Blogging by Candlelight

Wikipedia tells me that they are know as Construction and Management Simulation games. (Who knew? I didn’t!) I used to love playing them, and if the image of an 11-year-old kid engrossed in SimCity seems a little incongruous, perhaps that explains why my Dad installed Theme Park alongside it on our family PC.

The gist of Theme Park is that you purchase a plot of land and build a Theme Park on it, try to make a profit, and eventually sell your park in order to buy a bigger plot of land somewhere else in the world. Perhaps Theme Park’s appeal to a pre-teenager is easier to explain, as Wiki points out

Theme Park is permeated by an eccentric sense of humour.

For my younger sister, Theme Park was old hat and she liked The Sims. When I found a copy of The Official Strategy Guide lying around the house, I was disappointed when I browsed through it. It explained, in excruciating numerical detail, the mechanics behind succeeding or failing at the game, right down to how many points you would increase your Sim’s happiness by if you purchased a goldfish bowl to put in their kitchen, or exactly what effect a different character attribute (which you could control) would have on your Sim’s employment status. I don’t know how I had thought the games worked, up until then.

I was reminded of a giant, real-world game of Theme Park when I came across¹ an article in Science called Shared Social Responsibility – A Field Experiment in Pay-What-You-Want Pricing and Charitable Giving. In this study, a 2 x 2 design was applied to punters as they exited a theme park ride and were given the opportunity to purchase a photo of themselves on said ride.

Each of the four treatments was conducted over two full days.

In Theme Park, if nothing was happening, you could just speed time up until you got to the next board meeting, staff strike, thunderstorm or rollercoaster malfunction. I guess they couldn’t do that when they were collecting data on their 113,047 participants.

The authors investigated two pricing models – fixed price, and Pay-What-You-Want – with or without 50% of the price paid going to charity. Their conclusion, that profit for the firm was maximised when participants could pay what they wanted and half their payment went to charity, is held up as an example of what they call Shared Social Responsibility increasing profit for the firm.

Profit per rider (amount paid minus production costs). Photo sales were most profitable for the firm and made the largest contribution to charity when participants could pay what they wanted and half of their payment went to charity – the shared social responsibility treatment.[2]

They differentiate Shared Social Responsibility from Corporate Social Responsibility. The consumer may be dubious as to the motivations of any corporation’s CSR strategy, whereas

SSR…perhaps minimised suspicion of the firm’s intentions and maximised the identity expressiveness in the purchase.

I don’t recall either CSR or SSR being a feature of Theme Park. This contrasts with SimCity – the residents of the city are at real risk of catastrophe if you cut the cost of building power cables by placing your nuclear power station close to a residential area.

Is there scope for Bullfrog to have a renaissance? “Theme Website” perhaps – try out different business models, and see how your readers respond. Can you maximise your revenue, before all your readers go elsewhere? No, wait…

¹ Hat tip to one of my favourite bloggers, Andrew Gelman.

² Gneezy, A., Gneezy, U., Nelson, L., & Brown, A. (2010). Shared Social Responsibility: A Field Experiment in Pay-What-You-Want Pricing and Charitable Giving Science, 329 (5989), 325-327 DOI: 10.1126/science.1186744

When I took my GCSE science exams, sometimes the questions were set in the context of an experiment.

John and Sarah are investigating the effect of temperature on the rate of photosynthesis.

or

A physicist was investigating this or that phenomenon.

I used to notice how the individuals who featured in these questions were scrupulously gender-balanced.

An engineer has been consulted about the design of a bridge. She has the following concerns…

That I noticed this at all says something, I suppose, about stereotypes and about women and career choices. I never thought a huge amount of it. I certainly didn’t think that the gender of these characters, mentioned in passing, could affect exam performance.

I was reminded of this phenomenon, when I was listening to the All in The Mind podcast this week. (All In The Mind is a BBC Radio 4 “programme exploring the limits and potential of the human mind”). From about 16 min 30 s into the programme, Claudia Hammond interviews Jessica Good, a PhD student in the psychology departement at Rutgers University, about her paper The effects of gender stereotypic and counter-stereotypic textbook images on science performance.

Good explains that science textbooks that contain photographs are more likely to portray scientists as male than as female. Where women are featured, they are more likely to be portrayed in lower status roles – the male doctor and the female nurse; the male scientist and the female assistant. Sound familiar?

Good presented high school students with some pages of a chemistry text book to study. The students then took a comprehension test evaluating their learning and understanding. Unbeknown to the students, they had been given one of three versions of the text. In one version, the scientists in the photographs accompanying the text were male, in another the scientists were female, and in the third photographs of both men and women were used. The hypothesis, confirmed by the study, was that female students would perform better when the photographs accompanying the text they had read were of female scientists. Male students performed better when the photographs were of males. When the photographs were of male and female scientists, there was no difference between the performance of male and of female students in the comprehension test.

Good relates this result to a phenomenon termed Stereotype Threat – the idea that in a situation where a relevant negative stereotype about your group exists, you worry about confirming that negative stereotype, and this makes your performance worse. She points out that students did not always remember the gender of the scientists in the photographs, but that their performance was nonetheless affected.

Good does not claim that making science textbooks more gender balanced would eliminate the gender gap in performance. However, as her study found that the gender of the scientists in the images does have some effect on student performance, she suggests that using mixed-gender images might contributed positively to reducing this gap.

I wonder whether hope that science text books produced in recent years are more likely to portray scientists as women, compared to books produced longer ago.

This study made me wonder, whether the gender balance in exam questions is deliberately chosen with this phenomenon in mind? Would it be feasible to conduct this study on a country-wide scale? Print three versions of GCSE exam papers, with questions featuring either John and James, John and Sarah, or Sarah and Sue, and see whether this had an effect on student performance.

Maybe not, but anyway, I agree with Good’s conclusion.

Although eliminating gender bias in textbooks will most likely not eradicate the gender gap in science interest and achievement, it will begin to chip away at an ever-crumbling foundation.

¹ Good JJ, Woodzicka JA, & Wingfield LC (2010). The effects of gender stereotypic and counter-stereotypic textbook images on science performance. The Journal of social psychology, 150 (2), 132-47 PMID: 20397590

I had a great time at (my first) #ukscitweetup last night.

I promised some people some links to some of my favourite articles, things I have not blogged about before on the assumption that they were old hat.

The importance of stupidity in scientific research – I am not the only PhD student I know who had this blu-tacked to the wall above their desk.

Can a biologist fix a radio? Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis – I first came across this when I was looking for some references for the introduction to my undergraduate thesis, which applied a mathematical method to a biological problem. The article made me laugh out loud and has elicited the same response from other biologists working in bioinformatics or mathematical biology.

If you are a PhD student, a bioinformatician, neither, or both, I think you might like them.

Why can’t they just write clearly ?

Disgruntled Postdoc A threw the paper down on his desk in frustration. A non-native speaker of English, he had spent the morning studying an aspect of a new collaboration that he was less familiar with. Having, sensibly, started with a review paper, he was following this up with an original research article.

Why do they have to use such fancy words?

he lamented. One of the things we discussed, as I helped him untangle the unwieldy sentences, was how if one is close to understanding an important result, it is easy – on first glance, especially – to understand it as exactly the opposite. Confusion arises as results – or even individual paragraphs – appear to contradict each other.

Communicating a message clearly is an essential attribute of a decent blog post, book or article aimed at a non-specialist audience. Notably in the science blogosphere – but elsewhere as well – one must be sensitive to readers for whom the language you are writing in, is not their mother tongue.

There is substantial discussion online, both on Nature Network and elsewhere, on how to write a good paper. When I am writing on my blog, I am careful not to include (too many!) culture-specific references, having been the victim more than once of a reader or commenter getting the wrong end of the stick. In part, I picked this habit up from when I used to run one of our student societies, and communicated with our members using an e-mailing list with several hundred subscribers. More than once I included some flippant comment as a sign-off resulting in a handful of worried responses from students who did not ‘get’ the joke.

I am not suggesting that flippancy was the cause of my Postdoc colleague’s confusion, but, when writing original research up for publication, do scientists explicitly consider how their research might be read by a global audience? Is there a difference in style between a well-written paper and a paper written with a non-English-speaking audience in mind?

In order to upgrade from MPhil to PhD student status, research postgraduates at Imperial College are required to undertake a certain amount of Transferable Skills Training. One option for obtaining the majority of the required credits on one go, and the reason I was unable to attend CISB10, is the residential Research Skills Development course (“the RSD”), which is run by the Graduate Schools and takes place off-campus in the middle of nowhere a pleasant, rural setting in Berkshire.

For the benefit of future participants, the specifics of the course program cannot be disclosed. However, I can safely summarise some of the skills addressed, taken from the Graduate Schools’ website.

• PhD Planning and Management
• Creativity
• Communication Skills
• Group dynamics

• Research collaboration…

You can probably imagine the types of activities, if not the details. The course was fun! It is attended by postgraduate students from across the college. As well as working with a few familiar faces, I made a number of new friends.

At the beginning of the course, the course director read an extract from a document published by the League of Europoean Research Universities (LERU) in March this year entitled Doctoral Degrees beyond 2010: Training talented researchers for society, which

sets out the LERU’s vision for doctoral education beyond 2010

The extract she read was

The modern doctorate is at its core determined by an interplay between professional research experience and personal development, the most important aspect of which is an individual trained to have a unique set of high level skills.

The document goes on to emphasise the value of the transferable skills acquired during the PhD. Some recommendations are made as to how universities, governments, employers and the students themselves should derive the maximum benefit from this “most important” outcome.

When we were issued with instructions during the RSD, we were encouraged to focus on the process, not the task. Parallels were drawn with the PhD process. The LERU document highlights

While historically [the doctorate] was seen as a qualification for an academic career, in many countries and among many employers the doctorate is now seen as a high level qualification that trains people to think deeply and rigorously about a subject and to translate this knowledge into novel opportunities for society.

By focusing on (or at least keeping in mind!) the process as we worked, we could take more from the RSD than if we had considered first and foremost the outcome of the tasks alone. In the context of my own PhD at the moment, this resonates. I feel that the process is progressing well – I have learnt a lot of the background material, developed some useful practical skills, and learnt – through reading, journal clubs, talks and conferences – where the field is at and where it is going. That said, the “task” is somewhat less encouraging. I am frustrated by the lack of results even though I am close to getting there with the first part of my project, and daunted by the seemingly overwhelming nature of the work left to do.

For those NNers who have completed their PhDs, in hindsight do you view your doctorate as a “task” or a “process” (or perhaps a combination of the two?) How do you think others – such as your employer – view it? Has your perspective changed over time?

This week, an unofficial, but to me not insignificant, milestone in my PhD studies took place. A poster abstract I submitted to the European Mathematical Genetics Meeting (EMGM) had been accepted, and the meeting took place in Oxford this week. The abstract’s acceptance last month had prompted a mad rush renewed determination to finalise my results for presentation.

Strictly speaking, this was not (quite) the first poster to present my work, but it was the first to present work that was mostly mine. The conference really was excellent (despite not featuring any poker) but I will confess to feeling super-nervous before the poster session. My supervisor was not able to stay for the poster session, which took place in the evening, but before departing, advised me to stay calm and not to become flustered by questions that people asked.

In the event, the session passed smoothly. I spotted a couple of familiar faces, to whom I had spoken at previous conferences when I was at the very early stage of the work I was presenting, and who listened as I explained my results.

Other poster-presenters were in possession of a (seemingly) well-rehearsed patter, talking those viewing their poster through their methods and results, and describing their next steps. I had no such handy speech at the ready, and whilst I was able to explain what I did, I floundered a little when it came to knowing how to start, particularly when I was talking to someone who was not familiar with the methods which I knew a lot less about just a few months ago form the basis of my work.

So, do you have any advice that might enable me to present at a future poster session with a little more conviction? Practise, practise, practise, perhaps.

There is a postscript below the fold

Continue reading →

At the end of my last post about the then-newly-launched Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, I indicated that I planned to attend an interview and question-and-answer session hosted by Imperial College Union Political Philosophy Society. Below I reproduce, with permission (and links!) the text of the report I wrote, which was published in Felix, the student newspaper of Imperial College.

Continue reading →

Have you been “media trained”?

Until recently, I was skeptical of the value of specific media training for scientists, imagining such training to be similar to other transferable skills training – how to manage your time/supervisor/self – occasionally useful, often a waste of the very time you are learning to manage.

Last month, I invested three days in a course entitled Research, Researchers and the Media: a hands-on approach to communicating your science. The course is run by the Postgraduate Transferable Skills Unit at the University of Edinburgh , but is led by a lecturer from Imperial College. Gareth Mitchell, who lead the course, is the presenter of the BBC World Service’s technology programme Digital Planet , the podcast of which I have been listening to for years.

Hands on was certainly accurate. Upon arrival, we were briefed – briefly – before having, variously, microphones, video cameras and press releases thrust into our hands. We were to sketch out news reports – one for radio, one for television – based on the press release (with a little help from your favourite journal beginning with N). Taking roles – radio producer, camerman, or a (somewhat unlikely) spokesperson for the British Space Agency – we were to gather all our audio and video footage before lunch. On the first day. With a bunch of people we had never met.

In the afternoon, ably assisted by Robert Sternberg we put our video footage together. Maybe it’s the bit of computer scientist in me, by I was utterly hypnotised by Final Cut Pro – that is a very powerful piece of software. Robert worked magic on our interviews, cutting and editing and recording voice over.

Do you think our piece would have made it onto the six o’clock news, or would we have been left on the cutting-room floor?

Gareth worked similar magic using Pro Tools to edit our audio material, splicing together questions and answers. You can hear the Saturn audio piece included in the mp3 below.

The next day Gareth asked us whether the first day’s work had given us insight into how manipulative the media could be. One witty participant responded that he hadn’t trusted the media in the first place! The ease with which soundbites can be manipulated, and the difference between what makes “good” or not so useful interview material, were things I learnt. It will be a while, though, before anyone calls me up to ask for my expert opinion and requests from the media for a comment on my work seem unlikely. When I wrote my proposal there was a section for Public Engagement. My supervisor offered me her stock response.

Development of statistical methods allows little opportunity for public engagement, but we will endeavour to make use of what opportunities do arise, for example with students of the mathematical and biological sciences at different levels.

By email in the weeks before the course, and in the evenings during the first two days, we had worked on a script for a magazine-style science radio show. The culmination of our three days’ work was a trip to BBC Glasgow, where we went into the studio to record the show “as live”.

*I acquired another cool name tag*

If you listen to the mp3 you will hear that I have transformed from Space Agency expert to Radio Presenter, and that I execute some excruciatingly cheesy links! Our two producers (one of whom brought along her experience at the Edinburgh University Science Magazine) managed us ably from behind glass, with the help of the studio manager. It was satisfying to jointly lead a show from start to finish, with a producer in one ear and an interviewee across the table. Great fun – we certainly met the last of the course objectives in more than one way.

To end the module with a renewed and savvy attitude to the science media. Watching television, reading the newspaper or listening to the radio should never be quite the same again.

When I am watching a lecture or talk, sometimes, something that the speaker says causes me to gasp inwardly. It is not what they are saying, but the strength with which they express their opinions. You can’t say that, I think, not without qualifying it, not without adding the subtitle:

IMHO

My GCSE English teacher used to chastise us if, in an essay, we made a habit of starting sentences with “I think…”. It’s bloody obvious that you think it, she used to say, you wrote it. Here at University, during a break in a viva, an internal examiner once nudged me to stop starting every sentence with “What I understand is…” or “The way I understand it is…”. To be more assertive.

In the former case, we were writing opinion pieces, which must have been mighty tedious for the examiner if certain phrases were over-used. In the latter case, I was, as one is in a viva, having the edges of my understanding investigated, and in the exam room those boundaries felt very fragile indeed.

Many people seem to have no qualms about expressing opinions at odds with current scientific thinking – I will let you pick your own examples of claim and counterclaim. But in an area where these is no consensus, I am repeatedly astonished at the courage of some people’s – some scientist’s – convictions.

I am able to hold my own when I’ve had a few glasses of wine I am discussing something I have studied – something I know. But when discussing something that is less generally accepted, I am careful to distinguish between knowledge and opinion, between my understanding and what is not yet known, not by anyone, and not yet.

Someday, not that long from now, I will, with hard work, a bit of good luck, and a following wind, have my own thesis to defend. I have a suspicion that not being convincing when I discuss my research, will not convince my examiners either.

Is the confidence to make assertions – this is the wrong way to do things, and this is the right way – in a realm in which there is not, or is not yet, a consensus, a function of experience, or of personality, or a combination? Is asserting my views a risk I should be taking already? Humility is an attribute of science and of scientists. I wait patiently for the day I have the nerve to publicly stick my neck out. You will see it here, first.

Probably.

This week there have been two developments surrounding the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) and its ex-chair, Professor David Nutt, who in October last year was asked to resign by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, after he…erm…gave advice on the misuse of drugs.

As I summarized the issues leading to his sacking, I wondered how a new chair would be appointed. Lee blogged the announcement of Professor Les Iversen as Nutt’s successor (at least as interim chair). Iversen, a retired professor of pharmacology from Oxford University, has served on the Council since 2004 and was previously the chair of its technical committee.

As Goldacre tweeted as soon as the announcement was made, Iversen and Nutt

basically agree on stuff

The press were quick to jump on the fact that in 2003 Iversen held the view that cannabis should be legalised; however Iversen clearly stated in an interview on BBC Radio 5 (halfway down the page) that he has since revised his views in light of new evidence or the relationship between more potent forms of the drug and psychiatric illness.

Attempting to move on from the debate surrounding the legalisation of cannabis, Iversen was keen to (re-)emphasise the role of the advisory council

The government should have respect for the experts in the advisory committee, and the advisers should have respect for the government’s prerogative to govern.

Whilst the ACMD attempt to take up where they left off in reviewing so called legal highs, ex-Chair Professor David Nutt is not resting on his laurels.

With the financial backing of a hedge fund manager, Toby Jackson, Nutt has established the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. Iversen welcomed the development of this new committee, and The Times suggests that the Committee is likely to be called upon to give evidence on drug harms to the ACMD – although Iversen did add

This is not the only group we will talk to on drugs.

One wonders how Johnson will respond to the collaboration between the ACMD and the ISCD. Certainly some members of the public still hold the view that Nutt is irresponsible – it is worth listening to him taking part in a phone-in (01:05:00 into the program, and only available until Friday 22 January) on BBC Radio 5 where he handles accusations with a weary patience.

Highlights from the press conference announcing the ISCD explain the remit of the new committee. In addition to considering drug harms, they plan to consider drug benefits (presumably in a medical context) and treatments. In common with the ACMD, Nutt plans to study the harms of so-called “legal highs” and also ketamine, the misuse of which Nutt is increasingly concerned about. The new committee will also develop

better and more appropriate, more flexible ways of determining drug harms, particularly in comparison to other harmful activities.

Perhaps this is an acknowledgment that a direct comparison between the harms associated with taking ecstacy and those associated with horse riding was not the most appropriate means of publicly disseminating concepts of relative risks and the perception thereof.

On Tuesday 26 January, Imperial College Union’s Political Philosophy Society will host Science & Society: Drugs, Politcs and Policy, an interview and Q&A session with Professor Nutt. At the session, lead by Dr Stephen Webster, Professor Nutt will discuss what he thinks are the roles and responsibilities of science to society, including public policy-making. All are welcome; for more information, contact the ICU PPS using the details on their website. I will attend and post a write-up when I return.

Any suggested questions for Prof Nutt?

Professor Nutt can be followed on Twitter.