Was blind, but now I see… May 6, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, research, papers.Tags: papers, peer review, double blind, single blind
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I was recently asked to review a paper for a fairly large conference in one of the engineering subfields I’m involved in. This particular conference is one which I’ve not attended, so I had no familiarity with the procedures. As a side note for non-engineers, I discussed before (on my old blog) that many (most?) engineering conferences take full, peer-reviewed papers.
When I received the paper and looked it over, I nearly fell out of my chair. I could see the freakin’ authors!
In most of the conferences where I’ve submitted papers, the peer-review was double blind. One conference in particular was this way because it’s such a small area of research that they wanted to make doubly sure that people are as objective as possible. (In reality, there’s a good chance that you could tell who it was just by what they were doing, but I applaud the effort.) It seems like a very straight-forward thing to do: you submit the paper without any names on it. The session chair knows who it is but picks people to review who will be none the wiser. If the paper is accepted, a revision is submitted with names on it. Easy-peasy.
I have to say that this was very disconcerting for me. I don’t WANT to know whose paper I’m reviewing. I spent the whole time writing this review terrified that knowing who they were, where they were from, how many authors were on the paper, etc. was affecting my perceptions of the paper and destroying my objectivity. I was amazed at all the stupid things I found myself questioning in terms of my reaction. Was I making a mountain out of a molehill? Was I overly impressed by something which shouldn’t have impressed me?
It really isn’t all that hard to keep reviews double-blind when using an automated submission system such as the one used for this conference (and most IEEE conferences), and as a reviewer, I would have been far more comfortable.
I’m curious about other fields, though. Is single-blind review the norm? (When I stumble across these things, I feel like I’ve been living under a rock.)
Hung out to dry May 5, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, personal.Tags: carbon, chores, clothes, dryer, energy
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Some days I don’t feel like posting about science or engineering or anything like that. This is one of those days, and I’m feeling more domestically inclined. (Perhaps it was baking muffins that got me on this kick.)
Over a year ago, a relative of mine was featured in the local paper because of his attempts to minimize energy use and how this was connected to his ministry (he was a minister at a local church, at the time). I actually didn’t know how far he’d gone in his attempts until reading the article, and I have to say I’ve been trying to think of ways to do things like this ever since. The picture included with the article showed him in his basement with lines hung all around, drying his clothes.
A couple months ago, I decided that there was no reason not to try something similar. When I was a kid, we had clotheslines in the back of most of the places we lived, but I never really liked those. I don’t know how many times I brought in clothes that were covered in dust or seeds…or even bugs! I also had no idea how I’d hang lines around my basement (or how to keep the kids from playing with them and turning them into a place to hang and launch toys.) Instead, I bought a couple of clothes-drying racks and set them up in my basement. I figured it would cut down on use of our dryer (extending its longevity), cut down on energy use, and help keep some of our clothes from coming to an early demise. (I think I read somewhere that heat destroys cotton over time, and I’ve seen it with a few of my own things.)
I tried to talk my husband into using them, but I don’t think he likes them a whole lot. He is giving it a try…at least for now. We’ve determined that several of our work clothes just simply can’t be dried on the rack because they get too wrinkled. (I’m sorry, but I really don’t iron clothes unless absolutely necessary.) Also, jeans take forever. I keep trying to get myself onto a schedule (like I was a few years ago), where I did specific loads of laundry on specific days (Mondays was whites, Tuesdays was jeans, etc.). I think it would work much better than just doing things on the weekend…and running out of space. I am also trying to think harder about what kinds of clothes will dry well on the racks and try to avoid those really wrinkly things. That’s difficult, however, as you can’t always tell how well they’ll work until you see what they look like wet.
The end result is that we’re drying about half of our laundry on the racks, while the other half is still going through the drier. I still feel guilty that I’m not doing all of it this way, but I keep telling myself that every little bit is a step in the right direction. (And, hey, if it cuts down on expenses, even better.)
(Thanks to Ukko.de for the picture!)
What my kids read… May 3, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, younger son.Tags: astrology, books, paranormal, reading, skepticism
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The younger son has had a fear of reading due to his perfectionistic tendencies. In the past few months, however, he’s really taken an interest in it, especially when there are comic books available. (Yay for Marvel comics!) I’m really not too picky about what my kids read. I’m of the opinion that the more you read, the more you learn to think critically.
Or at least, that’s what I thought until the younger boy brought a book home from the library on “Unsolved Mysteries.” Basically, the book talks about all these events that are apparently paranormal. As a scientist who is also a bit on the skeptical side (though I don’t like the term skeptic, despite our subscription to Skeptical Inquirer), I have to admit that it got my hackles up a bit. At first, I wanted to go complain to the librarian.
The funny thing is, though, that I had to sit back and remember that I used to read this stuff, too. I remember checking out books on the Bermuda Triangle and astrology. In fact, I, at one point, went through and plotted out full astrology charts for everyone in my family. I fascinated my family by finding out interesting little factoids like that my sister was actually a Taurus and not an Aries, like we’d always thought, because her sign didn’t fall on the normal dates the year she was born, for some strange reason.
As I continued to read and learn about this stuff, however, I started coming across counter points to all the supernatural phenomena I was interested in. As I became more educated as a scientist, I began looking at how people were conducting their ‘experiments’. And, probably most important, I wanted to know how things worked: I wasn’t satisfied with explanations of, “It can’t be explained!” Eventually, I began looking at things much differently.
I realize the younger boy will probably be walking around for a while talking about the stuff he reads in the book. However, I’m trying to look at this as an opportunity to introduce him to questioning things that he reads and get him thinking about whether or not he can find what might be a more realistic explanation of how things work. It’s a slow process, and it won’t be helped by not exposing him to these things. And having a cultural reference to these things aren’t always bad: we still like to joke about my sister being bull-headed.
Wordless Wednesday: New haircut May 2, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in photography.Tags: hair, pictures, wordless wednesday
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Another one bites the dust April 30, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in computers.Tags: computer, computers
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I’m typing my first post from my new laptop. Ordinarily, getting a new computer as an occasion for great happiness…except when it’s not. While I got a nice new computer, I have to admit that I’m disappointed. Some of you may remember that a few months ago, my macbook hard drive bit the dust. I replaced it with another and things have been cruising along rather nicely. That is, until Saturday morning when I left the computer unplugged and it went through a hard shut down. When I booted it back up…well, it didn’t boot. And it looks like I lost the hard drive completely.
On the up side, I have a backup that’s only a month old, so I certainly didn’t lose as much as I could’ve.
And the whole time, this song has been running through my head:
I love my dog, but… April 29, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in pets.Tags: CGC, Gigadog, obedience
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Today, we took Gigadog to have her evaluated for a CGC (Canine Good Citizen). For those unaware of what this means, your dog has to do some basic heeling, allow strangers to touch them, and generally behave themselves around other people. Given how huge Gigadog is, I find it rather important that she be well-trained.
We had been practicing in her obedience class, and she was doing all of the exercises fairly well with the exception of being greeted by a stranger. Gigadog is terribly friendly and would rather make a point of introducing herself rather than waiting for someone to notice her and pet her. I figured she would fail the test, or at least that section of it, but I also thought it would be a good experience to take it so we could see what we needed to work on.
Things started off okay, except, as I expected, she decided to introduce herself rather than sitting nicely and had to be restrained. So we failed that part right off the bat. However, then we started the heeling part and the other stuff…
It was like she was a completely different dog. She kept looking over to the side of the ring where all the people were. She wouldn’t look at me, she wouldn’t listen to me…and then she finally just sat down and stared at all those people out there and wouldn’t move. Afterwards, I had all kinds of ‘advice’ for what I was doing wrong with my training. Funny thing was, it was all stuff I was doing.
No, I realized afterwards was that we were witnessing one of these really bizarre behaviors that Gigadog has that I have never been able to break her of: she wants to people-watch. When we go out for walks, she will occasionally see someone across the street. She will then plop her butt down, wag her tail, and sit there until they disappear or I give her a good hard yank on her leash (she is impervious to gentle gestures). Normally, we use a prong collar on her (and before you yell at me, try keeping a 100 lb. puppy from yanking your arm off), but we’re not allowed to on the test. Despite the fact we had a martingale collar, we were getting no response from her. She just wanted to sit and watch all those people staring at her outside the ring because she KNOWS that if she sits nicely, they’ll all come and pet her. And Mom is just being a big dope by not letting her sit there.
So we failed the exam because she was dragging me all over the place during the heel (kept trying to go toward everyone outside the ring) and wouldn’t do a thing after that. In fact, I think we failed spectacularly.
I thought this would go pretty well because there wouldn’t be any other dogs in the ring to distract her. Boy, was I wrong. Given all of the obedience and rally and other trials we want to do are set up to function this way, I have no idea what we’re going to do now. I think that I might want to talk to my instructor and see if we can find a way for my fuzzy prima donna to practice how to not be a show-off.
But she didn’t care…just wanted some cheese when we got done. Dogs are goofy.
Friday Fun: For all the Stars Wars Geeks April 27, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun, science fiction.Tags: science fiction, star wars, video
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No deadwood here April 26, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineerblogs.org.Tags: engineerblogs, engineerblogs.org
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I posted my response to Tuesday’s question about the implications of having no tenure and PIs having to fund their own salary at EngineerBlogs. Despite the title, I try to analyze much more than how this will affect the presence of ‘deadwood’ in a dept. Let me know what you think.
Wordless Wednesday: Younger son visits the South (sort of) April 25, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in photography, younger son.Tags: alligators, pictures, wordless wednesday, younger son
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(picture by Angie Hartgrove)
Permanent position April 24, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, research, science.Tags: academia, funding, science funding, soft money
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The other day, I was talking with a professor who was asking about my employment situation. After clarifying where I was at, he said, “But your husband has a permanent position, right?”
“Permanent insofar as he’s on soft money, too.”
One thing that’s become fairly obvious is that there has been a bit of confusion about our research center. A lot of people don’t realize we run entirely on soft money, which is a very uncomfortable situation to be in. It’s even more uncomfortable when both members of a couple are in that situation.
I recently read this article about the money trail in academia, and it got me thinking: what would happen if PIs were in the same situation as some of the rest of us. That is, what if they not only had no tenure, but also had to bring in their own salary? (I say this is the realization that, in some places, this is the case.)
I have a lot of thoughts on what may happen, but I’m going to put them in a separate post. In fact, by the time this post has been published, I will already have my post written so as to be untainted by potential comments. In the meantime, however, I’m curious what you think. Do you think this sort of system would help or hurt academia? Encourage or discourage competition, quality, efficiency? Do you think this would motivate the system to change or would it just be more of the same?
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