Month: September 2013

Article about Open Access

Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.)

An interesting take on the struggle of the OpenAccess movement to make scientific knowledge widely available, by one of the co-founders of PLoS.

I’d call everyone’s attention to this: "In the end, his disdain isn’t directed at the publishers who hoard scientific knowledge so much as at his colleagues who let them get away with it. ‘One of the reasons advances in publishing don’t happen is that people are willing to live with all sorts of crap from journals in order to get the imprimatur the journal title has as a measure of the impact of their work,’ Eisen says. ‘It’s easy to blame Elsevier, right? To think that there’s some big corporation that’s preventing scientists from doing the right thing. It’s just bullshit. Elsevier doesn’t prevent anyone from doing anything. Scientists do this themselves!’"

Courtesy of professor James Coyne.

Interesting historical reflection

An article just came out on Salon (Why Neville Chamberlain Was Right) with a reassessment of Chamberlain’s actions prior to WWII, applying a proper historical approach: considering events in their context and avoiding the temptation of whig history, i.e. judging the past with the view of the present.

At the very least it is a compelling reading, and most of all I enjoyed this part: "Historians often find themselves moving against popular opinion. In the case of Chamberlain, though, the gap between public perception and the historical record serves a political purpose. The story we’re told about Munich is one about the futility and foolishness of searching for peace. In American political debates, the words ‘appeasement’ and ‘Munich’ are used to bludgeon those who argue against war. But every war is not World War II, and every dictator is not Hitler."

Prejudice hurts; love heals

I hope this doesn’t sound trite, but I am writing these lines with my heart, so to speak.

Just after the (unbelievable) verdict of the Trayvon Martin case, I saw an episode of professor Melissa Harris-Perry show that commented on it (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/melissa-harris-perry-george-zimmerman_n_3595503.html).

I was deeply touched by the personal commentary that she and some of the guests – most of which were African-Americans – made about the experience of discrimination, not just the intellectual indignation against it; what it meant worrying if a son or partner would return safely home, for fear of hate crimes and police violence; having someone follow you in a store, made a suspect just because of the colour of your skin, and I had an epiphany of sorts (to the extent that a white, straight, middle-class cis man can have) of what it means to be at the receiving end of prejudice and discrimination every single moment of every single day of your whole life…

That brought to my mind the incredibly beautiful and touching poem "To This Day", presented by its author, Shane Koyczan in a powerful clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY

Both professor Perry’s discussion and Koyczan poem express the hurt experienced by peoplewho are, for whatever idiotic reason, shunned, mocked, persecuted, antagonized, isolated, stigmatized by a majority of people that mindlessly become sociopathic mobs.

All of that came to my mind again seeing a clip about someone who apparently had the same kind of revelation after being unfriended by some jerk on facebook because of the pictures he posted of his brother’s wedding – because his brother is gay and married a man, and the jerk is a fundamentalist who got his knickers in a twist because of that. The episode got him thinking and… well, better watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zezwl4XXK10

Only a total lack of empathy can make people act so cruelly; only fundamentalist ideologies – and especially of the religious variety – can dehumanize people to the extent that they will lose their ability to acknowledge the humanity of others.

As the example of that guy shows, however, being able to feel the pain – at least imagine what it would be – of those who suffer such indignities, brings out the better part of all of us. I can’t add anything to what David Stevens, the author of the last cited video said. I only hope that whoever reads this gets it.

On second thoughts, I can’t add anything, but I know some guys who can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-pFAFsTFTI

Recently published

Male circumcision and HIV: A controversy study on facts and values.
Kenneth Rochel de Camargo Jr., André Luiz de Oliveira Mendonça, Christophe Perrey & Alain Giami

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441692.2013.817599

Abstract
We present a controversy study on the association between male circumcision (MC) and HIV. Our general goal is to shed light on the issue, unravelling and comparing different conceptions of scientific evidence and their respective world views. We seek to reconstruct, based on an analysis of the literature on the topic, key moments in the history of the controversy about the association between MC and HIV prevention, analysing more closely three recent randomised studies, given their relevance to the argumentative strategy employed by those who defend circumcision as a prevention method. Following this, we present a synthesis of the main arguments against the three referred studies. In conclusion, it seems that reasonable arguments for a more cautious approach are not being adequately considered.

Can’t have enough of Krugman

The shrill one hits another home run.

His commentary on the very idiotic remarks made by AIG’s CIO a few days ago: Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted

"Well, I have a theory. When you have that much money, what is it you’re trying to buy by making even more? You already have the multiple big houses, the servants, the private jet. What you really want now is adulation; you want the world to bow before your success. And so the thought that people in the media, in Congress and even in the White House are saying critical things about people like you drives you wild.
It is, of course, incredibly petty. But money brings power, and thanks to surging inequality, these petty people have a lot of money. So their whining, their anger that they don’t receive universal deference, can have real political consequences. Fear the wrath of the .01 percent!"
(thanks to @mmflint)

When worlds collide: Sex, porn, media and higher education

A teacher shows a critical documentary about the porn industry in the classroom, three students complain that they felt "uncomfortable" and the teacher is suspended. This in and of itself is absurd, but a commentary on the whole episode has much, much more to make one think about gender relations, sex, porn, the media industry and the educational system, that trying to summarize would not do it justice, so read the whole thing: The “Price” of Counter-Hegemonic Pedagogy: The Case of Dr. Jammie Price and The Price of Pleasure

Just an example: "Given that the majority of students enter college with the hegemonic discourse firmly embedded in their social construction of reality, it is easy to understand why some experience critical theory as hostile. Most have been taught by elementary and high school teachers who themselves have had little exposure to critical theory and were reared on corporate-produced pop culture images. Consequently, students can be unnerved to find themselves in a classroom in which everything they have thought to be the truth is now open to interrogation. Suddenly students are exposed to theory and research that unpacks the way mainstream ideology obfuscates how institutionalized power reproduces gender, race, and class inequality. This is especially noticeable when dealing with issues of race and racism in classes that take a critical perspective because white students often feel like they are being blamed for being white, when in actuality the focus is on systems of white privilege that reproduce institutional racism. Again, this makes sense, since they have generally been trained to think only in terms of individuals, not structures."