And people wonder why... I've had one too many Manhattans

Just saw this on the Huffington post. Someone please tell me that it's not for real.

Congresswoman Martha Roby (R-Ala.) is sponsoring HR 205, The Geometric Simplification Act, declaring the Euclidean mathematical constant of pi to be precisely 3. The bill comes in response to data and rankings from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, rating the United States' 15 year-olds 25th in the world in mathematics.

OECD is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2011, and the Paris-based NGO released its international educational rankings, placing the US in a three-way tie for math, equaling Portugal and Ireland, just beneath No. 24 Luxembourg.

"That long-held empirical value of pi, I am not saying it should be necessarily viewed as wrong, but 3 is a lot better," said Roby, the 34-year old legislator representing Alabama's second congressional district, ushered into office in the historic 2010 Republican mid-term bonanza.

"It's no panacea, but this legislation will point us in the right direction. Looking at hard data, we know our children are struggling with a heck of a lot of the math, including the geometry incorporating pi," Roby said. "I guarantee you American scores will go up once pi is 3. It will be so much easier."

The dawn of idiocracy is upon us. Head for the hills. Addendum - Despite my sobreity now, I still hold to this statement. The question is who does it apply to me or the Republicans.

AHHAHAHAAAAAA!

I guess the real question is "Was this an appropriate response?"

Riding the bus

Riding the bus has made me lose hope that an equitable American society is possible.

I think it must be the slow accumulation of "I can't believe what I'm hearing."

I recently attended a conference where I had this same feeling. Three people were having a conversation (two female faculty and 1 male), but a second male faculty came up and joined the conversation. As soon as he joined the conversation, both males turned their bodies away from the two female scientists and proceeded to ignore the women. They made no eye contact. In fact, the conversation itself was subtly nuanced with language that was sexist. One might brush it off as just shooting the shit at a conference, but if you listened to how and what was being said, it became imminently clear that their words devalued the presence and contribution of the women standing near them. The surprising (or maybe not so surprising) part of this was that these two men were young faculty - probably in their 30s.

So yesterday, when I got back home, I sank into the couch, poured myself a glass of wine and came to the realization I just needed to accept it. It's not like I didn't intellectually understand this, but I don't think I emotionally understood the consequences to my long-term career. I guess naively, I still believed at some level things would change by the time I got there.

Intrinsic biases just aren't going away. They just aren't. And frankly they just aren't going to change fast enough to make a difference in my lifetime, my daughter's lifetime and perhaps even my granddaughter's lifetime.

I am, needless to say, quite depressed about this.

Are you sleeping too much?

Well if I were a 50-81 year old woman that might be true.

A new study in the journal Sleep Medicine found that women who sleep between 5 and 6.5 hrs a night were more likely to live longer. Researchers at UC San Diego followed 459 women ranging in ages 50-81 to figure out if sleep duration had anything to do with mortality. The original research was conducted between 1995 and 1999 and headed by Daniel F. Kripke, MD, professor emeritus of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Fourteen years later, he looked up his original participants to see who was alive.

From ScienceBlog, here's a quote:

"The surprise was that when sleep was measured objectively, the best survival was observed among women who slept 5 to 6.5 hours,” Kripke said. “Women who slept less than five hours a night or more than 6.5 hours were less likely to be alive at the 14-year follow-up.”

Okay so here's the problem, the headline at ScienceBlogs reads, "Women’s study finds longevity means getting just enough sleep."

But based on the small bit of information provided by the ScienceBlogs article, this study was specifically about women between the ages of 50-81. Secondly, if you're 81 years old, whether you sleep 10h or 5 h, my guess is that in 14 years (when you are 94) its unlikely you'll be alive anyway. In this study 86 women died. Unfortunately, I can't get access to the original scientific article so I can't assess what were the characteristics of these women? Also is it actually sleep or is it a specific kind of rest?

I realize that science news tries to sell itself because it is a business, but in the process it trades off the facts. One major consequence of exaggerated or inaccurate science reporting that is the public's perception of science and scientists is often mistrustful.

Need I mention ants?

Now this is how to quit your job.

This girl is awesome.



She quit her job by emailing 20 people in the office these photos messages to her boss that she wrote on a dry erase board.

Oh Canada.

This is why returning to Canada is no longer like returning to the land of the sane.

***

Have you ever noticed that the BBQ utensils look like weapons? Is this why guys love to BBQ?

***
To the dude obsessed with a cologne that smells like cheap-car-salesman-who-wears-vinyl-trousers:

I appreciate that desperate times, and in your case (what has been 5 years?) call for desperate measures. But this cologne that you've chosen to shower with has led to the following events:

1. Our undergrad looses her vision when she walks out into the hallway to use the autoclave. And I’m not sure her health insurance covers disability due to second hand cologne.

2. The lab technician can’t stop sneezing after you’ve walked by our doorway which leads to severe contamination in her experiments.

3. My eyes water for 5 minutes and I can't breathe. I've spent enough time in hospitals over the last year and don't want to return to the emergency.

4. A PhD student who has just given birth to the loveliest little boy is still nursing and is worried about her milk becoming toxic.

5. The Biology secretary complained that the hallway where our lab is, smells like methane gas and has decided to call Health and Safety. This means that if they come and shut us down, we will lose all the experiments that were started this morning.

Unfortunately as attached as you are to the cheap-car-salesman-who-dresses-in-vinyl-trousers cologne, it lingers hours after you've walked down the hall. And as we have no windows either in the lab or in my office, we are trapped.

The cologne overpowers incense. And fans simply make the smell waft into the lab.

As I've said before desperate times...so if need be, the next time you decide to saunter down the hallway, be prepared to be ambushed by those who will make you use the emergency shower station that sits outside our doorway. With of course our sincerest of apologies but we thought you had spilled chemicals on yourself and that's why there were such fumes.


Regards,

Girlpostdoc

Who owns data?

This should be of concern to all academic research scientists who think they have the right to publish on their own timeline.

An excerpt of an article from Times Higher Education by Hannah Fearn:

When Michael Baillie began analysing the rings in Irish oak trees more than 30 years ago, the long reach of the Freedom of Information Act in Britain was years away.

But three decades on, the FoI laws have been used by a science blogger, Douglas Keenan, to obtain data collected by the emeritus professor of palaeoecology at Queen's University Belfast over the course of a career investigating catastrophic environmental events.

After a three-year battle to get the university to release the data, some of which are yet to be published by the academic himself, Dr Keenan won a ruling from the Information Commissioner in April that said that Queen's owned the data and must release it.

The precedent has important implications for academics, raising issues similar to those highlighted in last week's report by Sir Muir Russell into the so-called Climategate affair at the University of East Anglia.

Until now, researchers have published data at the time of their choosing, through the normal academic channels and in the context of the overall objectives of their work.

The decision in the Queen's case indicates that any interested party can use FoI laws to request any data belonging to a UK university, whether they form part of an academic's published work or whether they are still raw.

Prelude

"The sign said Fine for parking - so I parked there because it was fine."

I had a wonderful conversation last night with my sister, Wisdom. She and I were talking about the latest in her wonderful teaching adventures at high school. Her school like many schools in big Canadian cities has changed in composition over the last 10 years. And many of the teachers at the schools have not changed their prejudices and biases. She often encounters teachers in the teacher's lounge saying things like,

"Why bother teaching students to write an essay. They can't do it, it's too difficult for them and they're only going to work in laboring jobs anyway."

Wisdom is often frustrated by the education system and rants about how many of her older white colleagues are confronted by their own prejudices when they stand in front of a class filled with brown and black bodies. This, she says is the slippery slope logic that many teachers employ.

I wanted to pursue this particular aspect of our conversation but it turned down a road I wasn't expecting and well, I really enjoy tangents.

She started to tell me how she was so shocked and dismayed by what her students were saying in class that she decided to dump the standard English curriculum and teach them something else.

Wisdom is often shocked and dismayed by what her students say, the actions of the principal, other teachers, the government, you name it. Shock and dismay comes, in part, because she still holds to a ridiculous ideal that the world can be a better place. When I remind her of this, she blames me for all her idealistic notions because I was her role model when she went to university. As most undergrads, I ditched classes for protests and writing articles about equity and equality for the university political rags, thinking that I could educate people out of the misfortune of their prejudices. Unfortunately the years (mainly grad school) have made me jaded and bitter, or as I believe, more realistic.

Her new curriculum was on critical thinking. At the start she asked her students what they thought critical thinking entailed, they said it was about detecting bias. Many of her teen-aged students also believed that you couldn't trust the media, politicians, or news organizations to present the truth. Nor for that matter history. History was written by the winners and was therefore just propaganda. As a result they dismissed anything that was riddled with bias. When I told her I didn't differ much, that I didn't want to have to read 10 different news sources just to figure out what happened and so I didn't. She was, of course, shocked and dismayed.

So were many of my friends when I didn't know that 1. Tiger Woods had cheated on his wife. 2. Michael Jackson died. and 3. Brittany Spears had a baby or maybe it was two. How any of this is news is beyond me.

Her response, "Critical thinking is about the effort. There is no excuse for laziness. Just because you may have to spend a little more time reading and evaluating the story doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. Of course history has bias but part of the study of history is to evaluate the social and political context of the writer's story. Just because it's a story doesn't make it any less informative."

Ugh, I know of course she's right. But she's the YOUNGER sister. This was a pattern we have lived with for over 30 years.

She continued, "Besides critical thinking is more than just the detection of bias. It is more about determining meaning in an individual's argument or statement by evaluating the logic and considering the evidence. This is the problem with the education system, instead of teaching students critical thinking skills, we spend our days reading aloud to them from Shakespeare, like they're still three. I think that teachers can't teach critical thinking because they themselves don't understand it. With the increased role of the media and internet in our lives, critical thought as it really is, has died. The death of logical fallacy has become usurped by the detection of bias. "

Now you know why I named her Wisdom.

And then I started thinking about science and the death of critical thinking in the universities and in the process of doing fast and dirty science. And she's right. Really, it's no different for us.

But unfortunately, readers, you will have to wait for that connection between our conversation and my slow science tirade until next time. I have to return to work on that manuscript!

*****

Addendum 1:

Every year HippieHusband and I make the dreaded border run to renew our visas. This time they fingerprinted (all 10 fingers) us and took photos. All I can say is that if the government was going to go to all that trouble to fingerprint me, they should have the courtesy to at least let me try out for the CIA. Yes, I know, I'm obsessed with all that Alias.

*****

Addendum 2:

The job side is looking good. Two possibilities look promising!!

****

Next time - how fast science has meant the death of critical thinking

Unbelievable

A DNA company (who shall remain nameless) wants to sequence the genome of a man (who shall also remain nameless), who lived like he was trying to kill himself when he was younger, to figure out why he is still alive. And no, it wasn't Keith Richards, apparently he was too busy starring in zombie movies.

Sounds like a marketing ploy to me. Since when did celebrities start selling science?

Hmmm, I wonder if Russell Crowe is available....

Whitewashing America

Good grief. Read this and weep for your country.

An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student's face, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students to be changed to Caucasian skin.

And then read this and speak out.

Imagine...

Imagine if the the Tea Party was black...

"Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins." From Ephphatha Poetry:

I'll take the meatlocker.

After spending 5hrs, HippieHusband and I managed to figure out the US tax forms. In the end, we owed money and a penalty. I hate doing taxes and so that's why I wait until the last possible moment. Filling out those forms is like being on a scavenger hunt - except without any fun. Why do they insist on using double negatives in the forms? Despite my higher education, I can't understand what's written on the forms.

Personally I'd rather hang by my toes upside down in a meatlocker than have to fill out those stupid tax forms.

As a Canadian, not only do I have the pleasure of filing US taxes, but in about two weeks I will have to file Canadian taxes. *Groan*

In the end although we owed taxes, it was nothing near the amount I would have paid in Canada. But then again, I wouldn't have spent so much freakin' money on my healthcare. Although my health care bills amounted to a pretty penny (and let me tell you the bills keep coming), it's not enough to make a difference to the amount we owe the US Treasury. Normally, my left leaning self is happy to pay my fair share of taxes, but for some reason here I resent it.

According to the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities,



In 2010, US tax dollars will cover equal parts Defense, Social Security, and Health programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program), throw in a little Safety Net for good measure, some to the national debt, transportation, retirees and veterans, education, scientific research and don't forget All Other. All Other? Grumble, grumble...smells like bailouts.

Now I remember why I was feeling resentful.

Creationism and college students - the battle for young minds.

Creationism is a popular belief in the United States and not surprisingly here in SmallTown, religion is ubiquitous. In a town of 21,000 people, there are 21 different churches, that's 1 church for every thousand people. There's one church that takes up a entire block of the town and is the size of Walmart. On Sunday morning it's parking lot is packed, I'm not kidding, packed with cars. The density of churches here is akin to the density of Tim Hortons in eastern Canada. I guess we Canadians prefer the sweet cakey goodness of doghnuts to hell and damnation.

(At least this Canadian does.)

I'm not a religious person at all, although I grew up in a family where religion (not Christianity) was a big deal. And in the last few years of my dad's life, he and I would have these phone conversations that would trickle down into the difficult waters of my non-religious beliefs.


I don't object to other people holding whatever beliefs they want, but I seriously object when those belief systems are used to discriminate against others or attempts are made to disguise faith/belief within a scientific framework. Religion is not science. Science is the use of "evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process" (National Academy of Sciences, 2008). Religon is founded in belief and faith.

The National Academy of Sciences has officially stated that "acceptance of the evidence for evolution can be compatible with religious faith," but they are clear that intelligent design or creationism just shouldn't be taught as equals in a science class.

That's why when I read this new study in the May issue of BioScience, I was both concerned and happy that someone had finally suggested there may be a link to how college students recieve scientific facts, evolution to be precise. This study found that college students will either accept or question evolution, depending on how it was treated in high school. In a survey of 1,008 students taking introductory biology classes at the University of Minnesota, researchers asked students if their high-school biology course included (a) evolution but not creationism, (b) creationism but not evolution, (c) both evolution and creationism, or (d) neither evolution nor creationism. They then used a Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) (Rutledge and Sadler 2007) to determine how they viewed evolution.

The study showed that students whose high-school biology class included creationism (with or without evolution) were more likely to accept creationism than were students whose high-school biology class included only evolution. Furthermore, students whose high-school biology course included evolution (and not creationism) were more likely to accept evolution-based statements than were students whose high-school biology course did not include evolution. Seventy-two to 78 percent of students exposed to evolution agreed that it is scientifically valid while 57 to 59 percent of students who were exposed to creationism agreed that it can be validated.

What surprised me the most was to read that approximately 20 to 35 percent of high-school biology teachers in the United States include creationism in their science curricula. And that reports that suggest one-fourth of biology teachers believe that creationism has a valid scientific foundation (Moore and Kraemer 2005).

The survey also had some interesting comments written by students. Of the 45.3 percent of students that advocated creationism, some wrote,

I believe in creationism and intelligent design.
I do not believe [evolution] happened.

And from those that expressed uncertainty (34 percent)

I am a little confused about it.
I really don't know what to think.
I don't know enough on the issue to have much [of] an opinion.

Shocking.

As scientists, we must be concerned about the malpractice of high school science teachers because they have an impact on a new generation of citizenry. We are educating students who lack the ability to understand and accept one of the most important and unifying ideas of modern science. The distinction between science and religion is necessary in order to make informed and thoughtful decisions about a vast majority of social and political issues that can have enormous consequences for future generations. Imagine trying to make decisions about combating epidemics, like SARS, without consideration to the fact that organisms evolve.

Furthermore, what kind scientists are in the making in America if intelligent design is seen as valid science? These types of views reject scientific findings, well-established facts, and scientific methods in favour of unsubstantiated claims.

Science is embedded in a society. And thus the types of questions asked and funded, scientific norms, and the trajectories of scientists are affected by cultural and political values. Right now, Americans lead the world in scientific discovery and innovation, but if these young voices have any say in political policies, science in the US could end up like bourgeois pseudosciences in Russia under Stalin - on its way to watering their crops with gatorade.

Go and make some noise: Town Hall Meeting

For all you Canadian scientists:

NSERC is holding 'town hall' meetings at Canadian Universities at the moment to discuss changes at NSERC. To protest changes to NSERC funding, attend these meetings and speak up for the funding programs that you have benefited from: two year PGS MSc funding, PhD funding, post doctoral funding, etc.

As I get information I will pass it along. The next NSERC town hall meeting is at the University of Alberta on Monday, April 27th (9:30-11:00 a.m.) in Council Chambers, 2-1 University Hall.

Go and make some noise, people.

The Value of Science in Canada: An Open Letter

I guess our good Minister of Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, was wrong when he said, in the March 2 issue of the Globe and Mail that his governement critics are few.

Now, I know that we all get confused with our greater than > and less than < signs, but here's a little mnemonic to help you remember, Gary:

"a few" < 2100 Alligator wants to eat 2100, so "a few" is less than 2100.

2100 > "a few" Alligator wants to eat 2100, so "a few" is less than 2100.

Thanks to Sandwalk for first posting a link to the open letter written to the Prime Minister and the two opposition leaders. Add your name to the list of 2100 Canadian researchers to protest the recent cuts to our tri-councils: NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read the backstory in one of my previous blogs.

The Lie continues

Ugh! I think that Nature should have not just printed this bullshit press release without a response from a few Canadian researchers. But on the positive side, when the Canadian Minister feels the need to write a letter to Nature convincing them that Canada supports science, well something is amiss.

Sir

You report researchers' concerns about the Canadian government's support for science in two recent News stories (Nature 457, 646; 2009 and Nature 458, 393; 2009). As Minister of State for Science and Technology, I can say that, despite the global economic situation, the government of Canada remains committed to innovation and discovery. We have increased funding to researchers, both in universities and in the private sector.

In the past three years, for example, we have significantly increased the budgets of federal granting councils, increased scholarships through the Canada Graduate Scholarships Program, and increased the Industrial Research Assistance Program for small and medium-sized businesses. The Budget 2009 announcements include Can$750 million (US$590 million) for the Canada Foundation for Innovation to attract and retain world-leading researchers, and a Can$2-billion infrastructure programme. The government has also put in place two five-year funding agreements with Genome Canada that are worth Can$240 million, to support large-scale, world-class research.

Your readers should therefore rest assured that the government of Canada will continue to fund research for the benefit of all scientists and Canadians.
Gary Goodyear, Minister of Science and Technology

The Canadian government intends on cutting the budgets of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences (NSERC), and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) by $148 million CDN over three years. These three councils provided the dollars that go to basic research.

We might be looking at empty building syndrome in the years to come in Canada.

Are Canadians taking jobs from Americans?

I tried to post this story earlier but for some reason it was deleted - so I've updated it and here it is:

HippieHusband was talking with Bearded Uncle tonight and I guess Bearded Uncle was worried about whether or not we would be able to get our visas renewed. Apparently, in Canada they are hearing more and more stories about U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers accusing Canadians of stealing jobs from Americans.

But I could find only one story at the CBC that suggested border officers had turned away a Canadian from entering the US. This quote pretty much sums it up.

"He looked at me, and in a yelling voice he said, 'You're friggin' stealing jobs away from American citizens,' and I tried telling him that I wasn't."

Of course, HippieHusband and I have our own tale of a 'border skirmish.' But the article and Bearded Uncle's fear made me wonder if stereotypes really are just "selfish memes." Selfish memes, according to David Sloan Wilson are traits that spread by cultural evolution. They help us identify in-group/out-group membership. When we question these memes or debunk them, we are questioning everything associated with them, in other words, our own in-group membership.

And I know that before I left Canada I held some pretty strong myths about Americans myself. And really it goes without say but both my colleagues and friends in SmallTown are intelligent, caring, Americans who are trying to live healthy lives.

I thought it would be an interesting 'exorcise' to hear what myths Americans have about Canadians. Here are just a few stereotypes that I've heard either amongst my Canadian friends or perpetuated by the Canadian media about Americans:

1. Americans are loud, obnoxious and rude.
















2. Americans are provincial, ignorant and stupid when it comes to what's going on outside their borders.and lastly,

3. Americans are seriously obese.

I'm interested in what fabulous tales you've heard of the peoples of the 'great white north' (Canada) ?

The Value of Science in Canada: Part Deux

I am not usually spurred on to write an entire post in response to a comment but this one posted on the blog, The Value of Science in Canada, made me angry because the graduate student made baseless and ignorant statements.

As a student who received only 1 year of NSERC funding I couldn't disagree more.

Firstly, most M.Sc students only receive one year of funding unless their graduation occurs much later than expected. So of the thousands of graduate students only a small fraction will be affected. Hardly the marginalization you claim.

There are two issues that this reader has brought up. He assumes that because there are thousands of graduate students and only a few that get grants, there are only a small fraction of students who will be affected. To determine if, in fact, he is correct and proportionately speaking that changes to the funding structure aren't such a big deal, we need estimates on how many graduates there are in Canada and how many graduate students are actually funded through grants from the tri-councils.

How many science graduate students (both doctoral and Masters) are there in Canada?

In the United States, in 2006 there were a total of 11,570 doctorate degrees awarded in the field of science and engineering (NSF Report). The US has a population of 306,041,094, so only 0.00378% of the population received a doctorate in 2006. If we assume that proportionately speaking the same number of people received doctorates in Canada and the most recent estimate of population size is 31,281,092 (July 2000), then that's about 1182 people in Canada.

Estimates of the number of applicants for doctoral awards at the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, NSERC, are about 1600. There were 883 doctoral applications to the Canadian Institute of Research Health (CIHR) for awards in 2006 (Research and Analyses Dec 2007). So all told there might be 2500 doctoral students in Canada in the sciences, clearly an underestimate. There are no doubt more PhDs that start than finish too.

ASIDE: Somewhere I know there are stats on this because when I finished my PhD I had to fill out a survey – but I just don’t know where to access them.

To determine the number of Master’s students our best estimate (an underestimate) comes from NSERC. A total of 1764 applied for a Master’s Level NSERC scholarship in 2008. That means even including Master’s students there are probably no more than 4300 graduate students in Canada pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences.

What fraction of these science students receive government funding from either CIHR or NSERC?

Again, we can only make our best guess, which is likely to be an underestimate. In 2008, NSERC gave a total of 1304 awards to Master’s students, a success rate of 74%. For doctoral students, NSERC gave out a total 1051 awards, a success rate of 66%. At CIHR, the success rate is 15.7% for the 2006 year, which means that 139 doctoral students received some kind of award. So more than half of the graduate students in Canada (58%) received an award from one of the tri-councils. And that's not including the two-year postdoctoral fellowship that one generally applies for during the last year of the PhD.

In my mind, 58% is not a small fraction.

Secondly, as you stated students who don't have both years of their M.Sc covered by NSERC don't have to TA. Since most students don't have both years covered, most students TA and a small fraction don't.

At NSERC you can receive 2years of funding like you've suggested. I believe that if you receive a PGS M (?) it's typically for 2 years. So the fraction of Master's students who don't have to take on teaching assistantships (TA) from the start of their degrees is 33%. Again not a small fraction.

The second issue I have with this reader's comments is that even students who TA will be affected by this budget, especially in the long term. Although Harper has slyly increased graduate funding, after 2 years, levels revert back. So all that extra money that was thrown at grad students doesn't get shifted back into the primary research grant programs, it's gone - Poof! This will trickle down to affect the supervisors who often supplement TAships from their research grants.

But the process of TAing is important and invaluable. Being a graduate student is more than just spending time in a lab tinkering with an experiment or fiddling with a simulation, rather being able to explain science topics to non-scientists is a skill that needs development and helps build teaching skills that are absolutely necessary for anyone considering a career as a professor. (plus where else would we get hilarious stories about undergrads?)

I agree that TAing is an invaluable experience but you are completely naive if you believe teaching experience is considered equivalent to a good publication record.

Remember that this change was suggested by NSERC as part of their review and was not foisted on them by the government. It is a decision made by scientists in response to a request by the federal government to examine ways to cut costs. Disagreeing with the cuts is one thing you can attack Harper on, but on specific things like this you're attacking the scientists who made these decisions themselves.

I guess you’ve never heard the term “government lackey.” They were ordered to do it. Here’s a quote from Suzanne Fortier, president of NSERC,

"It has been a real pleasure for us to work with the Hon. Gary Goodyear. He has already proven himself a champion of the science and technology community."

Enough said.

Also, you totally ignore the billions of $$$ being spent on science infrastructure which has been largely neglected in Canada. This helps students in two ways, firstly you have brand new or renovated buildings which can house more graduate students and more labs (a universal complaint no matter where you go is that there is not enough lab space). In both universities that I have been to the most common complaint was the lack of lab space or the poor quality of buildings.

Lab space is great but what do want the PI’s to fill it with? Funding the basics of science includes providing money to buy the equipment, chemicals, the field gear, basic salaries of lab techs, graduate students, post-docs, and research associates.

Canada is spending less on R&D and as a result putting many people out of work. This article suggests that the benefit of university R&D is two percent of Canada’s annual GDP or $15 billion, translating into 150,000 and 200,000 jobs. The point is that it shouldn't really be a choice both are important and in Harper's budget it is clearly a choice.

"Things have not gone dramatically bad under the Conservative government, but there is a lack of understanding of how scientific research works. We are getting mixed messages. On the one hand the government is investing in infrastructure. On the other hand, they are not investing in the research that people have to carry out in the labs being funded. What message is the scientific community to take from that?" Arthur Carty, now the director of the Institute of Nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo and former president of the National Research Council.

Today's funding rates for academic research are well below 20 per cent. I'm all for funding graduate students. But frankly, where are all these graduate students going to do research if fewer and fewer labs are being funding? Ultimately it means a limited number of research programs and a narrower scope of questions being asked. I'm guessing that graduate students in labs with 14 people don't get much attention or time with the PI, who is chasing after the next big grant. And with Obama giving $11 billion to the U.S. equivalent of Canada's science councils, how long do you think it will be before our young scientific talent goes south?

The second way it helps is that it reduces the burden that is placed on students themselves through tuition increases. Ironically at some universities it will also help preserve the environment since some, such as UBC in Vancouver, sell old-growth forest land to be torn down and developed into subdivisions and communities in order to fund construction projects.

If you look at the revenue streams of, say the University of British Columbia, they included government grants and contracts (federal and provincial), student fees, investment income and one-time donations. In 2008/2009, at UBC, student fees made up only 30-40% of the income revenue. My guess is that tuition fees cover operating costs like salaries, supplies, scholarships, interest on long term debt and not capital costs. As you’ve pointed out the University of British Columbia has found other ways to pay for infrastructure. Universities are going to have to get creative in order to survive this type of economic downturn. Tuition increases will be the least of your worries.

Scientists across the board take issue with Harper's choices (budget and personnel). At a time when both Obama and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown have decided that investment in science is a national priority, why hasn't our leader?

I hang my head in shame.

Ugh, it's gone from bad to worse. Our American neighbours have hung their heads in shame for eight long years because a monkey ran the oval office. Now I'm afraid, Canadians, it might be our turn.

When asked about his belief on evolution in an interview on Monday with The Globe and Mail, federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear said this,

"I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.”

What's disturbing about this comment is not the fact that Goodyear is a Christian but that he has equated evolution as a religious system.

Later Goodyear proclaimed he did believe in evolution but said this in an interview with CTV,

“We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment. But that's not relevant and that is why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong.”

Huh, that's a new one. In all my years of teaching biology no undergraduate has ever been that creative (and I use that term intentionally) and defined evolution as walking on cement either in running shoes or high heels.

Goodyear has admitted to nothing because he has simply changed the definition of evolution.

I guess all those biology textbooks are wrong. Or Gary if you have forgotten what a book is, it is also described on wikipedia as,

a change in the inherited traits of a populaton of organisms from one generation to the next. These changes are caused by a combination of three main processes: variation, reproduction, and selection.

You know, I kind of expect ridiculous statements and sly doublespeak from the Harper cronies, but not from the Liberals. Liberal science critic Marc Garneau (former astronaut) said in an interview on Tuesday that believing in evolution is not a job requirement for the science minister.

“It is a personal matter. It is a matter of faith.… I don't think it prevents someone from being a good minister.”

Sure that's the point Marc, science and faith are different things. Evolution is scientific fact and well faith is NOT science. Furthermore, it is of grave concern that a Minister who has influence on government funding, holds the view that evolution is equivalent to a religion.

Here I thought that evolution was taught in first year biology at universities across Canada. Something is rotten in the science programmes in Canada, if an astronaut and a chiropractor can't make the distinction between religion and evolution.

We, Canadians are on the verge of a dark age where science and education are no longer about the acquisition of knowledge and understanding of the natural world. Science fosters individualism and promotes biological development, all of which stand in opposition to the Stephen Harper ideology.

Instead, according to Harper, science and education are mere tools to help fill our wallets. It's no coincidence that in the recent budget, $750-million was invested in the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, while at the same time basic research suffered massive cutbacks. As Stephen Harper says,

“In the world of today, scientific and technological innovation is fundamental to economic and social progress....No country can hope to remain prosperous and healthy without reinvesting a substantial portion of its wealth in science and technology.”

Fascism of the pocketbook is still fascism.

I'm not sure if hanging our collective heads in shame is the appropriate response because that implies resignation. Instead, let us take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them.

Turning Back the Clock: Why pay equity is in jeopardy in Canada

I felt better today than I have in a few weeks. I've been so exhausted since my father died. I had forgotten how physically draining dealing with death can be. It also doesn't help that I'm away from all my close friends and family. SmallUniversity in SmallTown can be a very lonely place, and the present circumstances only highlight this isolation.

What really helped was a return to some sort of routine both socially and professionally. I'm actually making progress on the monkey revisions (yeah!) and HippieHusband and I went to play games at MrEnthusiam's house last week. We talked about the insanity that defines our families. And sadly, knowing that the dysfunctional family was so common made me feel better.

So it came then as no surprise that back in Canada another dysfunctional familywas working to create the demise of my happy socialist home. The Canadian government's recent policies have me highly concerned and fearful over the future of Canada.

In addition to devaluing science in Canada, Harper is working to erode the fundamental rights of women. The Budget Implementation Act called Bill C-10 is Harper's way of quietly turning back the clock on pay equity. And he can do this because his budget tabled in February, a 551 page document, focuses on a $40-billion stimulus package. According to the Conservative government, this bill will only be effective if implemented within 120 days, by May 27. But this 551 page document also makes fundamental changes to pay equity, weakens environmental protection, and will make the sale of Crown assets easy.

It's a slippery way for Harper to convert his social conservatism and neocon moral values into legislation under the guise of an economic crisis.

Harper's bill C10 is an attack on pay equity, because it forces pay equity to be dealt with at the bargaining table. It removes the right of federal civil servants to file pay equity complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Instead of pay equity being a fundamental right, such an issue would now be dealt with as part of the normal bargaining process between union and management.

Since when is a woman's constitutional right to be paid fairly something that should be bargained away?

As a fundamental right, it should be entrenched into law. But only two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have pro-active pay equity laws requiring public and private sector employers to examine their pay structures for systemic discrimination in wages.

Secondly, the bill uses the term "equitable compensation" instead of the well-known and well-defined term pay equity, thus obfuscating the fact that there exists a systematic wage disparity. According to Behind the Pay Gap, put out by the National Committe on Pay equity one year out of college, full-time working women earn only 80% of the salary of their male colleagues. And 1o years later they have fallen farther behind, earning only 69% as much as men earn. Even in female-dominated areas like education, women still earn only 95% of their male counterparts (in Biological Sciences it is 75%). This study controlled for hours, occupation, parenthood and other factors associated with pay.

Thirdly, bill C-10 suggests that an arbitrator in determining whether wage rates were fair would have to take "market forces" into account. Market forces. Are you fucking kidding me? Are these the same fucking market forces that have led to the collapse of the economies worldwide. And in Antonia Zerbisias column Toronto lawyer, Mary Cornish states that "pay equity was designed specifically to rectify a failure in the market that permitted systemic wage discrimination against women. To turn around and subordinate equity to this same market is to negate the entire exercise."

Lastly, in order to determine "equitable compensation" the bill adds a new evaluation criteria that makes it difficult to establish pay discrimination. If a woman held a job in the RCMP, say radio dispatcher, and she felt there was a pay equity issue, then this bill would require an arbitror to evaluate by making the comparison to similar jobs only within the RCMP. There could be no comparison to similar jobs in the rest of the public sector.

After the Ontario Pay Equity Act was introduced in 1987, the victories that led to salary adjustments all used comparisons outside the specific public sector department in which pay discrimination had taken place.

• secondary school secretaries received an annual increase of $7,680 based on their comparison with a male job class of audio-visual technicians.
• female health technicians were compared to male transportation workers, leading to an increase of $2.79 an hour.
• female-dominated mental health workers were compared to the male personnel officer's job, resulting in a pay equity raise of $2.20 per hour.
• female-dominated police dispatchers were compared to the radio technical supervisors and received an increase of $7,179.00 annually

Wait we have an opposition, with a leader right?

Here is just an excerpt from how our opposition dealt with this. In the House of Commons , Hon. John McKay (Scarborough - Guildwood, Liberal) said before the bill was passed,

Canadians can thank the Liberal Party for C-10. We are very aware that it is an imperfect document. It is full of political provocations. It lacks coherence. It has within it many items of no relevance to a budgetary document such as navigable waters, pay equity and jamming certain public sector employees. It is an obnoxious document. There is no doubt about it.

Many of these items deserve far greater scrutiny than the finance committee was able to provide in the context of trying to get this budget moved along. However, it seems to be in the DNA of the Prime Minister to load up every obnoxious element he can think of in a bill and try to jam the opposition.

In an era when Canadians crave leadership, they get a partisan bully. However, in the judgment of the official opposition, the potential good of an early stimulus package, as amended with the built-in review periods, outweighs the obnoxious elements of C-10. Therefore, we will be supporting it.

Economy before morality. It seems to be in the DNA of all of the liberals to follow their partisan bully, Michael Ignatieff and act like sheep. Canadians, do indeed crave leadership and moral responsibility from those that they have elected to represent them.

I urge you to go here and sign this petition so that we can stop the incremental conversion of our Canadian democracy into a neocon autocracy.