Time for a new list of junk journals

Earlier this month, Jeffrey Beall (rhymes with “wheel”) removed his blog and well-known list of probable “predatory” open access publishers. I was too slow in writing a blog post about it, but this excellent one by Neuroskeptic covers a lot of territory I would have covered.

In my view the demise of Beall’s project is a sad day for science. While his work was sometimes controversial, he was just about the only person who seemed to take predatory publishing seriously and who tried to do something about it. ...

On the other hand, I don’t think he should have been doing this job alone. ... The one-man nature of Beall’s operation left him open to charges of being arbitrary and opaque in how he decided where to draw the line between legitimate and predatory publishing. I think he made the right calls the vast majority of the time, but then again, he has not been transparent about why he shut down the site.

I haven’t forgotten that Beall once argued (badly) open access was motivated by “anti-corporate” sentiment, and that weakened his credibility.

While I have argued before that I don’t think junk journals are that big a problem, it’s not zero harm, either. Like many predators, junk journals prey on the weak: researchers who are disconnected from a professional community and don’t have a clear understanding of why some journals are not legitimate.

In discussions about our new tenure and promotion requirements in our department, the worry about “What if someone just publishes in predatory journals?” was brought up repeatedly. I argued that this was not that big a problem, and that we had criticized colleagues for publishing in dodgy journals. Beall’s list was one of the resources that we could point at to back up criticisms.

People want resources to help them find their way in the wild west of scientific publishing in the early twenty-first century. And while the Directory of Open Access Journals is a valuable, it has a problem: it’s a whitelist. Beall’s list was a blacklist, and somewhere along the way, Beall mentioned something important:

No one lies about being on a blacklist.

We can’t spend all our time sending obviously bad manuscripts to junk journals to punk them. I kind of hate to say it, but we could use a journal blacklist. Maybe even one that would call out legitimate publishers who don’t clean out their stable as they should.

Related posts

How much harm is done by predatory journals?

Dubious journals from major scientific publishers: Homeopathy

External links

Predatory Publishers: Why I’ll Miss Jeffrey Beall
Beall’s litter
This 'predatory' science journal published our ludicrous editorial mocking its practices 

This bill would be bad for UTRGV students

Not much information yet, but here it is:

H.R.483 — 115th Congress (2017-2018)
All Bill Information (Except Text)

As of 01/24/2017 text has not been received for H.R.483 - To amend title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to prohibit the provision of funds under such title to institutions of higher education that violate the immigration laws, and for other purposes.

This bill appears to be aimed at punishing universities who provide education undocumented university students. Some of them are called “dreamers,” in reference to the DREAM act.

I think there’s little question that UTRGV has undocumented students. If UTRGV was hit by this legislation, that would mean, I think, no federal research grants. No money from National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, etc. That would seriously affect our chances of becoming an emerging research university.

External links

H.R.483

Asking scientific societies to show some backbone

In light of the EPA freeze, I spent a chunk of today writing emails and filling out contact forms to pretty much every scientific society I belong to. After all, I had tweeted this:

EVERY scientific society in the US better be preparing to defend the EPA. Or science in the US is screwed.#EPAFreeze

This got more than the usual number of likes and retweets. It would be extra crummy of me not to follow up on contacting my professional organizations after arguing that scientific societies need to step up against this kind of stuff.

Ask yourself: “Have my professional societies done anything more political than say, ‘Please don't cut funding?’” Will they fight? #EPAfreeze

Why should scientists press their professional societies to do this? Many are already political advocates in Washington, DC, like the Society for Neuroscience. They have an “Advocacy” button right on the main navigation menu, and their current message from the society president is about strengthening advocacy. Scientific societies have infrastructure and organization and credibility and clout in a way that individuals don’t always have.

So I wrote letters to my scientific societies. I already had the email addresses to some of the presidents. I was disappointed that some societies didn’t give email addresses for their presidents, but they all had “Contact us” forms on their webpages, so those got used.

My letters mostly read something like this.

Hello,

You may have seen news today that several American research agencies, like the EPA and USDA, have been ordered to not talk to the public. The EPA has been instructed to freeze all their grants.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-administration-imposes-freeze-on-epa-grants-and-contracts

http://www.popsci.com/usda-epa-science-gag-order-government

Even though this doesn’t seem to have strong effects on researchers in this field now, I worry about the “domino effect” on other agencies if these sorts of threats aren’t strongly opposed. And I know this is an international society, but certainly many members are in the US.

I personally am hoping my professional societies, like this one, are willing to speak out about the importance of scientists being able to communicate with the public (say). I suspect many scientists would like their societies to show some leadership and be strong advocates for science against political threats.

While I am decided to start by asking scientific societies to become stronger advocates for members specifically and science support generally, citizens living in the United States have elected representatives. I found this Facebook post by Jacquelyn Gill last month extra helpful:

Things I’ve learned^* about effective communication with elected officials:

1. Online petitions are treated like one single correspondence, regardless of how many signatures you get. They’re basically useless.
2. Tweeting at elected officials is basically pointless unless you are famous.
3. Phone calls are effective, especially if you can call your district office (rather than the office in Washington), and especially if there is a large surge in calls. Ask for a response. Make sure you state that you’re a constituent.
4. There is zero point in calling, emailing, or writing to someone who doesn’t represent you (unless you are the CEO of a business or something similar where you can pull financial support from a state). Elected officials only have a mandate to represent their constituents; they will ignore you otherwise.
5. Personalized written messages are very effective – bonus points if these are hand-written, and double-plus-good bonus points if these are written by kids. Explain exactly why something matters to you, with an anecdote. (E.g., “My kids are scared of their teachers being deported,” or “The Muslim business owner whose shop I frequent is getting harassed.”)
6. Most elected officials have Google alerts on their names. This means that blog posts, op-eds, articles, or letters to the editor about them get noticed – even if it’s a small-potatoes blog.

^* This advice comes from listening to folks who have worked on the Hill or in district offices in several states.

Other countries have faced this sort of thing before, and managed to have political support for research emerge, not intact unscathed, but not eviscerated. But I think the attacks are going to be much, much worse in the United States in the days and months and years to come, and I think American scientists have been more reluctant advocates than in other countries, perhaps because the budgets have been bigger and science has traditionally gotten bipartisan support. But the game has changed, and I don’t know if scientists, and their societies, are going to adjust to the new rules fast enough.

Update, 25 January 2017: Back in 2012, I wondered what it would take to get scientists to march on Washington. Well, now we know.

A march on Washington by scientists is being planned. More as I learn it.

Update, 27 January 2017: Here are the responses from the societies I contacted.

Related posts

The political attack on science escalates with EPA granting freeze

Photo by Kurt:S on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

The political attack on science escalates with EPA granting freeze

When I was asked by Times Higher Education about whether scientists should worry about the incoming US president, I pointed to the candidate’s stated position that he would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Less than a week in, and Huffington Post reports that the agency has been instructed to freeze all its grants.

And on top of that, there’s a separate list of instructions for the EPA to not talk to anyone.

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
• No social media will be going out. ...
• No blog messages.

See also this NPR checklist about the new administration’s current record (such as it is) on scientific issues.

Look, any scientist looking at the rhetoric of the current president knew that things were going to get bad. But I somehow think a lot of them didn’t expect that it would be that bad, which this story seems to indicate it will be.

External links

Trump Administration Imposes Freeze On EPA Grants and Contracts
White House temporarily freezes EPA grants, contract
Information lockdown hits Trump’s federal agencies
As Feared, Early Reports Indicate the EPA Could Be Gutted
Donald Trump is getting ready to hammer the EPA
Trumpworld prepares to hammer the EPA

The winner of the “Best euphemism for lying” award goes to...

Kellyanne Conway, who coined the term, “alternative facts.”

This was in reference to yesterday, when the White House press secretary’s lied, stating that the recent American presidential inauguration had, “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

Coincidentally enough, 40 years before Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts,” Doctor Who broadcast “The Face of Evil,” which contained one of my all-time favourite quotes from a show loaded with great quotes:

You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

The Doctor, “The Face of Evil”, Part 4, Doctor Who Season 14 (Production code 4Q). Written by Chris Boucher, directed by Pennant Roberts, originally broadcast on the BBC on 22 January 1977

Powerful and stupid makes a particularly nasty combination.

At least, unlike back in 2011, when Senator John Kyl’s office said the Senator’s lie about Planned Parenthood was “not intended to be a factual statement,” Conway got called on it much more strongly:

Kellyanne Conway on @MeetThePress: Spicer offered “alternative facts.” @chucktodd: “Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”

Never let yourself become a fact that needs altering.

Update, 23 January 2017: io9 also wrote a story about the Doctor Who quote. Unfortunately, it left out the important last line that served as a warning.

External links

Trump's inauguration crowd: Sean Spicer's claims versus the evidence
Doctor Who quote about 'alternative facts' sounds awfully relatable 40 years later

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Related posts

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How a catchy title bit me in the butt

At SICB, the committee I chair, the Student and Post Doc Affairs committee, SPDAC, has a noon event every year. It’s usually some sort of workshop. This year, I wanted something that would complement the society’s incoming Code of Conduct for the meeting ,and wanted more of a roundtable than a presentation.

The title I came up for the roundtable was: “Low on the totem pole: power structures and power struggles in academia.”

I was pleased that I had not used the phrase, “Low man on the totem pole.” It’s an often used phrase (as the picture at right demonstrates), but does exclude half the population.

But the title was called out on Twitter as “cultural appropriation.”

It isn’t great considering that the Society is pushing for more inclusivity, and even has a Broadening Participation Committee (which I was encouraged to attend). And inclusivity is something I try my best to support.

The gist of the argument, as I understood it, was that the use of the phrase was inaccurate: the position on a totem pole in First Nations cultures didn’t indicate anything about power or status.
 My first reaction was to clench up and want to say, “I didn’t do anything wrong!” But after a few seconds thought, that didn’t seem to be a particularly helpful reaction.

The first thing I did was to make clear that the title was entirely my choice, and therefore my fault. That way, if anyone was going to be mad about it, they knew to be mad at me, and not the Society in general or the Executive Committee or anyone else. It was my decision, and I had to live with it.

I also said that I was happy to talk about it. The SPDAC had a booth in the conference vendor room, so I did have a place anyone could come and find me. There was a little more discussion on Twitter, but no face to face conversation.

I had some conversations with some people I trust about this to try to judge just how badly I misstepped.
Having thought about it, I realized that I could have used several other turns of phrase to get the same point across (like, “Bottom of the heap,” say). And when someone makes a polite request that you not use a phrase, and you can think of another one that makes the exactly point with only a few seconds thought, there’s no point in trying to argue that you were justified in using the phrase.

Constant improvement is the samurai way.

Tenure is like vaccination

Tenure is like vaccination: they both work best when nobody opts out.

We’re in the middle of two new legislative attacks on tenure in the United States. Anti-tenure sentiment is hardly new, but it seems bound to pick up steam when I look at the current sociopolitical trends in the United States, which might be summarized as, “Don’t get comfortable.”

We academics will need to be vocal about why tenure is a good thing (here is my own defense of tenure), but I worry a lot that conditions have moved too far for us to mount an effective defense of tenure.

One of the key reactions I saw on social media to the announced bills was that abolishing tenure would cause a “brain drain” in those states, and the institutions in those states would have a hard time recruiting top notch faculty. My mind immediately jumped to this graph:

Any discussion of the academic job market that doesn’t take this graph into account is woefully deficient. Possibly even negligent.

One of the arguments for tenure is that the the increases job security compensates, to some degree, for the decreased salary. It’s generally accepted that academic pays poorly compared to industry and other non-academic positions. In theory, tenure is such an integral part of being an academic that people should not be willing to accept jobs that do not provide tenure.

The extraordinary surplus of doctoral students rather puts a wrench in that assumption. There are so many doctoral recipients that it is an employer’s market. Sure, you may lose those legendary (mythical?) “best” people, but there are plenty of people with Ph.D.s who are more than good enough: they’re still highly trained, highly skilled, and completely capable of running productive research programs.

And we know that there are many people with doctorates who are desperate enough to take positions that do not offer tenure: many of them are called “adjuncts.”

We are in a crappy situation all around. Tenure has a perception problem, because people see it as a “job for life” and a blanket protection for incompetence (it isn’t). The adjunctification of so many universities demonstrates that there are enough people willing to take jobs without tenure that both legislators and university administrators feel emboldened to reduce or eliminate tenured positions. I am deeply worried that the concept of tenure in the United States may not be able to survive these assaults.

What we are left with is the principle of the thing: tenure is supposed to allow us to do amazing long-term research, and speak truth to power. Fellow academics, if you have tenure, I urge you to use it, actively and frequently.

Resist.


Related posts

What have you done lately that needed tenure?

External links

Killing tenure
Should public universities have tenure systems? (Quora)
The missing piece to changing the university culture

Bound by ribbons: SICB 2017

I’ve been to the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting before, and I’ve been to conferences in New Orleans before. Based on that, you would think this meeting would be routine for me.

It was not. It was a very different meeting experience, for a couple of reasons. First, I was coming off a very intense teaching semester, and I was nowhere near as prepared as I should have been. I felt discombobulated a lot during this meeting,

Second, I was at the meeting not to present any of my own science, not to see any new science. I was participating in my role as chair of the Society’s Student and Post-doctoral Affairs Committee (SPDAC). This not only gave me ribbons to put on my badge, it completely changed my conference experience.

First, there were the meetings. I understood that I had my own committee’s meeting to chair. But I didn't quite realize that I was also expected to be at two executive committee meetings, and at the Broadening Participation committee meeting. And two of those were at 7:00 am! By the time I rolled into the second early morning meeting on the last day of the conference, I was grumpy and hated the conference and the world and no amount of variety in the hotel’s breakfast offerings would cheer me up.

Then, there was the SPDAC booth. The committee, unique among all the committees, had a booth in the vendors area to serve as a place where students come ask questions ad voice concerns. I was a little embarrassed by our bare booth, so midway through day one, I got some candy and chocolates to hand out as “booth bait.” I tried to stay at the booth as much as a I could, although this was mostly coffee during coffee breaks and the poster sessions. Staying at the booth did make it a little harder to get to get to sessions and posters.

All of this meant I didn’t see as many talks, or have as many port unities to explore nearby, as I normally would at a meeting.

I also found out rather late in the game that I was expected to give a talk at the first timer’s orientation session. I had a slide deck from their previous year’s talk as a starting point, but I wasn’t given any other parameters. I thought I might be faced with maybe high tens of people, max, in an average sized room.

Instead, I was facing hundreds of people in a combined ballroom. This was just after I had posted my a little essay on why you should always be afraid during a presentation, and it was easy. I would have done things much differently if I’d known how big the room was. I just tried to be breezy and quick and show a lot of advice from people on Twitter. Fortunately, several people told me afterwards that it was good, so I got to breath a big sigh of relief.

My other performance was as the moderator of the SPDAC roundtable on academic power struggles. It took the conversation a little while to get rolling, but once it did, it was very thoughtful and enjoyable. There were lots of good ideas about how students can approach conflict resolution.

I also added three new pokémon to my pokedex in Pokémon Go.

While I had a good time and managed not to have any epic fails during the meeting (other than stores that I wanted to visit closing by the time I got there), I felt the frustration of feeling that I wasn’t prepared and could have done so much better.

The good news is that I have a chance to prove that I can do better in about 51 weeks time, when I head to San Francisco for SICB 2018.

Conference low point: Biting into a Zapp’s Voodoo flavored potato chip. I am a potato chip purist: carbs, fats, and salt are all I crave in a chip, not flavours. But the SPDAC meeting had a box lunch with only Voodoo flavoured chips. I was hungry, thought I would try it, and Cat (one of the committee members) offered me a bite of hers so I didn’t have to commit to opening the whole bag.

I had to spit it out. My instant reaction was, “People eat these voluntarily?”

The Zen of Presentations, Part 69: Always be afraid

One of the best treats over this past holiday season was the debut of Trollhunters on Netflix. This animated series, co-created by filmmaker and monster nerd Guillermo del Toro, is fantastic on all counts.

Early on, the lead, Jim, is given some atypical combat advice from his troll mentor, Blinky. In fact, it’s the first fighting rule for a trollhunter.^*

Always be afraid. Fear heightens your senses. Fear keeps you alive. Arrogance gets you killed.

Blinky, “Waka Chaka!” (Season 1, Episode 5), Trollhunters

I’m not afraid to give a talk. And that’s currently one of my biggest problems as a presenter: I’ve done presentations too much.

When I first started giving talks at conferences as a grad student, when I got up to the lectern, I was wired. And it was not entirely positive energy arising the excitement of sharing what I had found. No, part of it was nerves because I was afraid.

Fortunately, I was able to take that energy and use it to make the delivery more enthusiastic and animated. A lot of people who have seen me talk have used that word, “energy,” in describing my style. It worked out because I was prepared, I knew what I wanted to say, and knew what my slides were. I was nervous, but not paralyzed by nervousness.

But even as I moved through grad school, and I racked up the presentations about my thesis research, I realized that I wasn’t feeling that rush of nervous energy just before I got ready to deliver my talk.

The problem was not so much arrogance as complacency. You reach a point in developing your writing and presentation skills where you know that you can give a talk without huge preparation, and it will be reasonable. You won’t stink up the room.

Writer Alan Moore put it this way in this interview:

With the America’s Best Comics that I’ve been doing... not even a half-arsed, it’s a quarter arsed idea at best(.) “Yeah, that’ll be good, let’s have some three-eyed cowboys. I’ve got no idea what they’re going to do in the story, but this issue’s all about three-eyed cowboys.” I mean, you might think of a story that’s got three-eyed cowboys in it and hope it comes to some sort of resolution, but it always does.

I’ve been working for 25 years now and I can probably bring near enough any story to a satisfactory resolution just because I’ve been doing this every day for 25 years – you get more confident in your ability to bring a story home.

I knew that energy was important to my presentations, and had been important in reaching the audience when I talked. So I deliberately tried to make myself nervous before talks. Nervousness is a kind of energy, and I had done enough talks that I knew I could harness it and get it under control to get my energy level up where it needed to be.

Always be afraid, even if you have given a talk a hundred times before.


^* Unfortunately, Trollhunter rule #1 doesn’t get as much play in the series as rule #3, because rule #3 is funnier (you’ll see).

External links

“Eye protein”: Lessons from giant monster movies

Tuesday Crustie: Pride

I’ve featured lots of interesting lobster colour variants here, but that “rainbow” lobster on the right is a new one on me.

The rest of the gallery shows lots of interesting variations, mainly a few recurring colour types (orange, blue. calico, split) and claw deformities.

External links

'Rainbow lobster' leads contest for craziest crustacean
1st ANNUAL CRAZIEST LOBSTER CONTEST!

2016: Where did the work go?

There are reasons aplenty to hate this wretched year, but I’m just going to focus on the professional side for me. 2016 was a year I felt like I just couldn’t get stuff done.

On paper, it was not a horrible year. On paper, the book Freshwater Crayfish was released, which I co-edited and had a couple of chapters in. But in reality, the physical copy of that book was released in August 2015.

I also had one other book chapter, in Science Blogging: The Essential Guide, back in February. But the production on that book had dragged on for so long (I first blogged that it was coming out late in 2014) that it certainly didn’t feel like it was something new.

My frustrations were compounded because I had submitted a couple of papers early in the year; one early January, in fact. But for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture, the editorial process for both of them dragged out longer than usual and they won’t see the light of day until 2017.

(At least, I hope they will appear in 2017. One journal that has accepted one of my articles still has items in its pre-print queue today, 30 December 2016, that are dated 30 December 2015. A whole year as a “forthcoming” article? That sucks.)

The number of blog posts was down here on NeuroDojo, but holding reasonably steady on Marmorkrebs and Better Posters. I have a lot of blog posts that I started but wasn’t able to finish.

I did teach a lot this year. I just got through the heaviest teaching load in a semester I’ve had in a very long time (and am so pleased nobody yelled at me, which I was convinced was about to happen any day). I did two graduate classes that were new to me for the first time ever. I taught a grad course in summer. And I taught the #SciFund poster class for the second time.

For me, professionally, 2016 feels like “the one that got away.”

The open access “sting” by Science, three years on

In 2013, writer John Bohannon published a Science article where the main drawing card was an obviously bad paper that he got accepted or published in multiple junk journals. He was not the first, nor has he been the last, to set out to punk crappy journals with obviously bad papers. It’s practically a scientific genre in its own right now.

I grabbed four of the papers that made it through the production process (despite Bohannon’s efforts to keep them out of the literature) for teaching purposes. I was recently reminded of those papers, and went looking for them again.

Let’s start with Indandah et al., 7-chloronorlichexanthone inhibits the growth of murine SV40 transformed lymphoid sarcoma Cells in vitro, in Medicinal Chemistry:

The journal is still there, but there is no hint of the retraction. There’s just a gap in the page numbering.

Next, Magaya et al.,Arthogalin inhibits the growth of murine malignant prostate sarcoma cells in vitro, from Journal Of Pharmacy And Pharmacological Research.

The entire publisher website is gone. The same is true for Nonjah et al., Nephrosterinic acid inhibits the growth of murine malignant pleural sarcoma cells in vitro.

The entire Scientific Journal of Medical Science is gone, gone, gone.

With this track record, I was surprised to see one journal acting like a real journal: being transparent and taking responsibility. The Journal of Biochemical and Pharmacological Research still exists, first of all. You need to drill down to find their page for Onnoocom et al. contribution, Schizopeltic acid inhibits the growth of murine polyploid pulmonary blastoma cells in vitro. But when you do:

The journal acknowledges that the paper was there in its table of contents, but the links for the abstract and PDF both lead to a retraction notice:

JBPR has been a victim of bogus submissions; and this paper is one of those and is hereby retracted. The editor in chief takes full responsibility for accepting this bogus manuscript for publication in JBPR. We sincerely assure readers that something like this will not occur again.

The last line makes me raise my eyebrows a bit. No journal can assure readers that they won’t make this mistake again. It’s just not possible to have a 100% failsafe fraud detection system.

Yes, journals should be criticized when they publish deeply flawed papers. But how they respond to those errors matters, too. It is possible that some junk journals are actually new journals run by people with good intentions but little experience that have the potential to improve. I’m not saying a single retraction notice makes a journal reputable,

Related posts

Open access or vanity press, the Science “sting” edition
Using “journal sting” papers for teaching

Truth and justice at universities, not “or”

A friend whose opinion I trust asked people what they thought of a talk by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt’s summary of the talk is here. His thesis is universities can search for truth or be agents for social justice, but not both. Weirdly, Haidt says that individuals can pursue both truth and justice, but an institution cannot, for reasons that are never explored.

Haidt says there are few conservatives in university positions, citing Higher Education Research Institute data. Haidt then presumes that being on one political side precludes understanding of others. He does this by demonstrating that much reasoning is “motivated,” which is an idea that has lots of empirical support. However, he makes hasty generalization in arguing that because people often engage in motivated reasoning, they always do this. He makes another hasty generalization by arguing that only other people can dissuade researcher from incorrect views, neglecting the possibility that evidence can do so.

And this is about the last portion of Haidt’s talk that is driven by data.

Haidt is concerned that the political homogeneity of universities will trickle down to students. Evidence does not support this. Professors may largely lean to the political left, but their students are not much affected by this. See here and here.

He goes on to make lots of similar assertions about how students and professors are scared. “Professors all over the country are changing their teaching,” he claims. But his assertions are just that: assertions. He presents no data to support these claims. Well, unless you count a screenshot of a Vox article. (One which did not go unchallenged, incidentally.)

Haidt goes on to expound his thesis to say that universities have created a culture of victimhood, and how universities teach that other people are literally “members of good and bad groups.” He does so again through selected anecdotes, not data.

Haidt clearly implies that teaching that people can be “members of good and bad groups” is somehow wrong. He presumes that all political views have prima facie validity. He ignores many cases of political ideas have been shown to be empirically, factually wrong, but that are still bandied about as “common sense” by politicians. I would also like to ask Haidt would be whether he thinks German Nazis of the 1940s were just misunderstood.

At one point, Haidt says, “I’m not denying there’s oppression,” but I can’t help but wonder why this is a throwaway sentence compared to the amount of time he spends attempting to build the case for “victim culture.” He argues that certain statements are inviolable, like, “America has endemic racism / sexism,” but doesn’t address whether or not that is true. Again, Haidt is apparently operating from the point of view that has as as starting point that “America is racist / sexist” and “America is not racist / sexist” are equally plausible.

He says certain patterns that might be correlated with racism or sexism are “invitations to get to work” to find out if they are true or not. I like that Haidt is advocates empiricism, but what is missing is at what point hypotheses should be abandoned. We have seen the “Doubt is our product” strategy used many times to bring faux respectibility to discredited ideas.

Haidt also takes the liberty of defining “social justice” as he has experienced it. I suggest it is at least plausible that other people might disagree with his definition.

Haidt claims he is not on the left or the right. My impression is that Haidt, in trying to understand the origins of political disagreement, has attempted to be fair in understanding the basis for political viewpoints. Unfortunately, I think that objectivity in seeking the basis for people’s views has made him unwilling to critique them unevenly, leaving him to proclaim, “Everyone does it.” But as David Frum wrote:

“They all lie” is a sentiment that most benefits the most egregious liars.

I agree with many of the individual cases Haidt presents. But this is not surprising when you build your case on the best supporting anecdotes.

Weirdly, at the very end, Haidt unravels his own thesis, saying you can only effect change if you commit to truth. But again, this is a throwaway line that runs counter to his headline (which is 90% of communication effort). Haidt’s headline argument would make academia irrelevant. We can only tell the truth as long as it doesn’t matter. If we try to effect change, we’re spin doctors.

External links

Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice
The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

The tyranny of free time

“Have a nice break.”

I know students and other mean well, but “breaks” are very stressful for me.

I’m sure I’ve complained about this before, but work rarely stops. Before classes start up again, I have a conference (SICB in New Orleans), potentially an NSF pre-proposal to write, and two projects where data collection ends on 1 January that I can start writing up.

Second, and increasingly so, I feel pressure to make the best use of my time on things other than work.

“Hey, I have nothing slated for today! Should I do my laundry? Go shopping? Write a blog post? Play a video game? Read a book? Watch those DVD bonus features? Netflix binge on that show I’ve been meaning to catch up on? Work out at the wellness center? Clear all the crap out of my office? Clear all the crap out of my apartment?”

At least with work, I know what I am supposed to be doing. With my time, things are not so clear.

Misunderstanding antibiotic resistance

Even people who try to incorporate evolutionary thinking into their research struggle with the concepts, it seems.

Thomas Wittum was interviewed on Quirks and Quarks about finding bacteria in a pig farm that were resistant to one of the “last resort” antibiotics. He repeatedly put forward the idea that these bacteria must have been introduced there from a human health care facility, like a hospital, where these particular classes of antibiotics are used the most.

This notion come perilously close to the idea that organisms evolve features that they “need.” The thinking seems to go that antibiotic resistant bacteria must come from hospitals, because why would bacteria is someplace without those antiobiotics have resistance to them?


This misses the concept of “standing variation”: that any population can have variation in a trait in the absence of any selection pressure for one version of the trait or the other. If you look at classic cases of dark coloured insects, like peppered moths, flourishing in industrial areas (industrial melanization, for those who know the fancy words), populations always had some dark insects around before industrialization. That’s standing variation. Later, the dark colour provided an advantage as the landscape got darker. But the key point is that the insects didn’t newly evolve dark colouration as regions became industrialized, because they needed it.

Similarly, it is possible that these farm bacteria came had antibiotic resistance “out of the box,” so to speak. The resistance would do very little in the farm setting, but... if those bacteria were in an environment where those antibiotics were released, they would suddenly have a huge advantage.

Having said that, it is entirely possible that the antibiotic resistance did come from a hospital or someplace similar. The manuscript itself (Mollenkopf et al., in press) doesn’t address the source of the bacteria, or the antibiotic resisting gene. But it’s not a good assumption that if we create a new antibiotic, there will be no bacteria that will be able to survive it at the start. Some bacteria might, by chance, already have a way to evade the antibiotics.

References

Mollenkopf DF, Stull JW, Mathys DA, Bowman AS, Feicht SM, Grooters SV, Daniels JB, Wittum TE. Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae recovered from the environment of a swine farrow-to-finish operation in the United States. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy: in press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/AAC.01298-16

External links

Drug resistant "superbug" gene found on pig farm

Picture from here.

SACS speaks

SACS, the accreditation agency for UTRGV has released its document about why the institution has been placed on probation. There isn’t much in the way of new information in the document.

From what I have gathered in news reports, one potential issue is that after UTRGV was established in Fall 2015, the University of Texas Brownsville was apparently still “officially” still a degree granting entity. This was done because Texas Southmost College, which had been joint with UTB for some time, had no accreditation of its own, and keeping UTB going “on paper” allowed TSC to keep going. But the question was, “If UTB still existed, why didn’t students get degrees from UTB instead of UTRGV?”

Excerpts:

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley... was placed on Probation following receipt of self-disclosed information submitted as part of a withdrawn merger application
and receipt of a completed Institutional Summary Form. Prior to the institution’s next review by SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees in December 2017, a Special Committee will conduct an on-site evaluation of the institution’s compliance with the Principles of Accreditation(.) ...

Probation is the most serious sanction imposed by SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees short of loss of accreditation. ... The maximum consecutive time that an institution may be on Probation is two years. In December 2017, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will conclude 12 months on Probation. ...

What will happen in December 2017? SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees will consider the accreditation status of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley following review of a Monitoring Report submitted by the institution addressing the standards cited above for non-compliance, and the report of a Special Committee that will visit the institution in fall 2017. The Board will have the following options: (1) remove the institution from Probation without an additional report; (2) continue accreditation, continue Probation, authorize a Special Committee, and request an additional report; and (3) remove the institution from membership for failure to comply with the Principles of Accreditation.

Related posts

UTRGV placed on probation by accrediting agency
UTRGV’s accreditation probation details emerge
“We will...”

External links

Disclosure Statement Regarding the Status of UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS RIO GRANDE VALLEY

“We will...”

When UTRGV launched, it started a public campaign around the phrase, “We will.” It’s all over the place with claims about the things “we will” do. It’s on the Twitter account...

By the student press.

It’s even used by boring administrative stuff like strategic planning...

And student financial aid reminders.

In light of the accreditation probation , I thought it was time for an inspirational new addition to the “We will” campaign.

(I always thought “We will” was an ironic choice of tagline, because it indicated not that we were doing anything, just that we had plans to do it eventually, someday, sometime.)

Related posts

UTRGV placed on probation by accrediting agency
UTRGV’s accreditation probation details emerge

UTRGV’s accreditation probation details emerge

Local station KRGV and Inside Higher Ed report on what the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley has done to get into hot water with the accreditation agency, SACS.

And it’s not just the “timing issue” that president Guy Bailey claimed it was.

The SACC Coordinator of Communications Pamela Cravey explained a few.

“For failure to comply with principle 1.1 integrity, comprehensive standard 3.4.4 acceptance of academic credit, comprehensive standard 3.4.7 consortia relationships contractual agreement,” she said.

Inside Higher Ed calls the list of shortcomings “unusually long.”

(T)o judge by SACS's laundry list of areas in which the new institution is falling short of the accreditor's requirements and standards, UT Rio Grande Valley appears to be a work in progress.

A spokeswoman for SACS cited a full 10 major areas in which the new Texas campus had faltered, including such basic things as assuring that it “operates with integrity in all areas.” Other areas of difficulty included complying with federal financial aid audits and ensuring that the institution's degrees are based on instruction it offers itself (rather than by other institutions).

My reaction might be summarized as: “Holy sh*t.” I mean, to be accused of a lack of integrity? Judging from the quote above, it appears to be section 1.1, which would make it literally the first thing on the list that universities are supposed to do. I have heard, but not confirmed, that there is a lower level of concern, “warning.” If there is, we kind of blew past that.

UTRGV is not the only university on the list, as Inside Higher Ed notes. There are nine others, but UTRGV is unusual in that it is part of a state university system, serves the most students, and was launched with very high goals of creating a new research university.

What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of the University of Texas System board rooms these days.

At the start of the semester, the UT system was praising UTRGV for its first year, which it called “stellar.”

In the middle of the semester, we learn that the med school isn’t going well and UTRGV mispent millions of dollars.

At the end of the semester, we’re getting warning shots that our legitimacy as an institution is in question.

Update: The campus newspaper, The Rider, has published the full list of ten points of concern:

• Integrity (Principle 1.1)
• Acceptance of academic credits (Comprehensive standards 3.4.4)
• Consortial relationships/contractual agreements (Comprehensive standards 3.4.7)
• Institutional credits for a degree (Comprehensive standards 3.5.2)
• Institutional credits for a graduate degree (Comprehensive standards 3.6.3)
• Financial aid audits (Comprehensive standards 3.10.2)
• Substantive change (Comprehensive standards 3.12.1)
• Advertising, Student Recruitment, and Representation of Accredited Status policy compliance, (Comprehensive standards 3.13)
• Publication of accreditation status (Comprehensive standards 3.14.1)
• Recruitment materials (Federal requirement 4.6)

The Rider also reports the faculty senate will be meeting with the president soon.

Update, 9 December 2016: Local newspaper The Monitor wrote an unusually pissy editorial complaining that SACS should have released all the details of the concerns that put the institution on probation, and demanding more information.

Meanwhile, mark your calendars for 15 December, when SACS is planning on posting more about the issue:

(Pamela Cravey) said her agency will post “a public disclosure statement” on its website on Dec. 15 providing additional insight.

These statements include an update and explanation of actions taken and what it means for the institution, but the violations are not typically listed, based on statements currently available.

Another update, 9 December 2016: The Faculty Senate emailed the faculty today after meeting with President Bailey. They described the situation thus:

The concerns shared at this point in time center on the transfer of UTB students to UTRGV to meet the expectations of the timeline set by Texas legislature. It took longer for Texas Southmost College to gain independent accreditation than expected. If UTB had been abolished on August 31, 2015 (the date UTPA was abolished), all TSC students would have lost their financial aid. This meant that UTB could not be abolished until a later date even though it had no students. ...

We found President Bailey to be very straightforward about the situation. He provided us with detailed documented timelines starting in July 2013 through September 2016. Our institutions had been in communication with SACSCOC consistently throughout this process. He reassured us that there are no concerns with faculty, programs, students or financial aid.

Update, 11 December 2016: Local paper The Monitor has obtained new documents relating to UTRGV’s accreditation issues.

Because UTB would remain an accredited institution after the creation of UTRGV, there were discussions of transferring all UTB students to UTRGV to avoid “teach-outs,” which would be agreements with UTB and TSC to teach bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs at UTRGV. The next move would be to consolidate or merge UTB with UTRGV.

“Discussed the benefits of just moving all to UTRGV to avoid teach-out and facilitate the award of financial aid,” the log of a Feb. 23, 2015 meeting states.

This meeting was attended by UTRGV officials Bailey, Brown, Provost Havidan Rodriguez, and SACSCOC’s Armstrong, and Director for Legal Affairs Carol Luthman.

A year later, however, during a conference call between Brown, Donat and Armstrong, the SACSCOC officials seemed confused by what transpired during that Feb. 23, meeting.

“No UTB Students in fall 2015; this was not their understanding from the February 23, 2015 meeting,” states the log of a May 4, 2016 call. “Need to respond by clearly describing our understanding of the February 23, 2015 meeting and provide documentation that had been transparent on how UTB operates.”

It still doesn’t address why “integrity” is concern number one.

Minor annoyance: the story repeats the myth that UTRGV is the first university created this century.

Related posts

Show me what you value
Our med school is not going smoothly
Physics fraud
UTRGV placed on probation by accrediting agency

External links

UTRGV Reassures Students Probation Period Won’t Affect Them
A Watchdog Bites
UTRGV may have violated 10 standards on path to probation EDITORIAL: UTRGV probation questions need specifics
UTRGV probation fears dispelled

UTRGV placed on probation by accrediting agency

This is not good.

University president Guy Bailey sent an email to the campus today informing us that the university had been placed on probation by SACS, the regional accrediting agency.

The reasons for this are not clear. When I went to the SACS website, there are no details about this that I could find. Bailey referred to some “timing issues” around the separation of legacy university, UT Brownsville, from Texas Southmost College. But how that split affects the sort of things accreditation is supposed to measure, like financial stability, instructor qualifications, adequate assessment, it not at all clear.

UTRGV has to stay accredited. It’s just non-negotiable for students, faculty, and administration. A non-accredited university is just a diploma mill, and has no real standing.

More details are supposedly coming next month. So this is a story to watch closely.

External links

Accrediting agency places University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on probation

Polisplaining science

At the National Review, Julie Kelly says scientists should stop playing politics.

I’d be fine with that if politicians stopped playing scientist.

How many times have we seen politicians expressing opinions about the facts around scientific issues? Not policy issues around science, or funding science, or anything else that is a legitimate domain of politicians, “polisplaining” scientists. Politicians throwing snowballs to claim “global warming isn’t real” kind of stuff.

Hey politicians, you came into my house, and called my work, and the work of my colleagues, “lies straight from the pit of hell.” You routinely hold up the work of scientists for public ridicule as examples of taxpayer waste (even when it cost $48 in spare parts). Don’t antagonize scientists and expect us to say nothing.

Kelly warns that the public doesn’t trust scientists on some issues. The article kind of implies that public trust in scientists is in freefall. But in most polls in developed countries, scientists regularly come out as one of the most trusted professions.

In the United Kingdom, poll results came out today putting scientists as one of the most trusted professions. Politicians in general? Last.

In the United States, the poll phrasing isn’t quite equivalent. Even so, college teachers (which, since most scientists are professors, is reasonably close) got more than 50% of people rating them as very trustworthy, while members of Congress rated 8%.

While public trust in scientists is higher than that of politicians, I do agree that scientists should want to keep public trust. That’s important. But if the public doesn’t trust scientists on some issues, whose fault is that? There are documented cases of deliberate, politically motivated disinformation campaigns to convince people not to trust scientists. And that came from the political right.

External links

Scientists Should Stop Mixing Their Work with Politics

Campuses as sanctuaries

My campus is about 85% Hispanic, and we are one of the closest to the US/Mexico border. So we have an unusual perspective on a lot of issues concerning immigration. I’m mostly just quoting this story because I think it’s going to be an interesting one in the next few months.

The Faculty Senate of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley unanimously passed a resolution Friday endorsing the idea of a sanctuary campus. ... The resolution was passed in response to a recent petition signed by more than 1,500 students that asks President Guy Bailey to prohibit campus police or immigration authorities from asking students about immigration status.

My prediction is that President Bailey will do nothing. Because:

Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted in opposition to “sanctuary campuses” Thursday vowing to cut state funding from any state institution that assumes a sanctuary status.

As far as I’ve been able to observe, money seems to be President Bailey’s major motivator for doing anything as an adminstrator. Even the threat of losing state money will probably be enough to ensure compliance from institutions.

The Vice President of Young Republicans at UTRGV Jaime Garcia called the petition reckless.
“We could have stayed UTPA and UTB but we merged to get access to the funds that the bigger schools get here in Texas,” Garcia said.

Non sequiter. I don’t see how the merger is related to any of these issues. It’s also frustrating to see a petition – names on a piece of paper – one of the most notoriously sedate forms of political activism there is, being branded as “reckless.”

Update, 5 December 2016: Called it.

“There is no problem right now, and so, you stand a much greater chance of creating a problem if you make that declaration,” (UTRGV President Guy) Bailey said in an interview Wednesday.

Let’s not take a stand because something might happen. Gah.

Additional, 5 December 2016: In an email to faculty, the faculty senate noted of its resolution:

We do not use the term “University Sanctuary”, but do support our students, faculty and staff. ... We felt that we needed to step-up and not wait until later. We want everyone to know where we stand on this issue.

Well... they do use “Sanctuary campus” to describe what other institutions have done. Here’s the text:

WHEREAS the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) has a mission to “Transform the Rio Grande Valley” through an “accessible educational environment;”

WHEREAS, UTRGV has a goal to foster sustainable community-university relationships and lists “Diversity, Access, and Inclusion” as values;

WHEREAS the Senate and our academic community and peers across the country are concerned about the recent increase in hate crimes and inflammatory language around the United States since the presidential campaign;

WHEREAS there have been repeated examples of threats against women, LGBTQIA-identified individuals, specific ethnic and religious groups, and immigrants during and after a divisive presidential election;

WHEREAS President Bailey sent out a memo on 11/16 that stated, “Please join me in ensuring that all members of the UTRGV community embrace our commitment to a diverse, inclusive, safe, and supportive learning and working environment.” He referred to this list of University policies that support this commitment:
http://www.utrgv.edu/en-us/about-utrgv/office-of-the-president/presidents-message/2016/october-31-2016/

WHEREAS the U.S. president elect has openly discussed eliminating the DACA program that supports our undocumented students and has championed the rapid increase in the deportation of undocumented immigrant community members which could negatively impact our community, our students and their families, our staff and their families, our faculty and friends;

WHEREAS UTRGV has a goal to “Cultivate a welcoming, inclusive, and nurturing climate for all faculty and staff” including a commitment to “foster a supportive family-friendly climate;”

WHEREAS the internal 2011 memo indicates that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are subject to certain restrictions upon entering college campuses should be affirmed post-election; https://www.ice.gov/doclib/ero-outreach/pdf/10029.2-policy.pdf

WHEREAS the president-elect has campaigned on banning Muslims from entering the United States and his cabinet members have in the past suggested a registry of Muslim American citizens;

WHEREAS UTRGV has a focus on Globalization with a goal to “Foster a globally-connected university culture” with an initiative to “Increase the number of global partnerships that align with university priorities;”

WHEREAS UTRGV and its students have benefitted from the 2001 decision signed by Rick Perry that allows undocumented students to establish residency and enjoy in-state tuition, and later he and the Texas legislature allowed these students some access to the Texas Grant program, decisions which increased access to educational opportunities in our community;

WHEREAS over 28 university campuses have declared their campuses Sanctuary Campuses and many more (over 100) in the process of declaring;

WHEREAS UTRGV has the highest number of Senate Bill students in Texas;

THEREFORE, be it resolved that UTRGV be designated an All-Inclusive Campus, where all Vaquer@s are welcomed and supported.

To that end, the Faculty Senate of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, call upon the university administration to take the following actions and/or make these assurances, to the extent legally possible:

1. that the university assign a specific administrative office to assist our DACA students and other students who lack the protections of citizenship on a strictly confidential basis.
2. that the administration send a clear, public message that UTRGV will not tolerate xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, Islamophobic, and racist comments and actions on campus, and that we as a university will not tolerate religious persecution or the trivialization of sexual assault.
3. that the university continue its efforts towards being an allied campus and continue its trainings and inclusivity initiatives for LGBTQIA-identified students, faculty, and staff.
4. that the university avoid compliance with a registry of Muslim citizens, and that the university carry on with its pre-election (11/8/16) processes for admitting international students.
5. that the university make a public commitment to continue protecting student privacy and announce an assurance that it not release any records regarding the immigration status of students and their family members to institutions or authorities who would restrict a student’s opportunity for a quality education.
6. that the university publicly advocate for the continued resident tuition designation for undocumented students and Texas Grant consideration for Dreamer students at the forthcoming state legislative sessions.
7. that campus police will not question anyone’s immigration status or religious affiliation, nor will it enter into systematic partnerships or agreements with outside agencies, including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, to question the legal status or religious affiliation of our students, faculty, or staff.

*We use Vaquer@s to include all gender identities.

This document was aided greatly by the Petition sent by UTRGV’s Minority Affairs Council, LUCHA (La Unión Chicanx Hijxs de Aztlán), Center for Mexican American Studies, Mexican American Studies Program, Center for Bilingual Studies, Muslim Students’ Association, WAKE-UP (Women Artistically Kollecting Experiencias-Unidas Prosperando), Voto Latino, and BESO (Bilingual Education Student Organization) to President Bailey on 11/17/16.

Credit goes to the University of Oregon FS resolution on the same issue for some of the format and language of this resolution.
http://senate.uoregon.edu/2016/11/15/notice-of-motion-declaring-uo-a-sanctuary-campus/

Update, 13 December 2016: On 9 December, President Bailey sent around an email that basically affirmed that he would do nothing except the stuff the university was already committed to doing.

This message is a response to those concerns and is meant to make absolutely clear that UTRGV is committed to placing student success and safety at the heart of the institution. The UTRGV community includes students, faculty, and staff of many backgrounds, and UTRGV welcomes and celebrates what each person brings to campus.

The following are current practices at UTRGV. We reaffirm these practices as part of our commitment to an inclusive campus community: [snip]

External links

UTRGV faculty senate unanimously backs 'sanctuary campus' campaign
Bailey: Not a good time to declare UTRGV a sanctuary campus
UTRGV not likely to be deemed ‘sanctuary’ campus
UTRGV not a sanctuary institution fit

Post fact politics catches up to science communication

There was been much hand-wringing in political discussion the last few weeks about how we are living in a “post fact” world dominated by “fake news.”

Well, hi-di-ho, people, welcome to science education and science communication of the last few decades.

Fake news? Evolutionary biologists have been putting up with people saying things like, “There are no transitional fossils” for-frickin’-ever. Even when you show them Archaeopteryx. We’ve been putting up with the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis who attack established science and chug along regardless of scientific facts and countless debunkings.

We’ve been through the argument that, “If only people knew the facts, people would act different. The facts speak for themselves,” and seen how that has failed, and failed, and failed to budge public opinion on some of the best understood science out there. Unfortunately, even among scientists, this attitude of “The facts speak for themselves” is still common. People who say otherwise, like Randy Olson and Matthew C. Nisbet, have received way more criticism for pointing this out than they deserve.

Now the same strategies are not just confined to being deployed in a few hot button scientific topics, they’ve metastasized over the whole body politic in multiple countries.

It’s to our shame that we science educators and science communicators didn’t figure out effective ways to deal with those kinds of issues.

Additional, 5 December 2016: A new piece in the Guardian about how algorithms are delivering news on the Internet convinces me that, in some ways, what we’re seeing in qualitatively different from the misinformation that scientists have faced for the past decade. It’s deeper and more organized.

I think there are still powerful lessons from science communication, though: when trying to persuade, facts alone are not very persuasive.

I worry that policy wonks will go through the same long battles over “facts” and “evidence” that scientists have, and just believe that the facts will speak for themselves. They won’t. Facts need fierce advocates.

External links

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search

Picture from here.

Tuesday Crustie: Shiny

If I’d known Moana had a giant decorator crab in it, I’d have pre-ordered tickets.

Tamatoa also gets the second best song in the movie, although even it pales in comparison to “You’re Welcome.”