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What I Read In February

Posted on 2 March 2025 by Henry Gee

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 06.00.10Max Telford: The Tree Of Life Many years ago when the world was young I tried to explain, in popular science form, how scientists organise the natural world, all the better to understand the pattern of creation. The result was Deep Time. In The Tree of Life, Max Telford does the same thing but a lot better, bringing to a popular audience the very cutting edge of how scientists understand the pattern evolution has created. He does this with humour and a great deal of flair, though he is coy about exactly why John Ruskin gasped in horror on seeing his new bride naked for the first time (those who know, know). DISCLAIMER: The author is known to me personally and sent bound proofs so I could write an endorsement. I also feature prominently in the acknowledgements as the ultimate cause of this book,  so if you don’t like it, you can blame me.

 

 

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 05.59.47Bridget Collins: The Silence Factory Last month I read a sparkling collection of weird tales called Winter Spirits, each tale written by an author of whom I had not previously heard. Thus encouraged I found Natasha Pulley and her superb novel The Mars House. Another author was Bridget Collins, and I pulled her novel The Silence Factory down from the cloud for a listen. If you don’t like spoilers spiders spiders, look away now. On a remote Greek Island in the early nineteenth century, spiders weave webs of dream and deception, worshipped by the island’s women. Some of the spiders are captured and brought back to England where a descendant of the original explorer weaves the silk into a marvellous material which, on one side, offers a perfect soundproofing material, but on the other radiates maddening echoes. He does this in a factory that’s so noisy that it drives the workers deaf, mad, or both. That’s the concept, and the story is done well enough, but the theme of the male despoliation of nature in opposition to the female respect for it, though well taken, was perhaps too heavy handed for my taste.

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 05.59.18Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell I had read this long ago but had forgotten most of it until encouraged to revisit it as an audiobook by Offspring#1. Now, this is a masterclass in how to write modern fantasy. The scene is set in the early years of the 19th Century. Napoleon is ravaging Europe, while in York, the Learned Society of York Magicians meets once a month. The gentlemanly mages are all theoretical magicians, for there has been no practical magic done for centuries, ever since the disappearance of the Raven King, the medieval and semi-mythical fairy ruler of Northern England. Until, that is, the York magicians meet the secretive and intensely jealous Gilbert Norrell, a gentleman magician from elsewhere in Yorkshire who can still do practical magic. He comes to London where he makes his name raising a titled lady from the dead. To do this he invokes — in secret — the help of a fairy. who, once summoned creates all kinds of spooky and tragic chaos. While in London, Norrell serves the war effort, conjuring illusions to deceive the French fleet, for example. Norrell has the field to himself until the arrive of Jonathan Strange, a Shropshire landowner unable to apply himself to any particular calling until he discovers that he is a powerful magician. Unlike Norrell, who prefers the comforts of home, Strange is not afraid to  get his hands dirty and serves as Magician-in-Ordinary to Wellington in the Peninsular War, and at Waterloo. Strange gets caught up in Norrell’s fairy deceptions, but after many seemingly digressive adventures the tale ends mostly happily. It’s a vast book, and succeeds through the deft use of pastiche, for it is written in the style of the early 19th century, and has lots of absorbing footnotes, some of which extend to the length of fairy tales themselves. Some people might find this distracting. I found it utterly absorbing.

Screenshot 2025-03-02 at 05.58.55Adriana Marais: Out Of This World And Into The Next A summary of where we are in the Universe, how we got here, and how and why we should leave our home planet, by a very eager physicist and would-be astronaut. I can’t really say any more now as I have been asked to review this for another organ. Watch this … er … ‘space’.

 

 

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Response to the Free Speech Union’s article on my letter to the Royal Society

Posted on 18 February 2025 by Stephen

The Free Speech Union (FSU) has published an article about my open letter to the Royal Society regarding the evident contraventions of its code of conduct by one of their Fellows, Elon Musk FRS. Unfortunately, Frederick Attenborough’s piece contains errors, omissions and speculative rhetoric which together contrive to misconstrue the meaning and intent of my letter.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to the FSU for their piece because it gives me an opportunity to address free speech issues head on. They are very important.

But first let’s deal with the errors and omissions. Attenborough writes that my letter “cites Musk’s criticisms of net zero-style policy” but in fact it does not mention this.

He also states that the letter “frames Musk’s actions as inconsistent with the Society’s statement of values.” This is true, but Attenborough omits to mention that this statement is contained within the Society’s Code of Conduct which states:

“Fellowship and Foreign Membership of the Society is a privilege predicated on adherence to particular standards of conduct. Fellows and Foreign Members, by joining the Society, agree to abide by this Code of Conduct.”

To be clear: fellowship of the Royal Society is a privilege which brings with it responsibilities.

The particular breaches of the Code of Conduct are outlined in the letter, which goes on to express my puzzlement and dismay that the Royal Society has decided to take no action. Attenborough could perhaps have attempted to show that the charges laid against Musk do not amount to breaches of the code, but he did not.

Instead, he characterises the letter as a call to expel Musk from the Royal Society on account of “his political associations and opinions.” But it doesn’t call for expulsion and the argument is not about associations or opinions. It is about breaches of the code.

Implicitly, of course, expulsion from the fellowship is one conceivable outcome of the Royal Society’s consideration of the case (and clearly that’s an outcome that some would favour). However, other responses are also possible, for example, a request for Musk to demonstrate his adherence to the code.

However, what we have is no action and no comment. Attenborough rightly lauds the Royal Society for its principles of intellectual independence and open debate, but there has been no open debate on this matter. He also rightly reminds us of the Society’s Latin motto Nullius in verba – “Take nobody’s word for it”. But in this instance, ironically, the Royal Society is asking us to do just that – take their word without any explanation of their decision.

Free speech is a cornerstone of an open society, but it is a qualified right in law and, effectively, within the code of conduct of the Royal Society. There are political views which amount to hate speech which are unlawful in the UK. Equally, there are standards of behaviour (e.g. statements, actions) which can fall foul of the Royal Society’s code. This is not about policing political views or affiliations among Fellows, however much the FSU might want to cast it in that light. Indeed, it is important for Royal Society to accommodate a wide range of political views, and to the best of my knowledge it already does. What this episode has revealed is the need for greater clarity from the Royal Society on how it will manage breaches of its code that have a political character (e.g. in Musk’s case, his call to prosecute another FRS, Anthony Fauci, or his involvement in a government that is recklessly endangering the conduct of science in the USA).

It’s important to do that well because there will always be instances where rules about speech or behaviour rub up against rights of free expression. Which brings me to Attenborough’s last omission.

For all his concern about the free speech implications of a letter asking the Royal Society to take action in respect of Elon Musk, Attenborough says nothing about Musk’s control of free speech on X or the censorship being imposed on federal agencies and scientists by the Trump administration of which Musk is a core member.

If the FSU really cares freedom of speech, shouldn’t they be calling out censorship wherever it occurs?

Posted in Science & Politics | Comments Off on Response to the Free Speech Union’s article on my letter to the Royal Society

The Origin and Extinction of Humanity FAQ

Posted on 15 February 2025 by Henry Gee

People often ask questions about the lifetime of our own species. Questions such as ‘how long have humans existed?’; ‘When will humans go extinct?’ and ‘Did humans ever nearly go extinct in the past?’ Another one is ‘how will humans go extinct?’ In my book The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire I answer these questions, and many more, such as ‘Will the human population ever stop growing, and why?’ and ‘Will humans colonise space?’ Here I give a quick round-up of some of these frequently asked questions.

HOW LONG HAVE HUMANS EXISTED?
The answer depends on what you mean by ‘human’. Let’s start by concentrating on our own species, Homo sapiens. This is the species to which all people on the planet belong. The earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens come from Morocco and are about 315,000 years old. However, Homo sapiens probably lived in Africa earlier than this, maybe as long as 500,000 years ago. We can expand the definition of ‘human’ to include all those extinct species that are more closely related to us than to our next-closest living relative, the chimpanzee. If we do that, humans have existed for around seven million years. The earliest species on the human lineage that we know about is Sahelanthropus tchadensis. This lived in Chad, in central Africa, about seven million years ago. It walked upright but probably looked and behaved much like a modern chimp. Other early human relatives that would seem more ape-like to us included Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus afarensis (‘Lucy’) and Paranthropus robustus. All these creatures lived in Africa. The earliest of our extinct relatives that looked similar to a modern human was Homo erectus. This evolved in Africa more than two million years ago. It was the first member of the human family to leave Africa and spread throughout Europe and Asia. It evolved into many different forms including Neanderthals; the Denisovan yetis of Tibet; the hobbit Homo floresiensis; Homo antecessor, Homo naledi, the ‘dragon-man’ Homo longi and many others – including us. Homo sapiens is the only member of the human family that still exists. All the others are extinct.

WHEN WILL HUMANS GO EXTINCT?
This is a hard question to answer definitively. Nobody can predict exactly when humans will go extinct. However, humans will go extinct at some time, because extinction is what happens to all species. However, there are signs that humans will go extinct soon, in geological terms. In The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire I predict that humans will go extinct within the next 10,000 years.

HOW WILL HUMANS GO EXTINCT?
There are lots of answers to the question of how humans will go extinct. Some are chance events such as a large asteroid hitting the earth; a worldwide nuclear war; invasion of aliens from outer space; or takeover by some human technological development such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Even with none of these things, humans will go extinct soon because all modern humans are genetically very similar, making us very susceptible to disease; a rapid decline in fertility; over-exploitation of the Earth’s resources; and climate change.

DID HUMANS NEARLY GO EXTINCT IN THE PAST?
Yes, possibly many times. For almost all of human existence, humans have been very rare. Only since the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago have humans existed in large populations. That is when people started to live in villages, towns and cities. Today, about half of all humans live in cities, and this proportion will increase. For 99% of the existence of Homo sapiens, humans were hunter-gatherers and lived in very small family groups. Humans have almost become extinct several times. The most risky time for humans was between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago, when there were never more than around 1,000 breeding humans at any one time. When the number of individuals is as low as this, or lower, extinction becomes a real possibility, whether from genetic disabilities caused by inbreeding, or localised chance events. All modern humans descend from this tiny group. A consequence of such genetic ‘bottlenecks’ is that modern humans are all genetically very similar. This is because they all descend from the very small pool of people that survived the period when the population was very small. Today, there is more variation in one troupe of chimpanzees in West Africa than in the whole human population. This is called the ‘Founder Effect’.

WILL THE HUMAN POPULATION EVER STOP GROWING?
Yes. The human population will stop growing in the 2060s. Ever since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, the human population has been growing exponentially. At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, around 1800, there were a billion people. Back in the 1960s, when over-population started to become a worry to writers such as Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb, there were only around 3.5 billion. Today there are more than 8 billion people. The population is still growing but will reach its peak in the third quarter of this century, around the 2060s. At that time there will be 10-11 billion people. After that the population will shrink very rapidly. By 2100 there could be 8 billion (the same as today) and by 2300, as few as 1 billion.

WHY WILL THE HUMAN POPULATION STOP GROWING?
The human population will stop growing for many reasons. The most obvious is a massive decline in human fertility. In the 1960s the rate of human population growth reached its peak, at around 2.3% a year. Today it is less than 1%. Human fertility in almost all countries is declining. This is measured by the Total Fertility Rate, or TFR. This is the number of children a woman must have in her lifetime. To keep the population stable, the TFR is 2.0 – two parents, two children. The population neither increases nor decreases. Actually, the TFR for stability is a little more than this, about 2.1, to compensate for various factors, such as the fact that slightly more boys are born than girls. Today, the TFR is nearly all countries is well below 2.1. Fewer people are being born than are dying. Populations are ageing. There may be many reasons for the decline in fertility. One is the ‘demographic transition’. It used to be that people had many children, expecting that most would die in infancy. Now, people have few children, expecting that they will survive. But people are having fewer children now, too few to sustain a population, except by immigration. Another factor is a massive decline in male reproductive health. Men, even if young and otherwise healthy, produce fewer sperm than they used to. Nobody knows why. It could be because of pollution, overcrowding or stress. All this could be related to the environment. Homo sapiens has now outgrown the ability of the Earth to sustain it. The global economy has not grown appreciably for 25 years. Resources are more expensive and harder to obtain; employment is scarcer and less rewarding; young people can no longer to afford to buy or rent a home in which they can raise children. All this is made worse by climate change, which itself leads to scarcity, disruption in the distribution of resources, and conflict.

WILL HUMANS COLONISE SPACE?
Maybe, but they will have to do it in the next 200 years if it is to succeed. In  The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire I argue that the only way that humans can prevent their own extinction in the next 10,000 years is to colonise space, whether on the surfaces of the Moon or Mars, or more likely self-sustaining space stations or habitats inside large asteroids. If each colony has a population large enough to minimise inbreeding (more than about 1,000), and has occasional interactions with other space colonies, this will allow the genetic pool of humans to become more varied. However, if the colonisation is to succeed, it must be done before 2300. By then, the human population on Earth will have shrunk so much that the pool of technologically educated human minds will be too small to engage in such large-scale projects. We have a long way to go. Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon – all healthy, educated men. Although around 400 people have been in space, only a few have gone above the Earth’s magnetosphere that protects people from damaging radiation. No woman has ever gone into deep space. Nobody has become pregnant or given birth in space. We know nothing about how people might raise children in space. Apart from knowing little about space medicine, the technologies we will need to make space colonisation a success, such as creating truly self-sustaining habitats, or creating food entirely artificially, are in their infancy. There are also legal and diplomatic problems that will need to be overcome. The Outer Space Treaty forbids any human from fencing off any region of space and creating a new, independent polity. Infractions of this might lead to lethal conflicts here on Earth. If we are to save the human species from extinction, we must start to think seriously about long-term human space colonisation.

Posted in climate change, did humans nearly go extinct in the past?, evolution, extinction, future projections of human populations, Homo sapiens, how long have humans existed?, how will humans go extinct?, Politicrox, population growth, population trends, Research, Science Is Vital, space exploration, Technicrox, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, total fertility rate, when will humans go extinct?, why will the human population stop growing?, will humans colonise space?, will the human population ever stop growing?, Writing & Reading | Comments Off on The Origin and Extinction of Humanity FAQ

An open letter to the President of the Royal Society – time to stand up for your values

Posted on 11 February 2025 by Stephen

Earlier today, I sent the letter below to Professor Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society.

The letter expresses my deep concerns at the ongoing failure of the Royal Society to recognise that Elon Musk FRS has acted in contravention of its own code of conduct.

Further, in view of the continuing assault of the Trump administration on the conduct of science in the USA, in which Musk has a leading role as head of the Dept of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Society’s inaction has tarnished its reputation. It calls into question its commitment to its values, not least diversity and inclusion, and its fitness to speak on behalf of the UK scientific community.

It is my sincere hope that the Royal Society will find the resolve to stand up publicly for what it claims to believe in.

Dear President Smith,

I write to express my dismay at the continued silence and apparent inaction from the Royal Society over the Fellowship awarded in 2018 to Elon Musk.

The Society was made aware of Fellows’ concerns over six months ago about how Musk’s behaviour was in contravention of your Code of Conduct. Clear instances of this, such as his promotion of unfounded conspiracy theories and his malicious accusations towards Anthony Fauci were highlighted in Professor Dorothy Bishop’s resignation statement.

To that we can now add his post on X (Twitter) about the Rt Hon Jess Philips MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, falsely accusing her of being a “rape genocide apologist” who should be jailed, an utterance that placed her in physical danger.

I am at a loss to understand how these actions are consistent with a code of conduct that requires Fellows to have “due regard for the statement of values developed from time to time by Society”, (values that ask Fellows to “act in accordance with the highest standards of public life”, to make a “positive impact”, to “strive for excellence.”).

The Royal Society, as our national science academy, holds a unique and leading position within the UK scientific community, a position that in the Society’s own words “rests upon the reputation of the Fellows and Foreign Members of which the Society is composed”. That reputation has been grievously undermined by the public statements of Mr Musk.

The situation is rendered more serious because Mr Musk now occupies a position within a Trump administration in the USA that has over the past several weeks engaged in an assault on scientific research in the US that has fallen foul of federal courts. It has sought to impose huge cuts in funding and a regime of censorship (particularly with regard to EDI and climate issues) that is a direct threat to freedom of expression and academic freedom.

According to your code of conduct, “Fellows and Foreign Members shall not act or fail to act in any way which would undermine the Society’s mission or bring the Society into disrepute.” Yet not one word of protest has been uttered by Mr Musk over actions that contradict the values the Society demands of its Fellows and that have caused widespread fear and concern within the scientific community in the States.

This is a moment in which leaders and leading institutions need to take a stand. So far, the Royal Society has hidden behind the mantra that “Any issues raised in respect of individual fellows are dealt with in strict confidence.” I understand the need for confidentiality in cases of complaint, but the lack of any other statement in this very public instance, or recognition of its wider implications, increasingly looks like a failure of moral courage. What message does it send about the Society’s commitment to upholding its code, its values and its declarations about the importance of diversity and inclusion? What message of support does it send to our friends and colleagues in the USA, especially women, people from ethnic minorities, and disabled and LGBT researchers who are most exposed to the Trump-led offensive that has recruited Elon Musk FRS as its most enthusiastic general?

I urge you, for the sake of decency and to offer hope in what are very troubling times, to demonstrate that the Royal Society has the courage to stand up for the scientific community and for the values that it claims to believe in.

Yours sincerely

Emeritus Professor Stephen Curry

P.S. Given the widespread public interest in this matter, I will be publishing this as an open letter on my blog.

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International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025

Posted on 11 February 2025 by Athene Donald

It is ten years since UNESCO declared today, February 11th, as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Less well-known, I suspect, than International Women’s Day, it has a more specific focus. Sadly, in its ten years of existence, progress against its goals has not been particularly marked, despite the importance of women and girls entering the world of science to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Indeed, one could hazard a guess that in some places (notably Afghanistan) things will have gone backwards, with girls denied education of any sort at secondary level, never mind in the sciences.

The UNESCO call for action focusses on three areas, calling for urgent multistakeholder collaborative actions to: dismantle gender stereotypes and biases in science; open educational pathways for girls in science; and create empowering workplace environments. The UK could look at its own culture and consider how well it is doing across these objectives. Better than Afghanistan obviously, but we’ve a long way to go to eradicate gender differences in terms of pathways and stereotypes. In the run-up to last year’s Day, Teach First carried out a survey of children’s attitudes to science and maths (for children between the ages of 11 and 16). They found that more than half of girls (54.3%) don’t feel confident learning maths, compared to two-fifths (41.2%) of boys, with the gap even wider for science, with more than four in ten girls (43%) not confident, compared with a quarter of boys (26%). What is it in our society and our teaching that leads to this substantial difference, and why are teachers unable to overcome the issues?

Note, this is a problem of confidence not ability. When it comes to GCSEs, girls outperform boys, but the lack of confidence continues to manifest itself in that fewer girls than boys progress to A Levels in the STEM subjects, with particular shortfalls in the ‘hard’ sciences such as Physics and Computing, as well as Further Maths. Of course, these numbers then translate into lower numbers entering university to study those subjects as well as Engineering. And yet, report after report highlights how diversity in a company’s workforce leads to better outcomes, be it in a company’s profits or innovation.

By celebrating both girls and women in science, February 11th specifically highlights the pipeline. If girls get deterred from any interest they may have in science early on, they are unlikely to enter the STEM professions later. Schools and teachers have a key role to play here, in identifying what it is in their school ethos that may be holding girls back. The IOP’s (now quite old) data showing how single sex schools are more likely to see girls progress to A Level than coeducational establishments, must tell us something about the school environment in general.  I’m not convinced that things have improved since that 2012 report.

A small-scale study from the USA highlighted that children (both boys and girls) as young as 6 or 7 already see boys as inherently ‘smarter’ than girls. This is something that our society should be capable of eradicating if it put its mind to it. The belief that you have to be especially clever in order to be able to do Physics (particularly if you are a girl) is, again, borne out by many studies. The ASPIRES2 cohort study, led by Louise Archer, surveyed many children between the ages of 14 and 19. It showed that girls who do physics are regarded as exceptional, possessing high levels of cultural, social and science capital. They are presumed not to be typically ‘girly’. Girls may not identify with this description, indeed they may not want to identify with it. Furthermore, Physics is represented – in textbooks and overall narrative – as a subject for men. A lack of explicit representation of women in physics can lead to the assumption that women are unable to work in physics, or are unsuited to it. Once again it is not necessarily ability that is in question here, so much as a feeling of belonging or wanting to belong to the exclusive sect that appears not to be for them. Similar attitudes can be seen in those whose cultural capital or socioeconomic background leads them to feel unwanted in the subject.

More needs to be done to analyse, not just what deters girls from entering Physics (and, by extension,  Engineering and probably Computing), quite a lot is known about this. Now we also need to know what interventions would make a difference and, crucially, at what age. How is that girls imbibe the notion so early that they are less smart than boys? What would make a difference? Is it in how teachers interact in the classroom? Or is it in the messages they receive through the various media (social and otherwise) and their homes? Could teachers, if innocent of conveying the message themselves, do a better job of actively counteracting society’s messages throughout school years? Would more stories of modern women (and not just Marie Curie and, slightly more recently, Katherine Johnson) have a visible impact on the enthusiasm girls evince for the STEM subjects?

I don’t know the answers to questions like these but I think collectively we need to find them. I do worry, however, that a headteacher who is frequently lauded (at least by the last government) as leading such an outstanding school as Michaela, and yet who is unaware – or at least unconcerned – that her school has a below-average percentage of girls studying Physics at A Level, is the tip of the iceberg in the teaching profession. If diversity is only considered in terms of behaviour in the classroom in their training, how are teachers – particularly non-science-specialist teachers – to recognize and deal with the problem? And do they have the bandwidth to do something about this when their lives are so full and stressed already?

Posted in ASPIRES2, education, Michaela, natural history, People, pipeline, schoolteachers, Women in science | Comments Off on International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025

The Need to Join the Dots

Posted on 2 February 2025 by Athene Donald

Last week, I attended an event organised by The Productivity Institute and, more locally, the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, as part of National Productivity Week. The meeting’s theme was Innovation and Infrastructure in the East. Note, despite the recent announcement by the Chancellor of the plans for the Oxford-Cambridge Corridor (which used, under the previous government, to be known as the Ox-Cam Arc and was first supported and then cancelled; it covers a swathe of country between Oxford and Cambridge, including the cities themselves) this meeting was about the east: Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. This part of the country is unusual in that it consists of a number of old market towns and many villages, not a large if sprawling urban conurbation of the likes of London, Birmingham or Manchester. Skills was mentioned a lot and with concern.

If you live in a fenland village, the chances are the buses are rare to non-existent, and travel to a college may therefore be a grave challenge.  Your social capital may not be great and the careers advice you’ve been able to access sparse and unhelpful. Your local college may or may not provide the courses you seek, or which would provide you with a good route to progression, for instance as a lab technician or plumber. Of course, if you come from a family with good social and cultural capital this may not matter, and you may simply be planning the linear route through A Levels and on to university somewhere far from home. Let us recall, around 50% of the 16 year-old population will not be going that way, though, many may not want to go far from their home and far too many will end up as NEETs (not in education, employment or training). Yet we need this 50% to be productive in our economy. The fancy labs of the Ox-Cam corridor will rely on technicians; the building of hundreds of thousands of houses in the region won’t happen without plumbers – and electricians, bricklayers, plasterers and so on. Growth will not happen, nor opportunity for all as the Government mission has it, if we ignore the needs of those for whom college and apprentices are the right route.

In this vein, the Commons Education Committee has just announced an enquiry into Further Education and Skills, which may cover some of this important ground. It should also be noted that the Industrial Strategy Green paper, published last autumn, put skills at the top of its list of potential barriers to investment (although saying surprisingly little explicitly about the issue in the bulk of the document). Skills has to sit at the heart of growth, alongside investment. It needs to be thought about in depth, and not just mentioned as something to be sorted without detailed planning.  How is this to happen?

The concern about training/education and how it joins up with what the country needs in its future workforce was also made quite plain last week in a different context. The CSA at DSIT (the Department of Science Innovation and Technology), Chris Thompson, was speaking to the Science and Technology Committee chaired by Chi Onwurah, along with other departmental CSAs. Asked about his concerns, he had this to say:

The concern I have is that, with limited resources, how do we look to the next generation of scientists and engineers and make sure we have sufficient capability that is, at least in some approximation, of where we want to be in 5 or 10 years. And if we leave it to pure chance or the choices of the students, bluntly that may not align with where we need to be. How we can manage a national dialogue I think is the appropriate way forward…We need to be more upfront about the skillset we need going forward.

In that, he encapsulates many of the problems we are facing: limited money and a pipeline of talent in STEM that may not best fit the UK’s needs, whether it wants to be a ‘science superpower’ or a nation leading in AI, or prepared for cyberattacks and pandemics. How is that national dialogue going to be initiated? By whom and involving whom? Skills England is in the process of being set up and would seem to be one potential location. But it has been a long time in gestation so it is still hard to know how it may operate. This might be where the dialogue Chris Thomson wants might happen, but if it is solely an internal dialogue amongst its yet-to-be-announced members, it is unlikely to satisfy everyone. Furthermore, is it going to put its focus on those who do or don’t go to university? Focus on both is needed.

Mission-led government should help bring the different strands and arguments together, in this case skills will sit in part under the Opportunity Mission (led by the Department for Education), but – as with the Industrial Strategy – the Growth Mission will also need to be paying much attention to the issue. As Thomson said, we may not be heading in the right direction in terms of alignment of skilled workers (researchers and many other STEM trained workers) with the country’s needs if its economy is to grow. Locally, we need to be having this dialogue too – as the conversation at TPI’s meeting showed – recognizing that a solution to Manchester’s issues may differ greatly from what is appropriate in a transport-poor region of small towns and villages. Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich may be thriving, but if they are inaccessible to large numbers of potential students that will not help them or the economy.

Posted in academia, appraisal, ASSET 2010, Athena Forum, Austrian science, book review, careers, education, Equality, Evelyn Fox Keller, Further Education, gender, growth, natural history, NEETs, Opportunity Mission, Oxford-Cambridge Corridor, People, professional training, promotion, Women's Issues | Comments Off on The Need to Join the Dots

What I Read In January

Posted on 29 January 2025 by Henry Gee

Screenshot 2025-01-01 at 12.28.31Max Adams: Aelfred’s Britain Max Adams is an archaeologist and writer specialising in Early Medieval Britain (that is, between the departure of Rome in 410, to the Norman Conquest) . His other books include The First Kingdom (on the early English Settlements); The King in the North (on the life and times of Oswald of Northumbria) and In The Land of Giants (a travel journey through the early Medieval  landscapes of Britain. Aelfred’s Britain deals with the Viking Age, between the very end of the eighth century and the middle of the tenth, when the very beginnings of what we might recognise as English, Scots and Welsh identities were forged in response to the depredations of the Danes and the Norse. He tells a compelling story from archaeology and written sources — the often partial accounts of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and others — to draw a picture of how a countryside of scattered farmsteads slowly evolved into villages and small towns; how early medieval ideas of rule and kingship were rather different from what later nationalist ideas of history would paint; and most of all how the politics, wars and economics of early Medieval Britain were shaped by the landscape, of navigable rivers criss-crossed by the network of Roman roads and earlier cross-country routes. This is important, given that the modern world, with its concentration on cities and fast routes by road, rail and air, ignores the landscape altogether. There is one telling passage in which Adams reveals that an archaeological site of interest is now obscured by a modern motorway interchange. An ancient sense of place has been destroyed by the needs of people to go somewhere else.  The lives of people in what we used to call the ‘dark ages’ were indeed dark, forever scarred by endemic violence and disease. Yet, at the same time, one can’t help but feel a little nostalgic.

UntitledBarbara Davis: The Echo of Old Books Ashlyn Greer, child of uncaring parents, divorced from a philandering husband, sees herself as a victim of circumstances. She does, however, have a gift — she can tune in to the emotional states of the owners of books that come into her rare book store. Over the course of a couple of weeks, two books come in that vibrate her antennae off the scale — books without authors, publishers or any bibliographical details whatsoever. It turns out that each book tells one side of a doomed love affair in wartime America. The novel tells the story of how she tracks down the mysterious authors. It was a good enough listen, though I found the voice of the actor who played the female protagonist, Belle, rather prissy. But I feel that I was sold this under false pretences. I was expecting more of Ashlyn’s preternatural abilities, when these were really an excuse to get into a stock romantic melodrama. I can see that lots of people will love this, but I expect I am not the target audience. Apart from one thing — the book hits hard at the antisemitism of Ford, Lindbergh and their circle in 1940s America, and ends with a Hannukah party, something that is mainstream in America but probably wouldn’t have much traction in contemporary Britain, where the attitude to Jews among the literati is, it’s fair to say, ambivalent.

Untitled(various authors): The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights There’s nothing like an anthology of short stories to introduce you to new authors and get you out of a reading rut. This was a festive gift from Mrs Gee and what a treat it was. It contains one creepy spiderwebb’d tale each from twelve authors. Each tale is an absolute gem and just wonderful for reading next to a fireplace when the weather grows dark and chill beyond the window-pane, and when you know you’ll have to fumble up creaking, darkened stairs to bed, chased by shadows, accompanied by your own dread thoughts, and a candle. I must have been sleeping under a rock for years, or reading different things, for none of the authors was known to me, yet the biographical notes show that all are more or less buried under the weight of awards, plaudits and laurels of all kinds. My favourites (it seems invidious to single any of them out, they were all so good) were The Gargoyle by Bridget Collins; Ada Lark by Jess Kidd; and Carol of the Bells and Chains by Laura Purcell. Each one was suitably wintry and Gothick. I’ll be looking up the oeuvres of all these authors separately, as well as all the others I haven’t mentioned. But the standout (for me) was The Salt Miracles by Natasha Pulley, about mysterious happenings among contemporary pilgrims to a remote Hebridean island sacred to an ancient saint, That wasn’t Gothick at all, but like all good weird tales, it sticks in the mind. The biggest mystery, for me, is that the anthologists of this wonderful collection have remained anonymous…

UntitledMatt Haig: The Life Impossible The world has completely closed in around lonely, retired, twice-bereaved maths teacher Grace. Straitened by routine, sadness and crushing self-doubt, her world is turned upside down when she receives a letter from a lawyer saying she’s been remembered in the will of a fellow teacher with whom she’d worked many years before. The bequest is a small house in Ibiza. Arriving at the house, she finds it sad and neglected. But somehow, she’s expected. There is a reason why she was chosen to inherit this house, and come to Ibiza, for in her lies the ability to save Ibiza from the clutches of profit-hungry developers keen on despoiling the natural beauty of the island. The abilities include such things as – I am not joking – precognition, telekineses, and communion with an alien intelligence. Now, I love Matt Haig, who adds a spice of magic to what would otherwise be tales of the everyday. But this one was, I think, a little over-egged. Think of Shirley Valentine with extra Woo.

UntitledNatasha Pulley: The Mars House Natasha Pulley wrote one of my favourite stories from The Winter Spirits (see above) so I pulled this one down off Audible for a listen. She’s written many books — her first novel was The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, a Victorian steampunk fantasy, more on which later. The Mars House, is, perhaps surprisingly, SF. And it’s really rather good. January is the principal dancer in the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in London. London is flooded, a consequence of climate change, but Londoners are enjoying their new Venice. Until, that is, the floods eventually drive January out and he flees to the colony of Tharsis, on Mars, as a refugee. But refugees from Earth, having three times the strength of a naturalised Martian, have to be confined in body-cages that ramp down their strength so they won’t injure Martians by accident, and have to work in dirty, heavy jobs. January is a labourer in Tharsis’ water factory. By chance he meets Senator Aubrey Gale, a politician on the make, and — one thing leading to another — he ends up as their official consort. After that he gets sucked in to a grand political intrigue. Tharsis is sponsored by China, but is growing apart from it. Tharsese is a strange mixture of Mandarin with Russian and English (there is a lot of interesting exposition on language). The tensions between Mars and Earth throw Aubrey and January into a deadly Great Game. I enjoyed it hugely. The science is more-or-less okay, but what’s key here is the the social mores of Mars. Martians have abolished gender, so they are all ‘they’ (which I found confusing, because I had to keep checking that the author wasn’t referring to more than one person), and androgynous. Separate ‘male’ and ‘female’ genders are only for animals. What stands out is Pulley’s style, which is gentle, bright, breezy, witty, affectionate and very funny. I suppose that her humour is British (as are some of her cultural referents) and this might be off-putting to some, or even misconstrued. I was amazed, for example, to see that she’s attracted the fury of social-justice warriors (SJWs) on Goodreads. She’s a misogynist! (There is only one overtly female character, and she appears near the end). She is guilty of cultural misappropriation! (A white Englishwoman discussing Chinese language and history). She is even — gasp — a Zionist! (Because there’s an AI that has an Israeli accent). Oh, how dismal. I expect that SJWs will prefer Babel by Rebecca F. Kuang (reviewed here) in which social justice warfare comes to the fore and (in my opinion) spoils the story.

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How Much Does the Scientific Ecosystem Change over Time?

Posted on 26 January 2025 by Athene Donald

Desmond Bernal was an outstanding crystallographer. Not himself a Nobel Prize winner, he set the likes of Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz on their own successful paths to that accolade. A Communist, he fell from grace during the 50’s and 60’s due to his unwavering commitment to the Russian regime and the (discredited) theories of the geneticist Trofim Lysenko. However, before and during the second world war he was one of the giants of British science, heavily involved with providing scientific advice to government during the war and appreciated as a polymath with a grasp of many subjects beyond his own field, and beyond science itself. He easily slipped from the analysis of X-ray patterns before the war into modelling bomb blasts and the statistics of the way they damaged life and property during the Blitz.

I have been rereading his biography (J.D.Bernal The Sage of Science by Andrew Brown) and that has pointed me to his massive and influential 1939 work The Social Function of Science. Inevitably, parts of this will have dated very badly, but there are an uncanny number of comments about the state of science in society then which still ring horribly true. People often talk about how the satirical 1908 description of Cambridge life from Francis Cornford (Microcosmographia: Being a Guide for the Young Academic Politician) echoes across the years, with its downbeat assessment of how business is done – or not – within the University and how to be influential, for instance. I think this ringing true equally applies to much of Bernal’s text, only now applicable across the country’s research ecosystem. It, however, was not at all satirical but deadly serious, intended as a call to action for society.

Most people practicing science in our universities would sympathise with the statement ‘Nor are the actual emoluments of the young research worker really adequate’ for instance. The 1930’s may not have had to endure the REF, but the publish or perish culture was clearly alive and well:

One more peculiarly damaging to science is the necessity incumbent upon all research workers to produce results and to see that they are published.…for it is on his published results by number and bulk as much as by excellence that his future depends…Another result is to burden scientific literature with masses of useless papers.

One should remember back then papers were not online. Wading through the Science Citation Index – a very substantial collection of tomes which was the necessary route for me and generations before (and after) to try to track down who had cited which paper/ whose papers had been cited – was hard work in a library, not something one could skim through at one’s desk, and useless papers just take up unnecessary space. Such papers are probably even more prevalent now, with predatory journals cluttering up reading matter with papers of dubious quality. How does one separate the wheat from the chaff as a young researcher, especially if you obey the DORA mantra and don’t look at citation indices?

Bernal was a friend of CP Snow’s, whose PhD thesis on The Structure of Single Molecules at one point passed through my hands when the Cambridge Colloid Group and its library were disbanded. Indeed Bernal ‘appeared’ as Constantine, a brilliant polymath scientist in Snow’s first novel The Search. It is therefore interesting to wonder what his influence was on Snow’s fury about the two cultures, exposed in the 1959 Rede Lecture of that name in Cambridge. Bernal writes, twenty years before, that ‘Among people of literary culture there is almost an affectation of knowing nothing about science.’ The worry is that may still persist, although my concern would be not that this impacts on literary culture so much as those who studied literature may then go on to control policy decisions involving science. Bernal worried about that too:

The lack of proper appreciation of science is not confined to the public at large; it is particularly powerful and dangerous in the fields of administration and politics.

It is not for nothing that Angela Maclean, as GCSA, has aspirations (seemingly met) of getting 50% of the civil servants entering through the Fast Stream route to come from a scientific discipline.

However, clearly Bernal has encountered some who have access to policy decisions when he makes the statement

Somebody who knows the Prime Minister suggests that something might be done for a particular branch of research, and in that typically English way scientific research carries on.

Whether it is somebody knowing the Prime Minister personally or some other Cabinet member, as they come and go, there may still be too much truth in that about what areas of research get moved up the funding agenda.

My motivation in turning to The Social Function of Science was to consider Bernal’s views on education. In the Brown biography these are given as (taken from another 1939 publication Science Teaching in General Education)

  1. To provide enough understanding of the place of science in society to enable the great majority that will not be actively engaged in scientific pursuits to collaborate intelligently with those who are, and to be able to cricise or appreciate the effect of science on society.
  2. To give a practical understanding of scientific method, sufficient to be applicable to the problems which the citizen has to face in his individual and social life.

Those aspirations seem valid today as much as 80+ years ago. However, Bernal obviously felt back then that what actually happens in schools falls far short of this, and the words he wrote may currently be of relevance to the ongoing Curriculum and Assessment Review. Bernal writes somewhat sardonically

Actually for the convenience of teachers and the requirements of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe on the authority of their masters or text-books exactly what they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it seems nonsense to them or not…the only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience….It is unfortunate that the easiest modes of testing knowledge and those which on the average will give the fairest results are precisely those that are the least valuable from the point of view of acquisition of scientific knowledge.

The phrase ‘teach to the test’ was clearly as appropriate then as now. Bernal, as an FRS, was no doubt very aware of the Royal Society’s motto ‘Nullius in Verba’, clearly at odds with the sentiment in that first sentence above.

Finally (in as far as I’ve just picked out a few sentences from the entire book) what about the stereotypes that schoolchildren may get exposed to? This is a topic on which I have previously said much, because I believe it is discouraging for many children when they cannot see examples of people like them. Bernal had thought about this ; his description here is also probably tending to the satirical when he writes

This does not usually take the form so often imagined, of the scientist as an other-worldly person who can only just manage to keep alive through the assistance of female relations.

I don’t believe that was a sexist comment in the modern meaning of the word. Bernal supported many female researchers, including Hodgkin as I’ve already mentioned. He was merely reflecting the inevitable norm of the day, of the male scientist with a stay-at-home wife (a domestic scene somewhat at odds with his own chaotic life, where he had many lovers including Hodgkin, and children by two of them. One of those I was at school with, perhaps reflected in my own interest in the man.)

Bernal is no longer revered in the way he was. He turned up in my undergraduate lectures as the man who tried to unravel the structure of liquids using plasticine spheres in a sack, to come up with the model of random close packing. I taught that too, when I lectured on Materials to undergraduate physicists. But his work on crystallography is so fundamental it is probably now invisible to many. As the biography – and his own writings – show, he was a man of many interesting parts.

Posted in CP Snow, deficit model, Desmond Bernal, Interdisciplinary Science, Londa Schiebinger, macho, Project Implicit, Sage, Science Culture, Science Funding, social media, The Social Function of Science, Unconscious bias, Universities | Comments Off on How Much Does the Scientific Ecosystem Change over Time?

Trump, DEI and the REF – what is the vibe shift?

Posted on 20 January 2025 by Stephen

Trump-official-photo

There is an air of defeatism in progressive circles today, the day Donald Trump will be sworn in for a second term as President of the United States of America. Some of the reasons behind this sense of frustration and disappointment are captured in Ian Leslie’s latest Substack post, Notes on the Great Vibe Shift, which sees Trump’s election victory as a “far-reaching cultural reset”.

The principal components of this reset are the abandonment since the US election of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes by Meta, Amazon, McDonalds and others (including some universities after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action on admissions in 2023), and the political changes within the G7 which mean, according to Leslie, that Western leaders, rather than resisting Trump are “keen to be his friend”.

There’s some truth in this analysis – the DEI agenda is more on the back foot that just a few years ago and the mood music within the G7 leadership has changed.  But to me it’s undercooked and, while the day may seem dark, there are glimmers of progressive light poking through the gaps in Leslie’s thesis.

I won’t dwell on the political analysis since it’s not my forte. I will only pause long enough to suggest, for example, that Leslie’s assertion that the Obama presidency represented a significant political victory but not “a social or cultural watershed”, and claims that he was unable to diminish the country’s divisions are at the very least contestable. The overlooks the fact that Obama handily won a second term and place on him an expectation that is historically unreasonable. Who, I might ask, was the last president to succeed in reducing political divisions in the USA?

I am more interested in Leslie’s argument that the abandonment of DEI commitments by American CEO’s marks an irreversible step that will find its way across the Atlantic. Here’s what he writes:

“Whatever the initial motivation, there is no danger of them changing their minds back, since the new positions feel closer to what most leaders instinctively believe – that you should hire and promote people on individual merit; avoid internal divisions wherever possible; treat people the same regardless of race or gender; do the work in front of you rather than debate politics; show up every day and work hard unless you absolutely can’t. These are common sense principles of successful and thriving organisations and it’s the privilege of those who aren’t in charge to believe anything else.”

This is all very sensible – who could disagree? And yes, there is no shortage of DEI advocates parading the wilder claims of identity politics who have never grappled with the complexities of running a well-functioning organisation.

But neither, if you probe a little deeper, is it inconsistent with a well-wrought approach to DEI*. How, for example, do you know if you’re hiring and promoting from the widest pools of talent? How do you know you are treating people the same, whatever their background? How do you create a workplace where people can work hard, without the distractions and detriments of harassment or discrimination? CEOs and their organisations can only properly answer these questions if they are monitoring the data that reveals the demographics of hiring and promotion, or working hard themselves to credibly foster a culture where everyone can give of their best.

Ironically perhaps, Leslie appears to endorse this latter point because in the Rattle Bag portion of his Substack he recommends Nabeel Qureshi’s list of 64 “principles for life” which includes at No.4 :

“Environment matters a lot; move to where you flourish maximally. Put yourself in environments where you have to perform to your utmost; if you can get by being average, you probably will.”

As stated this principle places the onus on the individual rather than the organisation to seek out places where they will flourish. I suspect this is part of its appeal to Leslie because elsewhere in his piece (tracking the vibe shift across the Atlantic) he cites Iain Mansfield’s tweeted attack on the recently announced pilot of moves by UK higher education funders for universities to incorporate reporting on People, Culture and Environment (PCE) in their submissions to the powerful Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Mansfield-tweets

There’s certainly a debate to be had about how to implement this reporting without excessive burden on universities, but Mansfield’s angry volley betrays next to no engagement with the careful and consultative way the PCE framework has been constructed with the sector, with its clearly articulated links with the desire to enhance UK research performance, or with the extensive scholarly literature on why these REF reforms are so necessary.

It’s a viewpoint that, bizarrely, dissociates organisational cultures from the ability of employees to do their best work, seeing attention to culture as performative virtue-signalling that the HE sector can ill afford. But it is at odds, not only with the deeper rationale underlying the REF reforms, but also with the insights of deeper thinkers, such as Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, whose organisational – or institutional – insights are quoted here in a thoughtful post by James Plunkett:

“The Nobel laureate, Elinor Ostrom, has a useful way of thinking about institutions as rule-based games that get repeated. We move through life in institutions, each trying our best (within constraints like bounded rationality) before repeating, and trying to get better. Ostrom spent decades working to understand institutions, so that we can improve them. Her guiding vision — which feels to me more resonant with every passing day — was that the ultimate goal of government, and of public policy, should be to build institutions ‘that bring out the best in people’.”

So, I still hope, contra Mansfield, that the REF reforms, refined by the pilot, will be given the chance to prove their worth in the full exercise in 2029. And I still hope, contra Leslie, that the vibe shift that has accompanied Trump’s re-ascendancy to the White House will not endure.

For there is a fatal flaw at the heart of the Trump project: it is sustained by a disregard for evidence and for the truth, both of which can only be concealed temporarily. Those of us who advocate for progressive causes – ideally of course with all due regard for evidence and truth (as in this excellence piece)– would do well to remember that on this day.

 

*This is not to assert that DEI policies have never been constructed or implemented unproblematically, or without being buffeted by ideology. Of course they have. But the view that DEI is necessarily performative and beside the point is not one that can withstand scrutiny. To be fair to Leslie, given what he’s written previously on this topic, I suspect his main beef is with performative or virtue-signalling DEI, but I don’t think he’s made that so very clear in his post on the Great Vibe Shift.

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Unreactive Audiences and Pertinent Questions

Posted on 19 January 2025 by Athene Donald

Given that it is now a decade or more since I was particularly involved in research, if I am asked to give a seminar – usually to students, sometimes undergraduates, sometimes and more commonly PhD students and early career research researchers – I always make it plain that I won’t be giving a purely technical talk about my research. I was amused, before my last such talk, to be told by the undergraduate lead that they get fed up with speakers waxing lyrical about some minute area of physics that goes straight over the head of the majority of the audience. In prospect, they seemed excited I might talk a bit more about my policy and gender work.

However, when it came to it, I gave my talk to an audience that seemed totally unreactive. I am always encouraged when I spot someone nodding their head sagely, or smiling at some mildly ironic remark. To get some feedback from at least part of the audience is reassuring, even for people like myself who’ve given hundreds of similar talks. To talk to quite a full lecture theatre who give no sign of engagement can be unnerving, provoking the thought that there is no interest or one is talking over their heads in gobbledygook. At the end of my talk, when I asked for questions, there was a long time (well, it felt like a long time), before anyone tentatively raised their hand. Slowly, over the next fifteen minutes or so, the questions started to flow. Sensible, thoughtful questions but clearly from a nervous audience who weren’t used to putting their hands up in such a situation.

After the end of the talk, there was a plentiful supply of pizza, and a further opportunity for students to come and talk to me one-on-one. And, despite what had happened over the previous hour, come they did. It turned out that they had been paying close attention all along, and wanted to press me for advice but, given the majority of them were undergraduates they just weren’t as confident about speaking up in public as most of the audiences I encounter. I should have factored that in; a lesson for me to remember.

Some of the discussions I did have were particularly heartening. The student who said they felt ‘seen’ was especially moving. Others were seeking advice I’m not sure I was in any position to give. One asked me how to decide what to do post-graduation if they had no idea what they wanted to do. I suggested they went to their careers service, but that had already been tried and it didn’t seem to have lead to any breakthrough in their thinking.   Beyond that, I suggested that they should try something that they felt might be of interest and, since jobs aren’t for life, it should be easy enough to move on if it was wrong. I often feel it’s important to remember there is no single right answer to questions like these, and many routes might turn out to be satisfying. If for every one of us there was a unique solution, we’d all be frozen doing nothing in case we didn’t find it. ‘Good enough’ is often good enough, and may lead to something that’s even better.

In the public questions, there was one question in particular that needs further thought for all of us. I had mentioned that sometimes people aren’t necessarily easy to deal with. This was paraphrased back to me, as ‘how do you learn to deal with jerks?’, although I’m pretty sure the word jerk had not passed my lips. (I have written about that characteristic several times in the past, such as here). The reality is in most sciences – as opposed to engineering – there is little time to practice team-work and thereby start working out personal strategies. Wherever you end up working, there will always be people who rub you up the wrong way, do things that irritate you (or indeed, not do things that need to be done, thereby also irritating you) or claim undeserved glory when they’ve not pulled their weight. There isn’t an easy way to handle them, and managers/leadership won’t always notice. Getting used to finding your own tactics for staying sane while pushing back on the behaviour that’s getting you down takes time. There are some people – as I was told firmly by a trainer on a course for ‘dealing with conflict’ – that you can never get on with. If you’ve been trying, the chances are that’s their problem and fault not yours. Nevertheless, finding some strategies is important.

I believe, as the world of work is changing, employers increasingly want team players, employees who can work well with others. Yet our education system is more likely to focus on facts that can be crammed in and then examined, than on anything to do with interactions with other people. This is true in schools, and it is true in most university science courses. Just as with promotion in later academic years, we reward the individual. Industry is not like this, and employers typically don’t want individuals like that on their workforce either. Soft skills – such as the ability to collaborate – matter to them as much as the technical, yet universities don’t help very much with developing those skills. We should think harder about the bigger picture, and not just cram facts that can be tested, but which can also easily be found online if needed for future use.

Posted in careers, deficit model, Interdisciplinary Science, jerks, Londa Schiebinger, macho, Project Implicit, Science Culture, Science Funding, social media, team players, Unconscious bias, Universities | Comments Off on Unreactive Audiences and Pertinent Questions