RIP Fig Newton!

The great French cycling champion Laurent Fignon has died at the age of 50 from cancer.
As Velonews notes, he was French National Champion in 1984, took the Milan-SanRemo in 1988 and 1989 and Fleche Wallonne in 1986.
Fignon won the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984 and the Giro de Italia in 1989.

1989 Tdf, final stage (source)

Great rider, very classy.
He also had the honor of participating in one of the very best moments in sport, ever. The final day of the 1989 TdF found Fignon ahead of Greg Lemond by 50 seconds. That year the final day was a 25 km time trial- single riders against the clock, no drafting involved. Watching that stage coverage was certainly the greatest moment in sports that I have ever watched. Lemond beat Fignon by 58 seconds to win the 1989 Tour, as it happens, but Fignon was visibly battling the whole way. It was epic.

Sadly, a much needed reminder

Ethan Siegel has a highly topical observation up over at his blog, Starts with a Bang. It is as simple as this:

But we do not let fear dictate what we are free to do. Syed, Atiyah, Freida, and all the other Muslims I grew up with are no more or less American than any of us, and it is the right of every Muslim-American to expect the exact same freedoms that we have.

Glenn Beck’s little #Whitestock rally for racist #teabaggers at the Lincoln Memorial may have fizzled in terms of numbers but it really should be a wake up call for RealAmericans. You know, the ones who actually believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the ensuing body of Constitutional jurisprudence. The ones who actually believe in what has always made the United States special, democratic and progressive, rather than longing for the worst of our past.
The theme of the idiots from Glennbeckistan was “Restoring Honor”. What, you might wonder, in the hell is that supposed to mean?
There’s a nice explanation over here at Balloon Juice.

Who the hell doesn’t know they need to enact a MTA?

An ethical scenario was forwarded to the blog today with a request for the wisdom of the crowd. I can but oblige. The query has been lightly modified for anonymity purposed.

A member of my department informed me that a collaborator, another faculty member in our department, gave, without this person’s knowledge or permission, quantitities of unique compounds that synthesized by the lab to an investigator outside our university. That external researcher has recently published work based upon those compounds, and included in that paper an acknowledgement of the collaborator as the source of those materials.

The rest of the note indicates that the person who had synthesized the compounds was not informed by the departmental collaborator or the external investigator. This person only learned about it through a roundabout way that boiled down to “hey, have you seen this paper about this stuff you are working with?”
This is entirely simple, as depicted. Nowadays it is nearly impossible that an investigator would not know that anything sent to a collaborator external to the University requires a Materials Transfer Agreement. Everything. Compounds, reagents, mice, tissues. Everything.
Now true, many times people sort of overlook this for the small stuff. Or overlook it until something actually works out and it looks like a publication is ahead. But c’mon. How can you not know?
Furthermore, everyone knows that you don’t get to screw a collaborator and doing so in your own department is incredibly stupid. It will come out and you will look like a jerk. Particularly when you have failed to file the right MTA paperwork. And, depending on your University policies, you may be in a world of local hurt for letting intellectual property that belongs (formally speaking) to the University into a competing institution’s hands without protecting the intellectual property rights.
(Look, I don’t make the rules and I actually think they are bad for science. But the roots of this go back a long, long ways. Universities have a structural stance toward intellectual property that is highly corporate.)
My view is that the fault here is almost exclusively with the in-house collaborating investigator because s/he could have told the external collaborator that it was all coolio and conveniently neglected to mention that a third lab had actually made the compound in question. Maybe a *slight* possibility that the external collaborator had proceeded to publication without appropriate notification of the in-house collaborator who provided the (third lab’s) compound.
What do you think DearReader? Straightforward? or am I missing something?

Abel Pharmboy moves Terra Sigillata to…

Our great blog friend Abel Pharmboy has a new home for one of my (and yours, Dear Reader, and yours) favorite blogs.
He has joined the stable of blogs in the Chemical and Engineering News site for blogging, CENtral Science.
Congrats to Abel and congrats to CENtral Science.
__
crossposted.

Harvard found Marc Hauser guilty of misconduct, his lab claims he manipulated data

The ScienceInsider blog published a letter from Harvard’s Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences which states that Marc Hauser was indeed found guilty of scientific misconduct under their investigation process.

it is with great sadness that I confirm that Professor Marc Hauser was found solely responsible, after a thorough investigation by a faculty investigating committee, for eight instances of scientific misconduct

None of this pushing it off on the hapless trainee anymore. He was to blame.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed published an accusation supposedly from a former lab member.

The research assistant who analyzed the data and the graduate student decided to review the tapes themselves, without Mr. Hauser’s permission, the document says. They each coded the results independently. Their findings concurred with the conclusion that the experiment had failed: The monkeys didn’t appear to react to the change in patterns.
They then reviewed Mr. Hauser’s coding and, according to the research assistant’s statement, discovered that what he had written down bore little relation to what they had actually observed on the videotapes. He would, for instance, mark that a monkey had turned its head when the monkey didn’t so much as flinch. It wasn’t simply a case of differing interpretations, they believed: His data were just completely wrong.

Certainly the dude was charismatic. And had a good media reputation. And Greg Laden thinks he’s a great guy.
But he was also willing to fake data. The odds are good that he is a case of pushing a little too hard to demonstrate what he just “knew” a priori to be true. I saw a comment on him somewhere or other that referred to him as a master experimentalist. He was just sooooo skilled at putting together the experimental conditions in the right way to demonstrate…something. The assumption has to be that this is in contrast to others in his field that had more, shall we say, difficulty. Well, perhaps the reason his experiments were seemingly so brilliant, effortless and beyond the reach of mere mortal primatologists was because Hauser was making up data? Fudging it the whole way?

The scienceblogging aggregator to end all aggregators

This is unbelievable. BRILLIANT!
Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Dave Munger have come up with something really special.

Scienceblogging.org

Scrolling down you will note over 50 sites of online science being aggregated. So to quickly review all that is new in the discussion of science online, all you need to do is swing by and give it a quick scan.
I like.
Bora explains here, Munger here.

The zomg! grad school carnival is up at 49 percent

Go Read.
I’m not huge blog carnival reader but, wow, this is one of the biggest ones I’ve seen.
I guess people have a lot to talk about with respect to graduate school.
Naturally, I can’t possibly remember graduate school so that’s my excuse for not contributing.
Actually, I do have one thought. In the midst of some rather dismal dissertation writing months, a friend of mine (grad student, different department) was apparently tired of my moaning. He said “Why are you doing this if you hate it so much? No, really, why?“
This was, as it happened, a really good question to pose. The sucky didn’t end with grad school. I’ve had plenty more episodes of work annoyance since then.
It wasn’t a panacea then, and it isn’t now, but my friend’s remark really helped me to focus on one thing.
I like this stuff. I like doing science, I like my research models, I like being half-way decent at certain parts of my job.
They do make it worthwhile plowing through the times in which things suck ass.

Got Neurotree? Got Psych, Fly, Physics, Marine Ecology…phew!

It has been a while since we’ve discussed Neurotree.org, a data base of training genealogy focused on the training and collaborative relationships between neuroscientists. If Academic Family concepts are new to you, it is pretty simple. If you trained as a postdoc in the lab of Professor Richard Schwanger, ol’ Dick becomes your academic parent. Likewise, since Dick trained as a graduate student in the laboratory of Professor Hairley Bleu, she becomes your academic grandparent. I’ll leave it up to you to work out who your second cousins, once removed, are.
At any rate, I happened to wonder about the academic family of Marc D. Hauser recently (for obvious reasons) and this reminded me of Neurotree.
Check out this analysis. Nice steady growth across the years although it is interesting that a traditional Fall boost in entries didn’t last past 2008 (like I said, it has been a while since I reviewed the Neurotree site in any depth).
Also, note the expansion of the project into PsychTree, FlyTree, PhysicsTree, Marine Ecology Tree…actually, Madre de Dios, they’re doing everything!
The academictree.org site seems to be the root. Infectious Disease? Philosophy?
Go sign in and add yourself.
This is different from all the social media strategies seeking to be the scientific version of Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, if you ask me. This is an archival record of training histories and academic relationships which serves both as an interesting history-of-science type of resource as well as a concurrent networking tool. Six Degrees of Isaac Newton is a fun party game but what really makes this a real career asset is the networking. It doesn’t take very long for the knowledge of who previously trained in the lab you (postdocs and gradstudents) inhabit to dissipate. Sure, you could grill the PI about all of her previous trainees..but c’mon. Neurotree (or your relevant subdiscipline tree) allows you to browse about up and down the families to find out who knows which person that you might tap for your next training stop, collaboration or a key bit of advice.
Of course, these trees are only as valuable as they are populated. A more complete tree means a better tool for networking.
So go on over and search for your name in a relevant tree. Somebody may already have added you but if not it is simplicity to create a login and enter yourself. See if you can find anyone else in your tree and create the familial link. Search out people in your field and see if some key relationship is missing- link up other folks.
If you see an error somewhere, shoot an email off to the listed contacts and get it corrected.
In short, participate.

Three Cheers for the de-GlamourMagification of J. Neurosci!!!

cross posting from DrugMonkey on Scientopia
Journal of Neuroscience:

Beginning November 1, 2010, The Journal of Neuroscience will no longer allow authors to include supplemental material when they submit new manuscripts and will no longer host supplemental material on its web site for those articles.

HAHAHAAHAHA!!! Yes!!!!
whew. calm down, DM, calm down. why are they doing it?

Although The Journal, like most journals, currently peer reviews supplemental material, the depth of that review is questionable. Most well qualified reviewers are overburdened with requests to review manuscripts, and many feel that it is too much to ask them to also evaluate supplemental material that can be as extensive as the article itself. It is obvious to editors that most reviewers put far less effort (often no effort) into examining supplemental material. Nevertheless, we certify the supplemental material as having passed peer review.

True, true. A concern to be sure. [stay calm, DM, stay calm...]

Another troubling problem associated with supplemental material is that it encourages excessive demands from reviewers. Increasingly, reviewers insist that authors add further analyses or experiments “in the supplemental material.” These additions are invariably subordinate or tangential, but they represent real work for authors and they delay publication. Such requests can be an unjustified burden on authors. In principle, editors can overrule these requests, but this represents additional work for the editors, who may fail to adequately referee this aspect of the review.
Reviewer demands in turn have encouraged authors to respond in a supplemental material arms race. Many authors feel that reviewers have become so demanding they cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to insert any supplemental material that might help immunize them against reviewers’ concerns.

w00000t!!!!1111!!!!ELEVEN!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!! Damn tootin’!!!!!

Supplemental material also undermines the concept of a self-contained research report by providing a place for critical material to get lost. Methods that are essential for replicating the experiments, analyses that are central to validating the results, and awkward observations are increasingly being relegated to supplemental material. Such material is not supplemental and belongs in the body of the article, but authors can be tempted (or, with some journals, encouraged) to place essential article components in the supplemental material.

OMGWTFRUKidding me?????!!!??? YES!!!! YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exactamudo correcto!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Three cheers for the de-GlamourMagification of the Journal of Neuroscience!!
[h/t: Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde for alerting me to this important news]

LabSpaces.net evolves into a science blogging collective

and a powerhouse at that.
LabSpaces was previously a science news aggregator but now has jumped hard into the science blogging game with some key acquisitions. Many of them are some of our good blog and Twitt friends including:
DamnGoodTechnician
Odyssey of Pondering Blather (joining the kids, old man? )
biochem belle of There and Back Again
Dr. Becca of Fumbling Toward Tenure Track
Genomic Repairman
…and they have a bunch of other bloggers over there that you will like (and may already know).
kudos to Brian Krueger for assembling this new blog collective. Looks like great reading ahead.

Scientopia: A new science blogging network

crossposting from DrugMonkey on Scienceblogs.com….

A brand new science blogging collective has launched itself today. I encourage you to stroll on over to http://scientopia.org/blogs and take a look-see. You may even want to save a bookmark or two.

The vision statement reads as follows:

Scientopia is a collective of people who write about science because they love to do so. It is a community, held together by mutual respect and operated by consensus, in which people can write, educate, discuss, and learn about science and the process of doing science. In this we explore the interplay between scientific issues and other parts of our lives with the shared goal of making science more accessible.

As a community, we strive to be welcoming of anyone with an interest in science and its place in our world, regardless of any feature, whether extrinsic or intrinsic, which may act or have historically acted as a barrier to full participation in science or discourses about science.

Hippie statements aside, I think you will find that Scientopia has some interesting voices lined up for your reading pleasure. So go take a look.

Scientopia: a new science blogging network

A brand new science blogging collective has launched itself today. I encourage you to stroll on over to http://scientopia.org/blogs and take a look-see. You may even want to save a bookmark or two.
The vision statement reads as follows:

Scientopia is a collective of people who write about science because they love to do so. It is a community, held together by mutual respect and operated by consensus, in which people can write, educate, discuss, and learn about science and the process of doing science. In this we explore the interplay between scientific issues and other parts of our lives with the shared goal of making science more accessible.
As a community, we strive to be welcoming of anyone with an interest in science and its place in our world, regardless of any feature, whether extrinsic or intrinsic, which may act or have historically acted as a barrier to full participation in science or discourses about science.

Hippie statements aside, I think you will find that Scientopia has some interesting voices lined up for your reading pleasure. So go take a look.