{"id":173,"date":"2014-08-25T20:49:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T20:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labmath.org\/?p=173"},"modified":"2014-09-12T14:51:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T14:51:04","slug":"kill-my-book-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"Kill My Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashy new techniques get a lot of press, sometimes deservedly so:\u00a0 technical breakthroughs often lead to breakthroughs in understanding as well.\u00a0 But in the struggle for game-changing insights and the fame (funding) they bring, the tried, and more importantly\u00a0true<\/i>, gets lost in the shuffle.\u00a0 The person who has to teach the intro class is pitied, and it is considered mind numbing or remedial to cover the fundamentals.\u00a0 It is an unchallenged truth that science writing will be terrible.\u00a0 In the more expensive schools undergraduates are using the PCR machine but they don\u2019t know how to calibrate the pH meter.\u00a0\u00a0 Graduate students are learning to program mathematical modeling software but need an online program to convert units.\u00a0\u00a0 The fact that\u00a0Lab Math<\/a>\u00a0fills a genuine need is great for me personally, but a sad comment on something.\u00a0 High school science education?\u00a0 Parents confusing \u201cbest\u201d with \u201cnewest\u201d?\u00a0 Software that claims to perform critical analysis?<\/p>\n

I happen to think that advertising is the root of all evil[1]<\/a>.\u00a0 The word \u201csmart\u201d now applies to phones; need I say more?\u00a0 To sell a product requires convincing a buyer that\u00a0this<\/i>\u00a0product offers something\u00a0that<\/i>\u00a0product does not and you\u00a0need<\/i>\u00a0that thneed[2]<\/a>.\u00a0 Whether that something is useful or good is rarely discussed and certainly not by the salespeople.\u00a0 Plus we all like shiny new things.\u00a0\u00a0 New math anyone?<\/p>\n

Most of the fundamentals, like multiplying fractions, using a pipet, reading a graduated cylinder, and matching your predicate to your subject, are forgotten in our excitement over ANOVAs and digital qPCR machines and telling everyone what we did.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u00a0should<\/i>\u00a0be reasonable to assume that students got those fundamentals in high school, grade school, or utero.\u00a0 Unfortunately we make that assumption at the peril of our experiments.\u00a0 The wrong pH can really mess you up and it will be almost impossible to discover what went wrong or, worse, that something did go wrong.\u00a0 Even if your students took the classes and aced the tests, it is likely that the skills were forgotten, or deemed useless, before your student realized that Science was the best career on the planet.\u00a0 Plus the students, especially the A students, either don\u2019t know they don\u2019t know[3]<\/a>, or won\u2019t admit they don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Students are often embarrassed to ask how to use the tools, or they assume they don\u2019t need to ask.\u00a0 So everyone thinks they know how to pipet and how to write, and here we are, publishing p-levels while\u00a0 leaving out the sample size, the effect size, and the power, and reviewing manuscripts that take forever to read because the writer\u2019s meaning is so well hidden.\u00a0 The public doesn\u2019t have a chance and science writing is now a specialty that, while it is well written, often garbles some of the facts, or misses the important ones.\u00a0 And I know good scientists who don\u2019t know that an outlier is not just something that looks different, there is an actual calculation involved[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My suggestion is that everyone, regardless of whether they believe it to be true, announce: \u201cI do not write, or measure, or calculate as well as I could.\u201d \u00a0Spend time with your students actually reading the manuals of your tools before using them \u2013 even pipettes have directions.\u00a0 Have a journal club in which you read\u00a0The Science of Scientific Writing<\/i>\u00a0by Gopen & Swan[5]<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Strong Inference<\/i>\u00a0by Roger Platt[6]<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Work through\u00a0Biostatistics: the Bare Essentials<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0PDQ Statistics<\/i>\u00a0by Norman and Streiner[7]<\/a>. \u00a0That knowledge is the foundation you must have,\u00a0and maintain<\/i>, so that you can build a new paradigm with your creativity and your novel insights. \u00a0And the students will really appreciate being taught stuff without having to ask.\u00a0 \u00a0Do this for the whole field: work on your writing and your arithmetic skills.\u00a0 Help put Lab Math on the remaindered list.<\/p>\n


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[1]<\/a>\u00a0The irony of that sentence appearing on a blog that is, at least in part, advertising for my book, has not escaped my notice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a>\u00a0See: Geisel, Theodor Seuss (1971) The<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0Lorax<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/i>\u00a0 New York. Random House<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a>\u00a0See: Kruger J. and Dunning D. (1999) Unskilled\u00a0and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one\u2019s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments<\/i>. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 77(6):1121-34<\/span>.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]<\/a>\u00a0I will take this opportunity to say how delighted I am to see box plots again!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]<\/a>\u00a0Gopen G. and Swann, J. (1990) The Science of Scientific Writing. American Scientist. https:\/\/www.americanscientist.org\/issues\/pub\/the-science-of-scientific-writing<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6]<\/a>\u00a0Platt, J.R. (1964) Strong Inference. Science. 146:3642. http:\/\/pages.cs.wisc.edu\/~markhill\/science64_strong_inference.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[7]<\/a>\u00a0Norman, G.R. & Streiner, D.L. (2014) Biostatistics: The Bare Essentials 4th ed. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. B.C. Decker Inc<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u2013OR\u2013 Norman, G.R. & Streiner, D.L. (2003) PDQ Statistics, 3rd ed. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. B.C. Decker Inc.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Flashy new techniques get a lot of press, sometimes deservedly so:\u00a0 technical breakthroughs often lead to breakthroughs in understanding as well.\u00a0 But in the struggle for game-changing insights and the fame (funding) they bring, the tried, and more importantly\u00a0true, gets lost in the shuffle.\u00a0 The person who has to teach the intro class is pitied, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labmath.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}