Recommended reads #134

Standard

The illusion of objectivity in the classroom

The 2004 lecture that convinced David Attenborough to make a big deal about climate change

When you prep a course, how many times would you like to teach it?

A beautiful essay about settling in to a faculty position for the long haul, and why we do what we do.

Why we’re editing women scientists onto Wikipedia, and you should too

Here’s how PhD students can prepare for different careers, and how lab heads can help

Tips for scientists who want to be science writers

The Wall Street Journal does a story about how Americans lost the ability to identify plants

The next season of The Big Bang Theory will explore why Sheldon keeps his job after harassing his research assistants

How insulin helped create ant societies

What economic austerity looks like at different kinds of institutions

Improving LGBT visibility in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

“The political and historical insights of feminism have made me a better statistician and scientist.”

Wow, NYU med school is now free. Considering that so many doctors go in to massive debt while in med school, and then have to practice in a lucrative position just to pay off those loans well into their career, this is huge.

“Innovative ways to help first-gen students thrive.” Okay, it’s not innovative and there’s nothing new here but it’s solid and a quick read that might be worth sharing with others who are unfamiliar with the issues.

The above tweet blows my mind. While I knew that higher ed was an old boys’ club of course, but I didn’t know that in some fields, advertising for job searches didn’t catch on until the 1970s. Before that time, it was purely “let’s call my friend who has a student who’s ready for a job.” There might be some professors on your campus right now, on the verge of retirement, who got their jobs this way. Wow. I had no idea.

Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, a public figure for fundamentalist atheists, has long had a reputation for sexual harassment. Finally, his university (ASU) has decided that he sexually harassed someone.

What do we do with the science of monstrous men? (content warning: sexual assault, child abuse)

Rosalind Franklin and the danger of gender harassment

A medical school felt that it was admitting too many women on the basis of their academic performance. So how did they handle this? For the past decade, they’ve been automatically lowering the scores of women applicants before evaluating their records.

The precarious balance between subjectivity and objectivity in science

Goop’s fact checkers’s google search history

School choice is the enemy of justice

One university is going to be installing a listening device in every dorm room and campus apartment, and allowing a third party to process the audio for data-mining purposes.

If you want my blueberry muffin recipe, you must read this preamble first

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