Here’s another way I’m privileged: I have free access to the University of Minnesota library system, with all of its journal subscriptions, so I rarely have to worry about finding something published in the major journals, with a few annoying exceptions. It’s only now, then, that I’ve learned about Sci-Hub, but I’ll be using it more, especially to deal with those exceptions.

Alexandra Elbakyan set up Sci-Hub to make science freely available.

For those of you who aren’t already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it’s sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn’t afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it’s since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court – a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.

“Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them,” Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. “Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal.”

She’s being sued by Elsevier! She is fighting the most evil science publisher in the world. This isn’t just heroism, it’s epic heroism.

The Republicans in congress have just approved a rude little bill.

The House of Representatives approved legislation Wednesday that would require the National Science Foundation to provide written justification for how every grant furthers the “national interest.”
The legislation, H.R. 3293, passed largely along party lines in the Republican-controlled House. Its sponsors characterized the measure as designed to “ensure that the National Science Foundation (NSF) is open and accountable to the taxpayers about how their hard-earned dollars are spent.”

Meanwhile, those impractical enthusiastic physicists have been all jubilant over the discovery of gravitational waves, and it’s in the media everywhere I turn. Guess how much confirmation of this phenomenon cost?

The chirp is also sweet vindication for the National Science Foundation, which spent about $1.1 billion over more than 40 years to build a new hotline to nature, facing down criticism that sources of gravitational waves were not plentiful or loud enough to justify the cost.

All right, smart guys. I’m a reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-educated biologist, and I’ve been struggling to grasp the significance of this discovery. I want you to imagine standing in front of Lamar Smith or Dana Rohrabacher and having to explain to them how a squiggle in a billion-dollar instrument furthers the national interest. These are people quite happy to throw a trillion dollars away on the F-35, but want to know exactly how every penny going to basic science will Make America Great Again.

Have fun with that.

We’ve got an interesting seminar coming to Morris next Thursday.

Thursday, February 18, 2016, 5 p.m.
Location: Imholte Hall 109
The origination of novel structures has long been an intriguing topic for biologists. Over the past few decades it has served as a central theme in evolutionary developmental biology, in part to highlight explanatory gaps in the population genetic framework of standard evolutionary theory. Yet, definitions of evolutionary innovation and novelty are frequently debated and there remains disagreement about what kinds of causal factors best explain the origin of qualitatively new variation in the history of life. I argue that instead of trying to identify a single, correct definition of evolutionary novelty, biologists should shift their attention from defining the concept to characterizing the explanatory agenda associated with the concept. The meanings of the terms “innovation” or “novelty” serve to indicate explanatory expectations for the study of diverse morphological or behavioral features. These differences in explanatory expectations or criteria of adequacy help to account for disagreements about how best to explain the origin of novelty. Thus, advancing inquiry into the developmental evolution of novel structures requires attention to three distinct dimensions—conceptual, empirical, and theoretical—and suggests that combinations of philosophical and scientific expertise harbor the most promise for increasing our understanding of the evolutionary origins of novelty.

I’m looking forward to it. We’ll see you all there, right?

Paul Campos commits a really good deconstruction of the NY Times article on Jason Lieb’s resignation for harassment. He teases out all the understated assumptions in the article, and exposes the biases that minimized the consequences of Lieb’s actions…and the culpability of the institutions that have been hiring him.

But this is also a case where I’ll tell you to read the comments. They’re entertaining. The audience seems to be lawyers and the so-called softer side of academia, and they’re all talking about how the sciences get so much more money, and how so many scientists are dismissive of philosophy and the liberal arts and think the humanities are worthless, and how STEM is hostile to women.

As someone imbedded in that STEM community, I would just like to say that they’re completely right. It’s a serious problem.

You’ve all heard this kind of nonsense before, from the worst kind of ignorant creationist.

Evolution is not a fact. That’s why it’s called a theory! There’s more evidence that the Bible is true.

It’s just jam-packed with stupidity — if only we could condense science as densely as people do ignorance, we could educate everyone in a day. Evolution is a fact, there’s an immense amount of evidence for it; this person doesn’t understand the scientific meaning of “theory”; and no, there’s evidence that the Bible exists and was written by an assortment of human beings, but no evidence that it is of supernatural origin or contains a particularly accurate history of the universe.

Unfortunately, the person who wrote that pile of ineptitude was the head teacher at St Andrew’s Church of England school in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire.

She is trying to defend herself against all the scorn being poured out against her.

Amid criticism and calls for her to resign on Twitter, Wilkinson issued a statement saying: “I’d like to make it clear that we teach the full national curriculum in school and that our pupils receive a fully rounded education.”

She also said her tweet was sent from a personal account and “represents my own views”. However, her Twitter handle was @WilkinsonHead, apparently referencing her role as headteacher.

That is not an adequate defense.

I’m glad to hear that the students are getting a proper education, in spite of the incompetence of the head teacher. But one has to wonder at her capabilities to implement that education when it defies her views of science, and one has to wonder why any institution would hire someone who rejects the values of their organization.

You are certainly allowed to have your own opinions. No one is saying that you can’t have strange opinions (I have a few of those myself) — the problem is that she’s promoting her own version of facts, which are contrary to reality and unsupportable, especially in the context of education. She can go to church, if she wants (and almost certainly does), but when she publicly hectors other teachers about the proper way to teach science, a subject she obviously has no talent in, then a response that tells her loudly and clearly that she’s wrong is not out of line. It’s actually necessary.