The Methods Section

Now that I’ve been regularly walking in the evenings, I’ve been getting sick of the same songs on my iPod.  Enter the Radiolab podcasts.  I dread the day when I run out of their archived episodes!

NPR has been playing in my car for years, but I had never caught an episode of Radiolab.  There is no set schedule for this program – they come out when they come out.  I’ve heard the promos for Radiolab many times, and I always wanted to listen to it.  I love Science Fridays on NPR, and I knew this program would be right up my alley.

I am officially addicted.  The research stories and anecdotes are well produced and extremely entertaining.  I find myself laughing out loud often, usually startling some birds, on my walks.  Some of the topics on the show will almost certainly be discussed in this blog – many are just too interesting not investigate further.  For example, the short episode “Strangers in the Mirror” detailed the lives of two people with Facial Blindness. These people are incapable of identifying individuals by their faces.  After listing, I went online and found the “Famous Faces” test they discussed during the show.  That test is part of a collection of many on the Test My Brain site from Harvard University.  I ended up spending a few hours testing my brain!

The sound quality on Radiolab is unreal.  The show seamlessly integrates sound effects and music into its interview/reporting style format.  During some segments, the background audio is just as important as the interview.  Honestly, I feel more immersed in the stories when I listen to Radiolab than when I watch TV.

New episodes are posted sporadically on the show’s website and can be heard on your local NPR channel.

STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers / Mary Roach (2003)

Why I chose this book: Sitting in the Denver airport, I realized that my knitting project was not going to last for the entire flight.  The cover of this book was what first got my attention as I scanned the nonfiction section in the airport bookstore.  The book looked shockingly funny and extremely interesting -  what more could one want for a three hour flight?!

Why I finished it: This book is hilarious.  Sure, you might need to have a slightly morbid sense of humor, but I truly think  that anyone but the most squeamish of people would enjoy this title.  Mary Roach travels to some places you’d expect from a book about cadavers (mortuary, anatomy class) and a lot of places you’d never guess would be using dead bodies.  My favorite chapter involved Roach visiting a lab where the scientists use cadavers instead of dummies in crash testing.  I had no idea that was common practice, but apparently whole bodies and severed appendages have been getting battered by scientists for years in collision testing.

Roach tells the stories of these cadavers and the living people who work with them in an extremely respectful manner; the humor usually stems from her own inner monologue and awkwardness (and a fondness for puns).  She begins the book by immediately distinguishing you from the cadaver you will eventually leave behind.  What happens to you when you die is not in question here – just what can happen to your physical shell once you bid it adieu.  Once that distinction is made, Roach is allowed to freely discuss the bizarre, often disgusting, but always intriguing journeys of human cadavers without offending the people they once were or those who loved them.  You’ll discover the variety of uses for cadavers once they have been donated to science, and maybe even decide to try a new environmentally friendly form of ‘burial’ yourself.  Human compost anyone?

Overall Rating: 4.5   I would have loved to read more about the different experiments using cadavers.  Some of the history chapters, while short, seemed to drag on and felt out of place.  They did not really subtract from my enjoyment of the work, but I cannot see giving it a perfect 5 for that reason.  Regardless, this title is highly recommended!

Everyday I read something new about how more and more Americans are putting the car in the garage and walking or biking to work.  It really is a win/win situation: less pollution in the air, less money on gas, less fat on you!  Now that summer has finally arrived in Chicago, I think I am ready to try some ‘green commuting.’  I have a bike, but honestly, I do not think my cycling skills are where they need to be to safely ride the 3.5 miles to work on a busy street.  For starters, I’ll be walking.

After planning my route (I used Google Maps street view to check for sidewalks), I did my first walking commute yesterday.  While I really enjoyed it, I have a few tips for any new green commuters out there!

1. Bring clean work clothes to work the day before!  — Until I’m up to walking everyday, I’ll be driving a few days a week.  Carrying my work shoes and clothes with me on the walk was not comfortable at all.
2. It will be hotter than you think!  — Do not wear your work clothes!  You will sweat, even if it is under 70 degrees.
3. Wear sun protection!  — My arms and cheeks are very pink after my walk. I figured it was early enough to beat the harsher rays, but next time I’ll be wearing sunscreen and sun glasses.
4. Try to only carry your keys, wallet, phone, and a drink!  — Carrying more = more sweat. My commute is 3.5 miles, and near the end I was wishing I had brought my water bottle.
5. If you listen to music while you walk, keep the volume low!  — You need to be able to hear emergency vehicles and traffic to stay safe.
6. Using the sidewalk does not make you invincible! — Watch out for cars turning into driveways and side streets.

Do you have any other good advice for a new walking commuter? I’m really looking forward to making this a part of my daily routine.  Anything that keeps me off the treadmill is a bonus in my book.  Happy walking!

For the first time in a long time (ie. no longer a student), I have been reading for pleasure.  Over the past two years or so I’ve kept a list of titles I really wanted to read but just didn’t have the time or energy.  My entire list is nonfiction.  I’m not a fiction reader; I used to be, but to be completely honest, Harry Potter killed it for me.  Those books were not that great, but I couldn’t stop reading them! And don’t get me started on the ending… could it be any more saccharine?  I want those hours back!

Anyway…back to the list… almost all of the books on it are what one might call Popular Science.  I think a good popular science book should include the following:

• humor (when appropriate, which it almost always is)
• the assumption that the reader has some scientific knowledge, but isn’t a specialist
• an interesting story, history, or problem to discuss (I want to learn AND be entertained)
• be memorable enough that if I put the book down for a week, I won’t have to reread past chapters to remember all the science that came before)

This summer I plan on reviewing every book I read.  Hopefully, that will amount to about 10 or more titles. We’ll see.  I used to have an aversion to ‘quitting’ on a book, even if every second reading it made me want to hurl it across the room.  Since deciding on criteria for a good pop sci book, I’m going to try giving myself the freedom to walk away from a dud.  Once again, we’ll see.

Book 1: Dark Banquet by Bill Schutt (2008)

Why I chose this book:  This was on several ‘Best of 2008′ lists, but really its the sub-title that hooked me.  A book all about blood feeding creatures? I’m sold.

Why I finished it: Schutt combines his witty, at times sarcastic tone for describing personal anecdotes and history lessons with extremely clear and informative scientific sections. The best stories were the author’s own experiences capturing and studying bats in the wild.  Actually, all of the chapters dealing with bats were the most fascinating.  Of the 1,110 species of bats, only three are vampires, and all are native to the Americas.  They are also extremely cute ( its worth noting here that Patricia Wynne’s sketches in the book are really terrific.)  Many sections contained graphic descriptions of bats feeding, and many readers may have a hard time getting through those sections.  However, you shouldn’t sugar coat nature, and I think Schutt has done his bats a great service by telling their story to general audience.

Why it was difficult to finish: No more bats after the first couple chapters (less than half the book).  This would not have been a problem except that the rest of the chapters were at best disjointed and at worst boring.  Schutt is a bat man.  He knows bats better than almost anyone else.  He makes it quite clear that the research he did on leeches, bed bugs, etc. was done solely for this publication, and that’s the problem.  His stories about bats come alive because they are written with the passion of a man who loves these animals and has lived these experience.  Anyone could go interview some entomologists, read a few papers, and write his chapters about the other sanguivores.  The latter half of the book just is not genuine.  I wish Schutt had collected more material about vampire bats, even if that meant including more science and upping the reading level.

Overall Rating: On a scale of 1 – 5 (where 1 is ‘Chuck it’, 5 is ‘Loved it’), this book gets a 3.5.  The sections on bats get a 5, but the rest of the book is more like a 2.  Still, I found the bat chapters interesting and entertaining enough to recommend this title.

I remotely attended the OpenSciNY conference last Friday and was extremely impressed with the creativity and care going into current open science projects and resources.  The third speaker, Jean-Claude Bradley, was especially impressive, and I came away with some new ideas for scientific literacy instruction.

First off, Bradley discussed open notebook science, and how his ultimate goal is to make scientific research as transparent and accessible as possible. His research notebooks, and those of the students he teaches, are all available online and updated in real time.  Raw data from the notebook can be seamlessly connected to experimental reports.   All results are kept in easily shared formats (Google Docs, Excel) so that others can quickly view, comment, and use them.

But why go through all of this?  How do open practices benefit scholarship as a whole?  Many will argue that having experimental results easily accessible online is a detriment to scholarship; who is vetting this material? Where is the security of peer review?

Bradley flatly stated that peer review cannot and does not equal infallible results.  Review is not proof, and scholarship is not peer review.  The term ‘peer review’ has no standard definition between publications.  In most cases, reviewers are anonymous; readers are not privy to their qualifications or experiences. Journals promising peer review rely on the reader’s interpretation and preconceived notions as to how that practice reflects on article quality.  Without any standardization, peer review becomes less of a practice to ensure quality and more of a marketing tactic for publishers.  In 2009, bloggers at the Scholarly Kitchen were able to get an extremely ridiculous article published in an open, “peer reviewed” electronic journal simply by paying for an Open Access fee.  Obviously, peer review does not equal quality.

Even the most trusted journals publish articles with extreme errors, and I’m not talking about grammatical mistakes.  Bradley used the Journal of the American Chemical Society as an example of a highly respected periodical that has let some very questionable articles slip through peer review unquestioned.  For a prime example, check out the NaH debacle here. (Link to the now withdrawn paper.)

Unfortunately, many librarians and instructors are supporting the illusion of peer review.  Professors require students to use only peer reviewed sources in their papers; librarians explain how peer reviewed sources are the only true ‘scholarly’ sources.  Students need to be able to critically evaluate research articles themselves.  Providing a list of criteria for scholarly articles (peer reviewed, many references, etc.) may be doing students a disservice.  Sure, seeing that an article cites no references is a good reason to be skeptical of its contents, but students need to understand why references are important.

Not only that, but science librarians need to address more research specific issues in classes.  The value of raw data cannot be overlooked, as it often is in many published articles.  When the raw data for any experiment is easily available to readers, the science behind the experiment becomes transparent, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.  Bradley stressed this point during his presentation and discussed how open notebook science allows readers to quickly find raw data for all of his research.  I think many science librarians overlook this important issue; we tell students that the methods and materials section of a scholarly article needs to be clear and thorough.  One should be able to complete the experiments by using the methods section as a recipe.  However, if the author’s raw data is not available, it is impossible to know if there were any mistakes made in the results.

I think the biggest lesson I learned from attending OpenSciNY was that even though I was a working chemist 3 years ago, I was already out of the loop when it came to the current scientific research community.  If librarians want to be subject specialists, they must attend events and conferences outside the library realm.  I know how to search the literature and evaluate research, but before this conference, I had only heard of open science in passing.  I’ll be making it a point to skip some library conferences in favor of engaging with the scientific community this year.  Finding out the needs of working professionals can only help me better serve the next generation of scientists.

For more information on Dr. Bradley’s research check out his blog, Useful Chemistry, and the wiki/open lab notebook for his classes and research.

2,500 square miles of ocean… at least 200,000  gallons continuing to pour out each day… containment costs at over $6 million dollars per day…

These numbers cannot even begin to describe the enormity of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  Now, however, thanks to Paul Rademacher and Google Earth, anyone can view the oil spill in relation to their own location.  Visitors can use the website to transpose an image of the spill over any place in the world.  What a fabulous use of Google Earth; this type of visualization is better than any analogy I’ve heard on the news (“It’s the size of Jamaica!”)

Here is a look from my location: Chicago, IL.  Yeah… that’s big.