That's the premise of an article in Nature (Brown & Woolston, 2018), which I discovered via the excellent Debunking Denialism on Facebook (& if that's not a good example of how various social media are interlinked, I don't know what is). Since mine is a science blog, obviously I was interested in the Nature narrative. Brown […]
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what is feedback, and do universities do it well?
I've just received a reminder that I need to set up the paper & teaching appraisal for my summer school paper. This is a series of items that students can answer on a 1-5 scale (depending on how much or how little they agree with each statement), plus opportunities to give open-ended responses to a […]
Continue reading‘pregnancy isn’t a death event’ – social media’s window to the dark side
Today I was on leave and, the weather being bad, thought I’d do a bit of catching up on the news. And so it was that I found, on the Stuff FB page, an item about the (lack of) funding for cutting edge cancer drugs. So far, so innocuous (although also somewhat sad) – until […]
Continue readingmore on laptops in lectures
This is a cross-post from my other blog over at Talking Teaching. I type much more quickly than I write (some would argue, also more legibly). But when I'm taking notes in meetings, I do it with a (very old-fashioned) fountain pen & notebook. The reason is that this makes me filter what I'm writing, […]
Continue readinganti-vaccination activists – deluded and dangerous
The latest news reports indicate that the mumps outbreak in Auckland is spreading. As you might expect, the very first commenter on the FB page for that story is someone claiming that vaccines don’t cure mumps and offer a significant risk to health. (I wish Moveable Type allowed the Comic Sans font…) The only reason […]
Continue readingleech ‘therapy’ redux
Back in 2012 the Herald ran a series on alternative 'therapies' that included a somewhat uncritical piece on the use of leeches – the practitioner concerned claimed, for example, that they could be used to 'treat' diabetes. I blogged on this back then, as did fellow Sciblogger Siouxsie Wiles, & the criticisms we made then still stand. […]
Continue readingmeasles is a hoax? tell that to europe, councillor!
In the Spinoff today, there's an OP on the … 'alternative' … views of a member of our local City Council. It's worth a read. I knew that the councillor was against the use of community water fluoridation (CWF) as a public health measure, but going by various postings she's made in social media, we […]
Continue readingprofs, publications, & social media
A while back, my Twitter feed brought up a post with the intriguing title "Prof, no-one is reading you". The article kicks off with the following provocative statement: Many of the world's most talented thinkers may be university professors, but sadly most of them are not shaping today's public debates or influencing policies. Now, them's […]
Continue readinga science communicator silenced by the mob
Well, this sucks, & that’s putting it mildly. From Kevin Folta’s blog, Illumination: Dr Folta has been under constant attack in recent months since it emerged that Monsanto had donated $US25,000 to fund a science outreach program he was running. Not his research, but an outreach program. He was accused of a conflict of interest […]
Continue readingtips for effective on-line science outreach
As you'll have gathered, I'm finding Facebook – and now Twitter – great sources of information, whether it's for teaching, sharing with my students (& others!), or blogging about. And today, this paper popped up on my Twitter feed: Ten Simple Rules for Effective On-line Outreach. Because it's published on a PLoS journal (in this […]
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