Adventures in Ethics and Science

Weekend diversion: Happy Thinksgiving.

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:22:11 -0500

The younger Free-Ride offspring's soccer team has been playing in a regional tournament this weekend, and we're girding our loins and guarding our shins to go out and play a second day of tournament games. I'm happy that they're playing so well, but I have to say, watching games in late November is a different experience than spectating in mid-September. (Bone-chilling cold + bad sunburn = some kind of tangible sign of a parent's devotion. If only one's child took it seriously.)

Anyway, in the meantime, I wanted to test your knowledge in the identification of some turkeys.

Specifically, the turkeys currently adorning the door to my department's main office.

Here they are one by one:

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Death is not an option: optimizing academic performance edition.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:37:49 -0500

Let's say you're a college student.

You have a class meeting today at which a short essay (about 400 words) is due. The essay counts for about 5% of your grade for the course.

At that class meeting, your instructor will be lecturing on the reading assignment upon which that short essay is focused. The material from the reading assignment will likely appear on the final exam, which is only a few weeks away.

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Friday Sprog Blogging: photosynthesis.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:27:21 -0500

Dr. Free-Ride: Any ideas for tomorrow's sprog blog?

Younger offspring: I wanted to do how photosynthesis works.

Dr. Free-Ride: Did you do any research on that since last week?

Younger offspring: I don't do research.

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Dismal, yes, but is it science?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:43:32 -0500

As I was driving home from work today, I was listening to Marketplace on public radio. In the middle of a story, reported by Nancy Marshall Genzer, about opponents of health care reform, there was an interesting comment that bears on the nature of economics as a scientific discipline. From the transcript of the story:

The Chamber of Commerce is taking a bulldozer to the [health care reform] bill. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the Chamber is hiring an economist to study the legislation. The goal: more ammunition to sink the bill.

Ewe Reinhardt teaches economics at Princeton. He says, if the Chamber does its study, it will probably get the result it wants.

EWE REINHARDT: You can always get an economist with a PhD from a reputable university to give a scientific report that makes your case. So, yes, there will be such a study.

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Friday Sprog Blogging: placebo effect.

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:35:07 -0500

Dr. Free-Ride: Do you know what a placebo is?

Elder offspring: A placebo is something that you think works but doesn't really work.

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Grades for sale?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:53:32 -0500

Steinn apparently knows how to get me riled about wrong-headed middle school fundraising initiatives, since he nearly derailed my efforts to push through my stack of grading with his recent post about one such initiative. He quotes from a Raleigh News & Observer story:

Rosewood Middle School in Goldsboro... will sell 20 test points to students in exchange for a $20-dollar donation.
Students can add 10 extra points to each of two tests of their choosing. The extra points could take a student from a "B" to an "A" on a test or from a failing grade to a passing grade.

Rosewood's principal Susie Shepherd rejected the idea that extra points on two tests could make a difference in a final grade.

Shepherd said she approved the idea when a parent advisory council presented it. "Last year they did chocolates and it didn't generate anything," Shepherd said.

However, this cash-for-points fundraiser didn't last long:

Wayne County school administrators stopped the fundraiser, issuing a statement this morning.
"Yesterday afternoon, the district administration met with [Rosewood Middle School principal] Mrs. Shepherd and directed the the following actions be taken: (1) the fundraiser will be immediately stopped; (2) no extra grade credit will be issued that may have resulted from donations; and (3) beginning Novermber 12, all donations will be returned."

Steinn despairs at this whole situation. I'm not liking it so much either.

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One of the reasons I prefer a whiteboard to a chalkboard.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:31:03 -0500

Chalk dust thigh:

Indeed, this was the state of my pants after I walked partway across campus from my classroom to my office, so the level of chalk dust had decreased from its maximum level when I snapped this picture.

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How to eliminate 'any possible conflicts of interest'.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:47:09 -0500

There is a story posted at ProPublica (and co-published with the Chicago Tribune) that examines a particular psychiatrist who was paid by a pharmaceutical company to travel around the U.S. to promote one of that company's antipsychotic drugs. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist was writing thousands of prescriptions for that same antipsychotic drug for his patients on Medicaid.

You might think that there would be at least the appearance of a conflict of interest here. However, the psychiatrist in question seems certain that there is not:

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Random YouTubery video-tainment.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:40:43 -0500

It's been a long day, between teaching and attending to committee work, giving a colloquium talk, dealing with an emergency drill, and coming home to make a later-than-planned dinner for the kids (since my better half had to help a sprog with an arithmetic emergency during the anticipated dinner hour).

Tomorrow is a day off from school ... but for the sprogs, too, and me with piles of papers that must be graded and returned by Thursday.

What I need right now is to see Stephen Colbert dance:

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An observation about the student papers I'm grading.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:35:28 -0500

Because, as it happens, I tend to notice patterns in student papers, then end up musing on them rather than, you know, buckling down and just working through the stack of papers that needs grading.

In my philosophy of science class, I have my students write short essays (approximately 400 words) about central ideas in some of the readings I've assigned. Basically, it's a mechanism to ensure that they grapple with an author's view (and its consequences) before they hear me lecture about it. (It's also a way to get students writing as many words as they are required to write in an upper division general education course; sometimes assignments need to serve two masters.)

Anyhow, because these papers are focused on the task of explaining in plain English what some philosopher seems to be saying in the reading assignment, there are plenty of sentences in these essays that contain phrases like "AuthorLastName {claims, thinks, argues that, writes} ..."

And, in at least 5-10% of the papers turned in to me, the author's last name is spelled incorrectly.

Among other things, I've noticed:

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Snapshots from our weekend.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:24:25 -0500

Remember how I mentioned that we had some soccer tournaments this weekend?

Well, it looks like we're going to need a bigger shelf.

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Continuing internet education.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:11:15 -0500

Yo dawg! This is a soccer tournament weekend for the Free-Rides. (First game: 8:00 AM. Time of departure from Casa Free-Ride: 6:30 AM. Zombification complete!)

At the moment, the younger offspring and I are chilling before the younger offspring's team's second game; the younger offspring is watching Fred videos, while I am filling in gaps in my knowledge with the help of Know Your Meme.

Know Your Meme is a good way to catch up on memes that are currently part of the collective memory of the internets, but which might have peaked before some of us Luddites were sufficiently plugged in to be paying attention. And the videos explaining them do a nice job placing the memes in a larger cultural context and providing some analysis of why they caught on.

Here's an episode that had me and my better half giggling last night:

Be sure to stay near the pause button -- some of the images go by quickly, and you're going to want to be able to read the captions. (The last one is our favorite.)

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Sex toys and human subjects at Duke University.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:40:03 -0500

At Terra Sigillata, Abel notes that the Director of Duke University's Catholic Center is butting in to researchers' attempts to recruit participants for their research. As it happens, that research involves human sexuality and attitudes toward sex toys.

Here's how Abel lays it out:

Father Joe Vetter, director of Duke University's Catholic Center, is protesting trial participant accrual for a study being conducted on campus directed by Dr Dan Ariely, the James B Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Fuqua School of Business (story and video). ...

Ariely and his postdoctoral fellow, Dr Janet Schwartz, received IRB approval to recruit female study participants from the Duke campus community to examine the influence of Tupperware-like sex toy parties on sexual attitudes. A recruitment advert had been posted on the university website, as is commonly done for any clinical or social science study, but was pulled yesterday following the objection of Rev Vetter.

If I understand his quotes correctly, Vetter believes that studying sex toys somehow condones behavior that threatens relationships:

"It's not fostering relationships, and it seems to me that one of the things that we want young people to do is to figure out how to have deep, intimate friendships and relationships," he said. "I would draw the line at a different place. I don't think that it's a good idea."

I'm not privy to the hypothesis being tested but I suspect that the team is investigating how social norms toward adult products are influenced by groupthink. Ariely has not commented publicly on this story other than to say, rightfully so, that he won't comment so as to not contaminate the results. However, I suspect that it may now be too late.

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Friday Sprog Blogging: checking in on last week's experiments.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:17:03 -0500

A bit of follow-up on the two experiments we described last week:

First off, the water cycle model.

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Friday Sprog Blogging: getting information you can trust.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:18:33 -0500

Dr. Free-Ride: I wanted to ask you guys a question. I think maybe I asked you this question (or something like it) some time ago, but you were a lot younger and, you know, you keep growing and changing and stuff. So the question is, when someone tells you something about science, how can you tell if that person knows what they're talking about?

Younger offspring: No way.

Dr. Free-Ride: What? What do you mean, "no way"?

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