The kind of thing that would give me nightmares

Laboratory sabotoge. Magdalena Koziol was baffled about why her zebrafish experiments were all failing: the fish were all dying, every time. So she did a simple experiment, setting up some fish labeled with her initials, and others without the label. The fish with her initials all died, the others were fine, proving that the initials “MK” carry a curse.

No, wait, that’s not it. She put in hidden cameras and revealed the true cause of the dead fish.

The experiment was a key step in proving that someone was tampering with her experiments, according to a lawsuit Koziol filed with the Superior Court in New Haven on 7 February. When hidden cameras were installed in the lab, they revealed a fellow postdoc poisoning her fish, the complaint says. Now, Koziol is suing the alleged perpetrator, Polloneal Jymmiel Ocbina. According to the complaint, he left Yale after he was caught on video.

Ocbina is now working at a communications company in New York. He was clearly ethically unsuited to work in biology, that’s for sure. Heck, he shouldn’t be working in science, period.

All’s well now, though, right? Villain caught, sent shuffling off in disgrace, etc.? Nope. Her advisor seems to have resented losing the rascally Ocbina.

From then on, Koziol’s relationship with her boss deteriorated. The complaint says he refused to provide her with a letter about the sabotage, which presumably would have helped explain her lack of data to future employers. Koziol alleges that he criticized her work and character, didn’t help her make up for the lost time, gave her "angry looks when passing in the lab," didn’t list her as a contributor to a Nature article, and threatened to fire and "destroy" her. Koziol became depressed, suffered from sleeplessness, and gained weight; when she and Giraldez talked for 3 hours in August 2012, Koziol "cried throughout the meeting," the complaint says.

Koziol filed a grievance procedure against Giraldez, which she lost; Yale, in its statement to Science, calls her allegations against Giraldez and the university "factually distorted and legally baseless."

It would have been so easy to do the right thing here — Koziol was the victim, and she was treated like the bad guy.

But some good things have come out of it; she’s left Yale, she’s gone back to the UK, and she has an appointment in the lab of John Gurdon (The John Gurdon, I should say, and definitely a step upwards), who is wonderfully supportive.

Koziol left Yale in March 2013 and returned to the lab of Nobel laureate John Gurdon in Cambridge, where she had done her doctoral work. “I was very happy to have her back,” Gurdon says, “because her work is excellent. She was a model student.” Gurdon helped secure a small grant for Koziol and donated some of his personal money to keep her going. He’s optimistic about her chances against Yale. “They wrote her a letter promising her circumstances in which she could conduct her research,” he says. “And they quite clearly did not provide even remotely adequate circumstances.”

We can tell who the good guys are in this story, at least.

I’m just wondering how Ocbina could escape so lightly. Any student in my lab who dared to both do harm to a colleague and to do willful harm to laboratory animals would face some fearsome wrath. There would be criminal proceedings, not mere expulsion.

#upfordebate: @DonLemon Did a chupacabra eat Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

It’s kind of neat how a twitter hashtag and my contempt for cable news are colliding right now. Apparently, True Skeptics™ are supposed to be willing to debate anything and everything, even if it gives unwarranted credibility to nonsense. The True Skeptics™ must be loving CNN right now, because with the unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, they are just going to town with weird speculation. Everyone seems to be doing it.

So cable news has to fill up 24 hours of endless talk with something, and this is the perfect opportunity for them: call in a panel of ‘experts’, have an open-minded moderator who feeds all the speculation, and then blather away in the complete absence of information. CNN bubblehead Don Lemon has become the go-to guy for every crazy theory out there, going so far as to ask about the possibility of a supernatural explanation, and here he is babbling about black holes, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Twilight Zone.

There are six nobodies sitting in on this panel. If I were one of them, I would not say that the ideas were unlikely but that I just love the theories — I’d stand up, throw off my microphone, and flip off Don Lemon as I left the set.

Open-mindedness to a degree is a virtue, but not to such an extent that it’s like you’ve got an open head wound and are stumbling about hemorrhaging copiously and smearing flecks of greasy brain tissue on the walls you’re bumping into.

This is why I don’t watch any of the 24 hour news channels. It’s like a bad zombie movie come to life.

Watching Nate Silver squander his reputation

Nate Silver is putting together this journalism startup, and it’s already on the path to failure. I mentioned his oblivious sexism the other day, and now we learn the name of the ‘science’ writer he’s bringing to to cover the environment.

Nate Silver’s highly anticipated data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight launched on Monday, with a controversial figure covering science issues. Silver has brought on Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, as a contributing writer – a political scientist who comes with a long history of data distortion and confrontations with climate scientists.

That last sentence is a lovely example of understatement. Pielke, both Jr. and Sr., are denialist kooks.

I don’t think I’ll bother reading FiveThirtyEight. “Data-driven,” hah.

If you won’t pay people what they’re worth, you’ll get people worth what you pay

Here’s another twist on the problematic trend to hire more temporary/part-time/adjunct faculty at universities. It’s a disgraceful abuse of skilled academics and good teachers — would you believe that some schools hire adjuncts to teach four courses a semester (a brutal load, let me tell you) and pay them $16,000 per year? Who would be insane enough to accumulate all that college debt, then invest 4+ years in an advanced study program to get a Ph.D., for a poverty-level income? But that’s where we stand.

Here’s the other ugly side of the problem. The University of Idaho needed someone to teach microbiology, so they carried out a ‘national’ search for a temporary microbiologist, offering $6-8,000 per semester for a one year position with no promise of a continuation. Moscow, Idaho is a truly lovely place, but would you pack up and move across the country to spend one year in Moscow for maybe $16,000, and then probably have to move somewhere else again after that year was up?

No, you would not, if you had a choice. If you were really desperate, maybe.

But they hired someone. Someone local. They got Gordon Wilson who teaches at the New Saint Andrews College in Moscow. New Saint Andrews got some fame from Christopher Hitchens; Hitchens did a debate tour with Doug Wilson, the founder of the school. It’s notorious for a number of other reasons, too, including this stunning list:

  • In some circumstances, the penalty for adultery should be execution.
    Women should be permitted to date or “court” only with their fathers’ permission and, if they’re Christian, date and court with only other Christians.

  • Woman “was created to be dependent and responsive to a man.”

  • A rapist should pay the victim’s father a bride price and, if the father approves, should marry the victim.

  • Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people are “sodomites” and “people with foul sexual habits.” He favors the “exile [of] some homosexuals, depending on the circumstances and the age of the victim.”

  • Cursing one’s parents is “deserving of punishment by death. Parental failure is not a defense.” Christian parents “need not be afraid to lay it on” when spanking their children. If fact, in Wilson’s world view, “godly discipline” should include spanking 2-year-olds for such “sins” as whining.

  • “A rapist should pay the victim’s father a bride price and, if the father approves, should marry the victim.”

  • “Slavery as it existed in the South … was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. … There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.”

It’s also an incestuous little place of marginal academic credibility.

The faculty at New St. Andrews is hardly diverse. Several are N.S.A. graduates who went on to do master’s degrees elsewhere and came back to teach. Only 4 of 17 faculty members have Ph.D.’s (those few are always addressed as “Doctor” — proof that N.S.A. has not entirely escaped the intellectual insecurity typical of evangelical colleges). Doug Wilson’s son, son-in-law and youngest brother teach at the college. “Someone’s going to say, ‘Isn’t that a little cozy?’ ” Wilson admits. “Part of modernity’s negative legacy is the pretense of objectivity. All institutions thrive on interconnectedness, affection and loyalty.”

Read their statement of faith. Of greatest relevance is that they say:

In the beginning, God created the material universe from nothing in six ordinary days. He spoke, and by the Word of His power, it was. Our science on the nature and time of this event must be determined in full submission to the Word of God.

That’s right. The University of Idaho has just hired a young earth creationist, biblical literalist, and racist evangelical Christian to teach microbiology. UI biology students: you are getting ripped off.

For a sample of the mental gymnastics involved in creationist “science,” look no further than Wilson’s contribution [PDF] to a 2004 conference, in which he posits that God created every living thing with extra “gene sets” for carnivory, venom, pathogenicity, and other “natural evils,” which were, metaphorically, stored under glass to be activated by the Deity in the event of human malfeasance.

He’s going to be teaching microbiology.

He says he won’t be teaching creationism in the class — I don’t believe him — but this is what he does consider legitimate to teach.

I made it clear 9 years ago and this semester that I wasn’t going to promote my views or disparage evolutionary views in class. That said, I have stated that I do not share the views of common descent held by the main stream scientific community. Which is well with in my rights to do. The only thing that I have presented (briefly) is a distinction between historical science and empirical science, and that conclusions drawn from the former don’t have the high level of certainty as conclusions drawn from the latter. This distinction is not a creationist invention. Ernst Mayr holds to this as well. The conclusions drawn from historical science are as good as the presuppositions on which they are based. This was simply a moment to encourage students to exercise some critical thinking skills in assessing truth claims of the scientific community.

That should sound familiar — it’s the same bogus rhetorical ploy Ken Ham uses.

I do not consider Mayr the sine qua non of the science of philosophy (pretty far from it, actually), but you don’t get to use him to defend Ham’s idiocy. All biologists acknowledge a historical component to our science, but we don’t treat it as a pejorative, nor do we claim that it lacks observational power. Mayr’s thoughts on the subject are quite clear.

Despite the passing of a century before this new branch of philosophy fully developed, its eventual form is based on Darwinian concepts. For example, Darwin introduced historicity into science. Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science—the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.

For example, three different scenarios have been proposed for the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous: a devastating epidemic; a catastrophic change of climate; and the impact of an asteroid, known as the Alvarez theory. The first two narratives were ultimately refuted by evidence incompatible with them. All the known facts, however, fit the Alvarez theory, which is now widely accepted. The testing of historical narratives implies that the wide gap between science and the humanities that so troubled physicist C. P. Snow is actually nonexistent—by virtue of its methodology and its acceptance of the time factor that makes change possible, evolutionary biology serves as a bridge.

So basically, Wilson is saying, Mayr used the word “historical”, therefore our wacky weird abuse of the word “historical” is valid. He’s an idiot.

The University of Idaho just hired an incompetent religious crackpot who thinks black people were happier as slaves and who despises women to teach a biology course.

And everyone is going to sit back and be fucking fine with it. And if you point out that this man isn’t fit to be pretending to be a microbiologist, he’s going to whine about the persecution of Christians.

Spreading Christian hypocrisy world-wide!

The Nkhoma Synod in Malawi has recently sent out a letter telling all their church-goers who to vote for. It’s an interesting document with some revealing wording.

The Church continues to note with great concern the levels at which moral values are being eroded in the name of civilization, human and minority rights.

Cases of lack of respect for the elders, lack of decency in the dressing, promotion of secular humanism, homosexuality, abortion, prostitution and pornography are all acts that our Lord does not condone.

According to the Pastoral Letter, any nation that promotes these ‘immoral’ values faces judgment from God.

Notice what stands in opposition to their “moral values”: Civilization. Human rights. Minority rights. When you have to acknowledge that civilization and basic humanity are against you, shouldn’t that be a warning sign that maybe you ought to rethink your values?

I like the fact that secular humanism is noted as one of their enemies (and, presumably, one of those forces aided and abetted by civilization and human rights), and that they include a laundry list of other social concerns, like abortion and homosexuality that are all rightfully tangled together with our godlessness.

And, oh yeah, Jesus and the prostitutes. Luke 7.

44 And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.

45 Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.

46 My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.

47 Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

48 And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.

49 And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?

50 And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

So this Jesus legend blesses the prostitutes, and says nothing about homosexuals, but does rage at the moneylenders in the temple…what was it that he doesn’t condone, again, and what are the immoral values that face a rude smackdown from a god?

I’m so sorry, Malawi, I see you’re also regurgitating the poison spread by the likes of Scott Lively.

Are you visiting colleges? Here are some questions you should ask

One more story of academic inside baseball — I’ve been following John Wilkins, a brilliant philosopher of science who just can’t get a job, and I’ve been sensing waves of resentment at the rotten state of academia. I will be the first to tell you that I’ve been exceptionally lucky and privileged to get a job at a university that does a lot of things right, and one reason I can criticize freely is that UMM actually handles academic positions well.

Elsewhere…not so great.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get any kind of academic job at all, other than the miserable, harrowing, exploitive position sometimes called “adjunct”, or sometimes “lecturer” — temporary positions in which the instructor is hired on a per course basis. Bad jobs are driving out the good as university administrations cut corners, and somehow, it’s always the faculty who suffer the first painful snips.

This is the time of year when high school students come around to visit various universities and make decisions about where they want to go next year. Are you one of them? Or perhaps you’re a parent of a prospective student? You’ve got some power. Universities may be courting you, because they want your tuition dollars, or they see you have some skills that would bring honor to the school. Use your clout. Ask questions.

Here are some questions I wish more prospective students were knowledgeable enough to ask.

  • Ask, “Who teaches your introductory or service classes?” You may be thinking ahead to those lovely upper-level courses with the big names teaching them and the shiny lab equipment, but before you get there you’ll be expected to take courses outside your major — service courses in disciplines like math and English — that have big enrollments. At some universities, those will be taught by an ever-rotating set of temporary faculty called adjuncts. They are often treated like dirt, poorly paid, and given overloads. Often they’re so poorly paid they have to take adjunct positions at multiple colleges to make ends meet.

    Those course are important. You’ll take a lot of them. You want them to be well-taught. And that’s precisely where many schools cut corners on the quality of the education.

  • Ask, “How many of the faculty in your department are temporary faculty?” There are a great many colleges, some of them quite prestigious, where the swarm of adjuncts outnumbers the tenure-track faculty. Tenured faculty are in a privileged position where they get more money and lighter teaching loads, while the adjuncts are being victimized. Do not go to those colleges. Tell them why.

    Now adjuncts are often very good teachers — they have to be deeply committed to the profession to put up with the crap they have to take — but they are often spread thin and given frustratingly difficult workloads. My wife was an adjunct for a while, and she was commuting all over eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey to cover her scattered positions, on top of all the coursework. I think she was a marvelous professor, but the burdens compromised her ability to deliver to the students to the best of her ability.

  • Ask, “Can I talk to some of the other instructors?” I know the runaround. You’ll go to the university, they’ll have a lovely canned presentation of all the benefits, and you might get to sit in on a course or meet for half an hour with Professor So-and-So, who will show off their lab and talk about the great things about being in their profession. Ask to talk to any of the people who teach that first year course in your major; if you’re lucky, Professor So-and-So will say, “That’s me!” and you’re off to a good start. If you’re not so lucky, you’ll be led to a cramped office divided into cubicles with a group of temporary faculty crammed into it.

    They’ll probably still say nice things about being at the university. Partly because they do love their job, but also partly because they’re in terror of losing it.

It would be very nice if more students and their parents paid attention to the growing inequity within academic ranks, and if the tuition-paying people would regard that as important, and that the voting citizens would recognize that their state legislators are all conspiring to strangle higher education. It would be especially nice if students refused to support universities that were happily screwing over their teachers.

But I’m a realist. I know what university PR departments do and emphasize and tell prospective students is important: will your education get you a job after graduation, and how is the football team doing? Those are great smokescreens to hide the decay behind the scenes.

I’ve had a few prospective students ask the really important questions: will I learn many great and interesting things in my years at this institution, will it make me a better and wiser person, is this school investing in improving the educational experience? Those are the students I really want to keep.

By the way, I can tell you to ask those questions because I know UMM will pass them with ease: almost all of our introductory and service courses are taught by tenure-track faculty, we have almost no temporary faculty (occasionally some, to cover faculty on sabbatical leave, for instance), and I can walk you right down the hall and introduce you to each of the professors who teach every one of our courses, and they’ll be right there in those same offices when you come back in the Fall.

(This has been an advertisement for the University of Minnesota Morris. An advertisement I enthusiastically endorse.)