The Economist: The Richwine Affair.
Diego von Vacano at the Monkey Cage: IQ and the Nativist Movement.
Zack Beauchamp in Think Progress: The Inside Story of The Harvard Dissertation That Became Too Racist For Heritage.

Sentence of the Day

2013-05-13T17:54:00.001+05:30

He’s probably the first person ever to lose his job because of his Harvard PhD dissertation.

The 'he' here is Jason Richwine, one of the authors of a recent Heritage Foundation report on immigration reform that has been getting some serious backlash.

Here's the quote again, with some context:

He’s probably the first person ever to lose his job because of his Harvard PhD dissertation: Jason Richwine, let go by the Heritage Foundation on Friday. The problem: he co-authored their position paper opposing immigration reform; and then somebody discovered that his PhD thesis at Harvard’s Kennedy School was dedicated to the proposition that Hispanics have lower IQs than white people. Not even the Heritage Foundation wanted to go there–so after two days trying to answer embarrassing questions, he left quietly.

But how did he get a Harvard PhD for work that even the Heritage Foundation wouldn’t accept?

Jon Wiener's post also expands a bit on the bad uses of IQ tests. Inside Higher Ed reports that the revelations about Richwine's thesis has led to quite a ruckus at Harvard itself, where student organizations have "[have questioned] the legitimacy of the dissertation that was awarded to Richwine".

Links

2013-05-13T13:35:00.000+05:30

Noah Smith at Noahpinion: If you get a PhD, get an economics PhD.

... [D]espite these caveats, the econ PhD still seems like quite a sweet deal to me. And compared to a hellish, soul-crushing, and economically dubious lab science PhD, econ seems like a slam dunk. There are very few such bargains left in the American labor market. Grab this one while it's still on the shelves. [Bold emphasis added]
Sabine Hossenfelder (aka Bee)at Back Reaction : What do "most physicists" work on?

Since coverage by the media is driven by popularity and not by relevance, one can expect such a skewed representation. It probably isn't much different in other areas of our lives. (Who actually wears those wacky clothes that fashion designers celebrate?) What bothers me much more than the skewed selection of topics is how their relevance is misrepresented even in these articles. I must have read hundreds of times that "many physicists" believe this or that, while in reality most physicists couldn't care less and probably have no opinion whatsoever.
Nathan Yau: Length of the Average Dissertation.

IQ, Race, Immigration

2013-05-11T17:35:00.000+05:30

Heritage Foundation has stepped in it again, with a "report" on immigration reform [see Krugman's post]. It has led to one good thing, though: we get to revisit the topic of what IQ is and what it is not. Two links:

James Heckman (1995): Lessons from the Bell Curve [pdf].
Dana Goldstein: Attention Jason Richwine: You're Not the First Guy to (Wrongly) Believe Immigrants are Dumb.

David Foster Wallace: "This is Water"

2013-05-11T17:12:00.002+05:30

His 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, now as a short film [full text]:

This is Water - By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

Bad at Math

2013-05-11T16:51:00.000+05:30

Ben Orlin, who is now a math teacher, has a fabulous personal essay on What It Feels Like to Be Bad at Math. An excerpt:

As the day [of my presentation in the seminar class on topology] approached, I began to panic. I called my dad, a warm and gentle soul. It didn’t help. I called my sister, a math educator who always lifts my spirits. It didn’t help. Backed into a corner, I scheduled a meeting with the professor to throw myself at his mercy.

I was sweating in the elevator up to his office. The worst thing was that I admired him. Most world-class mathematicians view teaching undergraduates as a burdensome act of charity, like ladling soup for unbathed children. He was different: perceptive, hardworking, sincere. And here I was, knocking on his office door, striding in to tell him that I had come up short. An unbathed child asking for soup.

Teachers have such power. He could have crushed me if he wanted.

He didn’t, of course. [...] [Bold emphasis added]

Bonus: Fistfuls of Sand: (or, Why It Pays to Be a Stubborn Teacher) from Orlin's blog.

Dedication: Prof. Jack Holman

2013-05-09T09:06:00.001+05:30

Prof. Jack Holman is a pioneer in the subject of heat transfer with his textbooks on thermodynamics, heat transfer and experimental methods. He passed away on May 1st, 2013. Read an obituary at the SMU website.

Let me share some pertinent thoughts in public domain stemming from personal association. The text is modified from another one I was asked to write on him on another occasion.

I was a Teaching Assistant for Prof. Jack Holman all the four years while pursuing my Ph. D. at SMU (1998 - 2002). Once during a discussion with him, I goofed on an explanation about how friction power affects the efficiency of an internal combustion engine (of our cars). At the end of my explanation I raised a doubt, which wouldn't have been there had my understanding been correct. He didn't answer or correct me immediately. "Let me know if you find the answer" is all he said. I found the answer and went to him to apologize for my wrong understanding. "There, you seem to know something now, don't you," came the reply with a beaming smile and a penetrating look above his spectacle rim.

Seeing my interest in thermodynamics, he agreed to offer me any related course that I want as part of my Ph. D. requirement. Eventually I studied Irreversible Thermodynamics -- only student -- from him.

Since Prof. Holman was in my Doctoral Committee, I took the Heat Transfer qualifier exam from him. After going through heat transfer basics for few weeks, I went to him one day and asked to give me the exam. "Arunn, I keep feeling very chilly here. Design a radiation heater for my office room". That was his (one and only) qualifier question to me. I gaped and he assured me that is the question and by way of encouragement, added, "you can design that heater for six months or six weeks or six hours; come back when you feel you have learnt enough and are satisfied." I did pass that exam in one go and let us leave it at that.

Prof. Holman was one among the rare breeds of professors who, instead of making you study, make you learn a subject.

Prof. Holman appointed me to serve as the proof reader for two of his text books (Experimental Methods and Heat Transfer). And in that pretext provided me summer support from the publishers. Initially I was hesitant to point out typos and some errors in the earlier editions. On one such occasion he looked up from the proof and said severely, "Arunn, that is a mistake. Don't be apologetic. Say it. It shall be corrected."

(After a few days he visited my advisor's cabin -- who had by then just begun writing his first book -- and pronounced "One should write the first edition well. Mistakes seldom get corrected and could get carried over unchanged for several editions." My advisor beamed at the solemn face of Prof. Holman; I wanted the office floor to open up and engulf me.)

Well into my Ph. D. and having published some papers and presented them in ASME conferences attended by Prof. Holman, one day when I was rummaging some book in the excellent collection in his office, Prof. Holman turned around from his desk and said, "Arunn, you and *my advisor* know more porous media stuff (our research area) than me."

Among the several anecdotes I could keep citing to showcase his inspiring impact, the above ones speak for his humility and enthusiasm to lead the life of a professor as a life full of constant learning. Prof. Holman is not just a good teacher or a competent researcher. He is a Professor -- one who profess a subject.

Pioneering textbooks written by Prof. Holman have remained popular in India. His Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer books have been used several decades back by my father during his UG days. A generation later, I used them in my UG days too. That I was under the tutelage of Prof. Holman during my Ph. D. days and having apparently survived it successfully, made my father believe that even I could grasp a few engineering concepts.

I am also a proud owner of the first edition signed master copy of Prof. Holman's Thermodynamics -- with hand written corrections -- that was gifted to me just-like-that one day (that edition contains among other interesting stuff, explanation for diffusion using 'billiard-balls' schematic, provided for the first time then, by the author; later editions dropped that chapter). Years later, while at IITM, an email from him wondered if I would be interested to co-author the next edition of his Thermodynamics book. The project didn't materialize.

Towards the end of my Ph. D. tenure, he made an offer to me to take any/all of the books from his private collection from his 'inside' office. The flustered me could meekly lift only a few books on insistence. I am also fortunate to own several other memorabilia from Prof. Holman, including an audio cassette collection of his entire heat transfer lectures, topped with two CD copies of choir and pop music, participated (sung) by him.

Upon finishing my degree, I learnt from the ME Dept. Chair that Prof. Holman had insisted throughout my tenure that I should always be assigned as the TA for his classes. The confidence that knowledge gave me is everlasting for and in my academic career.

Flanneled always in three piece with the tie-pin in place, holding the bagel wrapped in a brown paper bag and coffee, short Hercule Poirot strides in polished black shoes, present always a few minutes earlier at 7:15 AM in our morning race to office, walking into the laboratory constantly reminding me not to jump up from my seat on seeing him... memories are to be cherished.

He was confident I would find a faculty position in the USA. "Arunn, this country needs good teachers; if all of the academics are after grants, who will teach these kids engineering?"

When he learnt I have taken up a position at IITM and moving off to India for good, he had a long discussion with me in his office about what and how I should do in an academic career. At the end of which he said, "I am willing to let you go provided you promise to visit us from time to time".

Among the very few reasons I would have gone back to the USA, keeping that promise would be the better one.

Arunn Narasimhan
Student of Prof. Jack P. Holman

Evaluation Season

2013-05-07T13:44:00.000+05:30

Here's The Onion's take on student evaluations: Professor Deeply Hurt by Student's Evaluation. The Dean's comment comes right at the end, but it's brilliant:

“Students and the enormous revenue they bring in to our institution are a more valued commodity to us than faculty,” Dean James Hewitt said. “Although Rothberg is a distinguished, tenured professor with countless academic credentials and knowledge of 21 modern and ancient languages, there is absolutely no excuse for his boring Chad with his lectures. Chad must be entertained at all costs.”

Moral Turpitude

2013-05-07T13:39:00.000+05:30

Could this phrase include acts that are meant to hurt a colleague's professional standing? Could someone be fired for this offence? The University of New Hampshire said yes, and yes.

Marco Dorfsman, a Spanish professor at UNH, tampered with student evaluations of an unnamed colleague. He was reported to have come clean in an e-mail to his colleagues about 10 days ago, and the university fired him last week. From the university's statement:

Dorfsman admitted to intentionally lowering the student evaluations of another faculty member. [...]

The [Professional Standards Committee] members unanimously agreed that Professor Dorfsman’s conduct constituted moral turpitude and ‘evinces a gross disregard for the rights of others, is a clear and intentional breach of duties owed to others and to the university by virtue of employment at UNH and membership in the procession, in which such an act is considered contrary to the accepted and expected rules of moral behavior, justice or honesty, and evokes condemnation. [...]

According the CHE note, 'moral turpitude' became a fireable offence at UNH just last year.

Links

2013-05-04T18:03:00.000+05:30

Kazim Ali in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine (Spring 2012): Poetry is Dangerous:

Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, the state police came. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his fear.

See also: On Being Brown in America by Amitava Kumar, written after the recent bomb blasts in Boston.
Faculty members of San Jose State University's philosophy department have penned an an open letter to Prof. Michael Sandel explaining why they "[refused] to be involved with [his] course
on "Justice"

here

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution: Online Education Trumps the Cost Disease.
Two NPR stories on women in computer science: Blazing The Trail For Female Programmers and How One College Is Closing The Computer Science Gender Gap.

The New 4-Year Bachelors Program at the Delhi University

2013-05-04T17:12:00.000+05:30

Our Institute, the Indian Institute of Science, started a 4-year BS degree program in 2011, the same year in which IIT-K dumped the 5-year integrated MSc program in favour of the 4-year BS (though the MSc program survives in the form of a BS-MSc combo for those who opt to spend an extra year). Bangalore University's also started its 4-year bachelors program around that time.

The Delhi University is starting, this July, its own version of a 4-year bachelors program, not just in the sciences, but in all fields. Unlike the earlier episodes in which discussions on the new program were confined to the institutions themselves, the DU initiative is being debated openly in many public forums; see, for example:

How to Destroy a University by Jayati Ghosh, and a response entitled Why Delhi University’s four-year degree is a good idea by Chandrachur Singh.
Why Delhi University’s Four Year Undergraduate Programme Should Not be Implemented with Irresponsible Haste by Apoorvanand, who also penned an earlier op-ed entitled Du's 4-year degree course: Reforms at Reckless Speed.
On Rahul Siddharthan's blog: How not to modernise a university: Dinesh Singh’s ham-handed efforts at reform, a note from the faculty of St. Stephen's College's physics department (and Rahul's comments appear at the end).

[Aside: Though the authors don't mention the 4-year degree course, I read this December op-ed entitled Wanted: intellectual leaders, not CEOsop-ed by Apoorvanand and Satish Deshpande as at least partly informed by the way this issue was being handled by the DU vice chancellor.]

On the practical side, I am not persuaded by the "things are getting implemented in haste" argument. I have seen quite a few episodes in recent years when new things -- right from creation of new institutions such as IISERs, IITs, IIMs, and new Central Universities, to OBC reservation in centrally funded institutions, to "doing something about entrance exams" ;-) -- got implemented after some debate, but with seriously inadequate preparation. Let's face it: if the leadership wants a certain change, and if it feels the time is ripe, it will get it done immediately.

It is important that answers be found for practical questions such as "Does the UGC recognize the BS degree?", "Will the BS graduates need a one-year or two-year masters to be treated as equivalent to the MSc graduates?", "What about those who leave with a diploma-type certificate after two years?". But we should be careful not to overstate their importance. The key, I think, is that these questions raised by the critics can be answered over the next 2 to 4 years, during which UGC can be made to take a call on these and other similar questions [If the IITs, IISc and DU cannot manage this, I don't know what will].

Similarly, incremental solutions, including mid-course corrections to address the curriculum-related issues highlighted by the St. Stephen's faculty, over the next several years will see DU through to its new equilibrium.

For outsiders like us, the more relevant part of the debate is about whether this transition from a 3-year BSc to a 4-year BS program is good and desirable. I answered yes to this question a long time ago; one of the reasons being it brings science and arts students on par with engineering students who get their degree in 4-years (in our current wretched system, only MSc degree holders are treated as equivalent to BE/BTech graduates). I also like the way DU's program offers exit options at the end of the 2nd year (with a diploma-like certificate) or the 3rd year (with a BSc degree).

All this is not to deny the distinct impression that the DU administration has made serious missteps. The final product appears not to have much to do with the big ideas which were used to sell the program to the constituent colleges and their teachers; for example, the inflexible curriculum is a cruel blow, especially since the entire 4-year program was sold using flexibility as a central feature.

While these missteps need not be deal-breakers, any corrective measures (in the medium and long term) to improve the program will require the DU administration to listen to the critics with an open mind; what the current debate shows is that it lacks this crucial skill.

Reinhart and Rogoff Get the Colbert Treatment

2013-04-26T00:15:00.000+05:30

Watch:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

The follow-up segment has Stephen Colbert interviewing Thomas Herndon, the UMass econ grad student whose term paper on replicating R&R eventually led to the once-influential paper's unraveling.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

Data Stories on India's Missing Women

2013-04-22T08:24:00.003+05:30

The Data Stories blog has a great interactive infographic on a grim, but all too real, phenomenon that goes by the name "missing women". The post is triggered by a recent paper in EPW by Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray who went beyond sex-selective abortion and infanticide to examine data on women's "excess mortality" across all age groups in India [The authors have presented summary at the Ideas for India site, which I linked to sometime ago].

Here's a short description of the infographic:

The paper calculated the numbers for 2003. I’ve redone the numbers to calculate excess female deaths per thousand across age-groups for India, China, and a number of Indian states [specifically, Haryana, UP, Kerala, Bengal, Bihar, and "Others"] for 2010. Each bar shows excess mortality per 1000 women in that age-group only.

Wringing water out of a washcloth

2013-04-20T12:29:00.001+05:30

In space!

Hat tip: Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics.

A grad student's term paper

2013-04-20T12:19:00.000+05:30

A great story from Reuters: How a student took on eminent economists on debt issue - and won. The student is Thomas Herndon, in the UMass grad program in economics. This thing is buried deep inside the report, but worth highlighting:

Herndon's paper began life as a replication exercise for a term paper in a graduate econometrics class.

A couple of fun links:

Kieran Healy: New Tools for Reproducible Research [a nifty infographic]
In the comments section, we find a link to EuSpRIG, The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group -- with its own annual conference. Its website has a page devoted to spreadsheet horror stories. The RR paper hasn't made it to this page so far, though.

Links: Bad Science Edition

2013-04-18T18:08:00.001+05:30

Gary Stix: New Study: Neuroscience Research Gets an F for Reliability.
In 2010, Reinhart and Rogoff published a paper that, by many accounts, turned out to be influential in framing economic policy options back then. After looking at the dataset, economists at the University of Massachusetts have poked multiple holes in R&R's methodology, including an error in their Excel spreadsheet program. Start with Andrew Gelman's advice to R&R: "it’s best to admit your errors and go on from there," and look at the links for the backstory.

This episode has triggered a flurry of posts on similar disasters in economics literature: Catherine Rampell has a post on A History of Oopsies in Economic Studies. See also: Dean Baker on In History of Economic Errors, Martin Feldstein Deserves Mention, Paul Krugman on another disastrous Excel error.

See also: Felix Salmon on the R&R fiasco.

E.O. Wilson: "Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math"

2013-04-16T20:22:00.001+05:30

In his WSJ opinion piece, Wilson gives a blunt answer by way of a "professional secret": "Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate." He does make the rather unexceptionable point that "if your level of mathematical competence is low, plan to raise it," but also adds that "you can do outstanding scientific work with what you have." Of course, if your level of math is not all that high, he also suggests you avoid "most of physics and chemistry, as well as a few specialties in molecular biology."

His article has led to tons of responses: Paul Krugman agrees, but with a caveat: "at least in the areas I work in, you do need some mathematical intuition, even if you don’t necessarily need to know a lot of formal theorems."

A couple of other responses. In Science's Cult of Calculation, Jag Bhalla talks about the rivalry in science between "math-monks" vs. "pluralist reasoners". Terry McGlynn places Wilson's piece within the context of Tribalism in the sciences: empiricists vs. theoreticians.

The tribe of theoretical ecologists appears to have got very upset with Wilson's piece for reasons that lie within the internal politics of that field -- this post explains some of it, and has tons of links.

Links

2013-04-13T21:12:00.000+05:30

Blog Discovery of the Year: Data Stories (Tag line: "... On India one chart at a time"). It's a personal blog maintained by "a Delhi based journalist" -- that's all we know about the blogger behind this wonderful site. Here's the first post. Here's a post with a catchy title -- We are the 5 %:
I leave you to draw your own conclusions about what it means to be ‘privileged’ in this country. I also leave you with this question: If the census takers had asked each one of these households, what ‘class’ of society they thought they belonged to, or where they fit in within the income distribution, what do you think their response would have been ( and by ‘their’, I also mean ‘our’)?
NYTimes obituary: Robert G. Edwards Dies at 87; Changed Rules of Conception With First ‘Test Tube Baby’.
Amy Freitag at Southern Fried Science: I’m a scientist. A social scientist. Please opine on the validity of my discipline.
Jenny Rohn at Occam's Corner: Show me the money: is grant writing taking over science?

Scamferences and Scam Journals ...

2013-04-09T19:19:00.001+05:30

... have become so numerous that even the king of the MSM jungle -- I mean, NYTimes -- has an article about it [I thank Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi for the e-mail alert]. The bottomline is that since their numbers have become large, and they have become better at deceiving their audience, even the smart and the savvy have fallen prey to them. In other words, the list of victims goes beyond the clueless and/or the greedy.

The article does a good job of identifying the problem and its variants (both conferences and journals) with plenty of illustrative examples. Where it goes horribly wrong is when it indulges in a bit of drive-by shooting by conflating the problem (scam journals and conferences) with open access models of scientific publishing.

I mean, while it is true that there has been a huge increase in the number of journals and conferences that take money from authors and publish their papers with little or no peer review scrutiny, it is also something that would have happened irrespective of whether these papers are placed in the public domain. The drivers for this trend are easy to enumerate, and include:

the huge expansion in scientific research (especially in the non-OECD countries) in recent years.
the ever-increasing pressure on researchers to publish, publish, publish.
the global university ranking business that puts a premium on research publications (and now, citations and other scientometric indicators), which in turn adds to (2).

Since the number of papers has grown (but the number of journals has not), someone is just going to come along and provide an outlet for all these new papers. And since a growing fraction of these extra papers is junk, the said someone is just going to take money to publish them. Insert your favorite cliche here -- Win-Win, the Invisible Hand, Magic of the Market, Nature abhors unpublished papers, whatever.

And none of this has anything to do with open access.

It is a fact that almost all of these "journals" are online-only operations. But open access has nothing to do with this business model, except perhaps as an unintended consequence.

* * *

I became aware of this problem quite sometime ago -- in November of 2009 -- when someone perpetrated a scam by "organizing" a scamference in an auditorium in the IISc campus! See this, this, and this (and see this as well!).

Since then I have also been alerted about all kinds of online journals. At least one of them used Google Sites (a free website builder) for its operations; that is, it didn't even bother to have, and pay for, its own domain name!

Stuff Indian Government Says - 2

2013-04-09T18:03:00.000+05:30

Amitabh Sinha reports in The Indian Express that Dr. T. Ramasami has expressed his desire to bring to an end his 7-year tenure as Secretary, Department of Science and Technology. A committee has recommended a set of people to succeed him, but two of The Chosen "have expressed their unwillingness for the job."

At this point, it's all mildly interesting, but the blog-worthy awesomeness lies in the Groucho-Marx^*-in-reverse quality of what comes next:

One member of the committee, however, said that the reluctance of scientists to join the ministry was understandable. "We would be slightly worried if candidates are too eager to take the post. Most of the scientists like to keep doing their scientific work," he said. [Bold emphasis added]

* * *

^*Just in case the Groucho Marx's quip didn't spring to mind immediately, here it is: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."

Quote of the Day: Trying to have a life

2013-04-09T07:42:00.001+05:30

... I don’t leave comments on other blogs, I don’t have another Twitter account, Facebook account, Google Plus account, or any of that. Hey, I am trying to have a life.
-- Paul Krugman on his blog.

Links: Indian Higher Ed Edition

2013-04-08T19:26:00.002+05:30

Over at Kafila: The Delhi University Four Year Structure -- Myths and Reality.
The Telegraph reports from Assam: Pay-cut plan for off-campus doctorates. What in hell is an 'off-campus doctorate'?
Saira Kurup in ToI: Jawaharlal Nehru University professor suspended for sexually harassing female student.
The Deccan Herald published a news story about the founder of ISI, Pakistan's spy agency; but it used a picture pf Prof. Mahalanobils, the founder of ISI, the Indian Statistical Institute [Hat tip to Kaneenika Sinha, who has a screen-grab of the online version].

The story has been available online since 4 April, and at least four people have pointed out the horrible error; and the DH has still not corrected the article. WTF, DH?

Deaf Sentence

2013-04-08T07:25:00.000+05:30

Blindness is tragic, deafness is comic. That is the premise Deaf Sentence, the latest by the British author David Lodge, begins with. The first few chapters explores this perspective through Desmond, a likable character, spending his early retirement as professor of linguistics from the English department, but still in academic setting and company continuing with his research (or purporting so). He has accepted his deaf state and its mostly comic and tragicomic flailing in stride, without indulging in self-pity (David Lodge acknowledges his growing deafness for the authenticity of the portrayal of the protagonist).

Through him we learn of the (non) workings of hearing aids, what is Lombard reflex and how deafness saves one from that, why TV is a good companion (close captioned) for the deaf than the movie halls, of 'quiet coaches' in England trains, of Beethoven's despair and how his reclusive character is a put-on to cover-up his growing deafness (as he explains in his letters), how Francis Goya's deafness could have enhanced his concentration to do better paintings in his later years and several such interesting deaf stuff.

These sections are peppered with word play and dead-pan humour

One of the strongest curses in English language is 'Damn your eyes!' (much stronger than 'Fuck you!' and definitely more satisfying) [...] "Damn your ears!" doesn't cut it. Or imagine if the poet had written, 'Drink to me only with thine ear...; It's actually no more illogical than saying drink with thine eyes [...] Nor would 'Smoke gets in your ears' be a very catchy refrain for a song [...] 'There's more in this than meets the ear' is something Inspector Clouseau might say, not Poirot.

The novel moves on from that relatively light premise to a 'deafness is tragic' premise for few chapters and ends with chapters that conclude 'deafness is not tragic, only death is'. The plight of a geriatric parent, living separately in London, and refusing to move 'up North' near to his son (Desmond) and daughter-in-law, and the doting deaf son's inadequacy in convincing either his dad or his wife for a 'move in' solution is only familiar to most of us in such a state in our lives. A less familiar track, perhaps to readers who are not 'academics', is the episodes between Desmond and Alex Loom, an attractive but unhinged PhD student who is only too aware of her charms and doubly eager to use them for her getting her research and laundry done by someone else capable. The despair felt by a bright professor (not Desmond) beguiled by Alex, the dread he and Desmond feel when a suicide was threatened by her, the associated academic quibbles, jealousies and integrity, are all portions of the novel I could lap with sympathetic unease. In the end Desmond gets lucky -- not with Alex, but with his integrity.

Apart from Desmond, his ageing dad is given enough coverage and care in character depth (again, David Lodge acknowledges his personal life for this). Next comes his asserting and business savvy wife Winfred. The character of Alex Loom is also given some flesh and detail. The rest don't have a major role of impact in the novel. This perhaps is deliberate as the novel unfolds from the perspective of Desmond and the rest of the characters are discussed and detailed only to the extent he knows of them. The novel has several anecdotes that are original and amusing if not LOL-type funny, while engaging in wry observations about familiar human relationships.

Given the scope the deafness tempts, thankfully, the novel is not bitter, kept mostly upbeat, if not cheerful. The writing as one expects from David Lodge, is elegant and taut. The narration moves between first and third person, an exercise Desmond is fond of giving to his students. That and long paragraphs often spanning two pages, with long sentences that use the language and written form to its potential (with parenthetic contrary observations appearing in the middle of the already long sentences, a style that I have observed to annoy several non-British English language readers, particularly non-native-English speakers), a writing style that demands undivided attention from the reader in return for the assured enjoyment.

Novartis judgment: Myth and Reality

2013-04-04T22:56:00.002+05:30

In a must read write-up, Debunking Big Pharma's canard against Novartis judgment: Myth and Reality, Prof. Brook K. Baker, Professor of Law at the Harvard University and Senior Policy Analyst Health GAP, explains the essentials of the recent Indian supreme court verdict -- a landmark one that stood India up. Here is a sample to get you going.

Myth 8: The Novartis decision undermines the global search for new medicines.

Fact: Of all the canards, this is probably the most ludicrous. Big Pharma makes the vast majority of its profits on sales to rich patients in rich countries. Nearly 75% of global drugs sales by dollar volume in 2011 was in Europe, North America, and Japan. Indian sales comprised less that 2% of global sales. Drug giants do not make R&D decisions or shut down promising drug candidates because they didn't squeeze a little extra profit out of small market.

To the contrary, drug companies waste a lot of research dollars now trying to evergreen existing medicines instead of focusing on truly innovative medicines. They spend nearly 2 1/2 times on marketing and administration as they spend on R&D. Despite the "risks" of R&D they still retain more in profits than they actually spend each year on R&D.

Read more...

[Thanks Prof. Guhan Jayaraman for email share]

Links

2013-04-03T18:08:00.000+05:30

Tarun Jain (Indian School of Business) at Ideas for India: Should Bribe Givers Be Let Off?

In 2011, Economist Kaushik Basu argued that for a class of bribes, the law should not punish the bribe-giver. This column presents results of experiments conducted to test this idea and provides insights for anti-corruption efforts.
Dirk Matten in Globe and Mail: India’s generics drug ruling will help, not hinder, innovation. He reiterates what I consider to be central to the Supreme Court verdict; Indian news outlets that I have seen seem to miss this point, though:

The crucial point here is whether the version of Glivec for which Novartis was claiming patent protection is actually a ‘ new ‘ drug. What the Indian supreme court in fact ruled was not that Novartis should not enjoy patent protection on their new drugs; it mainly concluded that the new edition of Glivec, for which the company applied for protection, was in fact not sufficiently ‘new’ – not different enough from the old version of Glivec, for which the patent had expired.

This points to a well know strategy of the pharmaceutical industry. Rather than fighting generic companies, ‘originator’ companies such as Novartis just marginally change the chemical formula of an existing drug whose patent is about to expire and then pretend to having come up with an entirely new one, for which of course they should enjoy full patent protection.
Brad Plumer at the Wonk Blog: Expensive batteries are holding back electric cars. Can that change? A part of the argument hinges on the lack of a Morre's Law in energy storage technology!