From time to time the ‘debate’ around vaccinations re-surfaces in the headlines. A number of other NZ bloggers have addressed this (here, & here, for example). It’s a much hotter topic as in the US, where a number of high-profile ‘anti-‘ groups keep vaccines in the public eye for all the wrong reasons. Don’t get me wrong […]
Continue readingI listen to quite a lot of podcasts. Lately I’ve been listening to more than usual. I’ve had the flu (I’m assuming that’s what it was, since colds tend not to come with fever, chills, & sore joints) & listening to stuff was easier than reading. Anyway, I digress. One of my current favourite podcasts […]
Continue readingI suspect that for many of my first-year Biology students, the sheer weight of new terms they come across is perhaps the most daunting thing about the course. In some ways learning biology is rather like learning a new language – with several thousand new words swamping the page (& the brain) over the course of […]
Continue readingI blog a fair bit about the way science stories are (mis)represented in the press. And when I do, I always wonder what the original press release (from the intitution to the media) would have been like. Now Ben Goldacre’s posted an excellent item on one such release. The release in question came from a […]
Continue readingThis is a re-post of something I’ve written for Talking Teaching. I’ve reproduced it here because I think the notion of teaching things like critical thinking & the nature of science are just as relevant here as they are in a discussion about teaching itself. I’ve just been reading a post by Tim Kreider, over […]
Continue readingThis is a very relevant question in the light of the government’s recent announcement of its intention to tie a proportion of tertiary funding to student completion and retention rates. (This decision is presumably driven, among other things, by relatively low rates of retention and passing papers/courses, which lead to questions about whether we’re getting […]
Continue readingOver the last few months many science bloggers have been watching – with considerable interest – a libel case taken agains science writer Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association. Singh had used the word ‘bogus’ in describing treatments offered for a range of ailments, including asthma and ear infections. (Similar claims-by-implication are made in […]
Continue readingI’ve been reflecting on my teaching career lately, partly because I have to write a teaching portfolio. It occurred to me that talking about how I came to be where I am now might perhaps be interesting to some of you who are thinking about your future. In my experience, at least, things don’t always go […]
Continue readingOne of the nice things about working at a university is that there is almost always an interesting talk to go to (supposing you have the time…). Yesterday I managed to go to a fascinating discussion of the use of meta-analyses by a Waikato graduate, Shinichi Nakagawa. (I suspect that Grant knows much more about […]
Continue readingA while ago now I wrote about Rom Houben, who’d been in a vegetative state for 23 years but who, it was claimed, was really conscious inside an immobile body & now able to communicate via something known as ‘facilitated communication’. I and many others were sceptical of this claim – it looked too much […]
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