CharonY

That is the issue, though. When they were done, they were not misapplications. Only after we gained more information did we decided that it was. And in future we may decide that what we do now were misapplications. This broader context (ideally) helps us to keep our minds open to these issues (including ethical ones). Don't get me wrong, I know where you are coming from. I was attracted to sciences because it appeared to be such an objective way to look at things. However, as I learned over time, science is conducted by humans and humans all have their respective biases, cultural background and other baggage which, in the end, makes us humans. Note that does not mean that if we repeat an experiment we get different results. Rather it influences what types of studies we actually conduct and the way we set them up. The decision to exclude women made a lot of sense, we want to minimize variables to gain stronger insights. As such for the longest time (pretty much until a few years ago) it made sense not to include women as it could compromise your results, delay funding etc. Only after folks recognize the (in hindsight) rather obvious issues with that, NIH and other funding agencies require that you at least justify why you do not have gender equity in your research. Some saw it as SJW overreach, others a necessary means to finally figure out how to address lack of data. Likewise our data on racial/ethnical differences in medicine is rather rudimentary. However, depending on who you ask, quite a few have strong opinions about the sense (or nonsense) of addressing racial profiles in cohorts. Ultimately, the insights that science provides us, depends on how we try to figure things out. Eise can probably talk about the philosophcal aspects of it (certainly more eloquently than I could) but to me, it is important to recognize that while the subject of natural sciences is something objective and independent of us humans, the act of conducting science certainly is not. And of course literally any scientific aspects pertaining to humans specifically risks being politicized. I firmly believe that training scientists requires teaching strengths and weaknesses, results of bias and misapplications (as you named it) and if some elements appear political, so be it. I just cannot see myself figuring out which position every possible political group may have and strip my curriculum from anything that may be vaguely seen as political.

So when I talk about the Linnean system should I just not mention how that actually led to humans being grouped in Systema Naturae and the line to to scientific racism because someone might get offended? What about applied sciences? Should I stop mentioning in upper classes some of our disease models are often not applicable to women since the studies were all conducted on men to avoid hormone fluctuations influencing data?

The link is here, however be forewarned, this site isn't free. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/10/11/seattle-schools-lead-controversial-push-to-rehumanize.html According to the interview with a person who is directly involved in the planning, this is taught IN math class. I didn't notice the link before though. Either way, in light of what Castro-Gill is saying, I'd chalk that up to a bad folder organization. Or someone got confused and thought this belonged in an Ethnic Studies course. For the record, I have absolutely no issue with this being an ethnic studies course. But it's not, it's to be incorporated into the math class. Thank you for the source, much appreciated. I'd have to think a bit more about it. First is of course that it should not compromise the core curriculum, and from what I read that does not seem to be the case. The other aspects however, I actually do see the value in it, but I wonder whether K12 is too early or not. For example, in part of my class (college level), I talk about the scientific method. However, I am careful to contextualize it that far from being an infallible, science often comes to wrong conclusions and is not simply dealing with a series of facts. To illustrate these shortcomings (and how science can address those), I and other lecturers use a variety of examples, including phrenology and/or the development of scientific racism. In computer science some lecturers may also discuss why algorithms are not truly neutral or universal (e.g. using examples where seemingly race-neutral inputs result in racial bias). Incomplete information and implicit assumption derived from science with real-life consequences. It is not possible, or even useful to keep things entirely neutral. What would that even mean? How can we talk about evolution or climate change while being politically neutral, when politics have taken sides? Or should we ignore potential impacts of our findings, because folks can politicize them? What, the heck is considered political nowadays anyway? The answer of course is that science is not just an accumulation of facts with no impact. Science is so powerful because it has consequences (positive or negative) and as such understanding those impacts is quite useful, even if it is only done as a sidenote to the main curriculum. As such I do see the value to also use these concepts to highlight how a seemingly neutral concept such as maths can (and have been) used in problematic ways. If nothing else, it teaches that only because we have a certain system of understanding and learning, it does not mean that it is the only possible one nor that it is infallible (or unbiased). With regard to student levels, my first thought is that is more fitting to University, where we provide broader context to our studies and where we have students unlearn misconceptions learned in highschool. At the same time, I wonder whether it might actually be helpful if already highschool students start of with this broader context in various studies. Another benefit is that (as mentioned above) these types of context actually help (minority) students to perform better in class. After all, mathematics has always suffered from the impact issue (i.e. why should I learn that, I am never going to use it). That all being said, I was unaware of ethnomathematics as a broader concept and I see now that there is actually quite a bit of literature dating back to the 80s. So, I think it would be a good idea for everyone, including myself to read up a bit on the benefits and issues of the concept, before resorting to knee-jerk (or similar) reactions.

Depends on the usage of the term. I am not entirely sure about the origin, but there was a time when it referred to folks engaged in social justice reform. But since then it has been delegated to a derogatory term referring to folks taking up social justice issues but without putting the work in to actually understand the issues. At some point, presumably with the help of social media, the latter is also applied to all folks engaged in social justice issues, in an attempt to devalue the principles.

Considering that you manage to resolve your marker, I suspect that you got mostly linear acrylamide. Measurement errors could account for that. If you used powder, bis-acrylamide is relatively stable, but I do not think that I had a batch lasting longer than a year or maybe two.

There are open reviews that work similar to that, but there are a lot of issues with it, especially in competitive fields, where there are overaps in research. There, big labs have it easier to scoop up things and just get things out with all the wrinkles ironed out and smaller labs getting hosed in the process. But one can already put things into bioarxiv, if one is inclined to do so, but we see a lot of crap out there, too. Which clearly shows that without at least some barrier we are going to be swamped by nonsense and it is not clear who is going to put the time in to comment on those. I'd rather have slightly curated swamp of nonsense over a non-curate one, to be honest. Even if it means that it takes a while to get comments back (which suits me just fine, it gives me time to catch up on stuff before I have to work on revisions). Most open review schemes do indeed a hybrid approach in that regard. That is admirable. However, most folks have a couple of theses, their courses plus exams, unfinished papers that need to get out yesterday since the student needs to finish up, the grant deadline and, committee work to deal with when a request for a paper comes in. And then one realizes that there are already two or more on the desk that should be worked on, already. If there is a gap in scheduling, a week is quick. But if there is not, it can easily take longer just to find the time to sit down and work on it. And there is of course the delay from the editors finding suitable reviewers, many of which will decline because they are too busy already. Point is, however, whether the time frame was extraordinary, which would just then be a fluke (I had one sitting on a desk of an editor, because he actually thought he sent it out, which was annoying but never happened again) or something systemic in your field.

Huh, weird. I must have forgotten all about it. I vaguely remember that there was a different system but try as I might, I have no recollection how it used to be...

! Moderator Note I think that is quite enough. Please focus on the topic. Additional bickering will be removed.

I just tried to google the curriculum and the first pages were all articles in a similar vein to OP and how that erodes math teaching. Some of these aticles frame it as a leftist attack on science, which is rather rich considering where the political anti-intellectual movement (at least in the US) is coming from. I found it worrying that the search pages were dominated by articles from the "SJW attack on math " crowd. In-between there was pretty much a single article from a Seattle outlet discussing ethnic studies within the first pages. Before the argument is made that ethnic studies themselves are useless, I will like to highlight a relatively new body of literature highlighting that minority students perform better academically, when attending ethnic studies or other curricula that highlight their experience or background. Improvements include scores, attendance and overall credits earned. These include significant increases in Maths and Science scores (See e.g. Dee& Penner, Am Ed Res J Volume: 54 issue: 1, page(s): 127-166). Thus there is an increased interest to use these benefits, especially for at-risk-students.

This is sounds like either incomplete polymerization or lack of cross-linking. This is often due to old APS or wrong acrylamide bis-acrylamide ratio.

I wished I knew. Things are so weird. It should be noted that AFAIK the precise timing is still not clear and thus it has not been established whether Trump was actually absent during the operation.

As per your link the class is part of the ethnic studies curriculum, not for the math curriculum. You can also see it in the link as it refers to the social studies directory. Also the curriculum itself makes it rather obvious what the topic is, unless one has a rather weird view on what schools teach (though, to be fair, some states mandated teaching the controversy of evolution, so quite a bit may be projection).

A simple mutation would not change the fact that the locus is still shared by the whole population (and was derived from the same ancestor). The typical scenario for relatively rapid acquisition of new genetic elements are typically horizontal gene transfer events (e.g. via viruses).

Well all members of a given species share essentially the same core genome. In cases of mammals we basically all have the same genes and related traits. The phenotypes can be different, due to variations of the genes (i.e. individuals have different variants of the same gene) or external factors. In other words, a species is basically defined by the genetic traits that they share.

The quality of a publication is not based on being published. Rather after that it depends on how it impacts the community. Often it is skewed by who publishes I too and sometimes the importance is recognized way later. Peer review was always the initial bar.

Homology us above the species level. I.e. if you see a trait in two extant species that is derived from a common ancestor it would be considered a homologous trait. The important bit is the inheritable (I.e. genetic) aspect of the trait. Many traits are require many genetic elements, there are variations of the said gene and a the actual phenotype can also vary based on environmental input. However if the relevant genetic elements are shared between several related species (and therefore likely derived from the same ancestor) they are considered homologous.

If we count self-experimentation like the above example as fitting there are quite a few with non-lethal consequences but with varying degrees of yuckiness. Barry Marshall infected himself with Helicobacter pylori in order to demonstrate that they cause ulcers. Stubbins Ffirth on the other hand was convinced that yellow fever was not contagious and inoculated himself with body fluids from sick patients. In this case, the conclusions were wrong (though he did not manage to infect himself). Claude Barlow tried to bring viable eggs to Johns Hopkins by infesting himself with schistosomiasis. A number of researchers in the process of developing antidotes against venom have tested treatment on themselves and risked (as well as went into) anaphylactic shock (I cannot recall names, right now, though). In fact, medical research, especially in its early days where knowledge was limited is chock full of self-experimentation such as e.g. William Ramsay, who exposed himself to various gases to figure out anesthetic properties, or Wernder Forssmann who inserted had a catheter inserted in the 1920s to obtain radiographic evidence for the procedure. Also there are quite a few tragic stories related to that research when scientists willingly, accidentally or unwittingly exposed themselves to dangerous hazards (Marie Curie comes to mind, but there were quite a few deaths associated with work on diseases, of course).

I know one who prefers smoothies to coffee or tea. What a weirdo.

If it takes that long one of the reasons is typically that the received reviews were deemed insufficient (and just did not come back) and they had to look for additional reviewers. From mathematicians I have heard about rather long review times as routine. One should also keep in mind that much in academic sciences is carried by active researchers (including reviewers and editors) which almost inevitably leads to delays (or at least I have yet to meet someone who has got more than enough time for all their commitments).

It is, and there is good reason to think so. However, other researchers who look at the matter from a holistic energy balance view (Rippe was one of them, I believe) have argued that the contribution of lipogenesis (i.e. de novo fat generation) are too small relative to say, daily fat intake.

Lustig and others have talked about health implications, but it is not because HFC is something specifically toxic. Despite the name, HFC contains about equal amount of fructose and glucose. However, Lustig's research mostly implicates the fructose with adverse health outcomes. However, it is important to note that while potential pathways of disease have been uncovered, it is not fully established whether it is really down to the type of sugar. The reason is that ultimately the various sugars are not consumed in isolation and due to overall complexity of nutritional biochemistry, it is difficult to clearly isolate the functions leading to adverse outcomes (on top we can add contributions of lifestyle, microbiota and other aspects and it becomes a mess). What we can state rather clearly, however, is that we consume too much sugar in total. And of course the addition of HFC in all types of products really amps up the overall carbohydrate count. There is little (disputed) evidence just switching the type of sugar with similar composition (say sucrose) but consuming equivalent amounts would be safer.

The whole reasoning sounds very suspect to me. There are no clearly identified anti-aging pathways. There are proteins associated with aging processes, though in most cases the precise role is still under investigation and in most cases it is not clear whether manipulating them would reverse aging processes (or perhaps, cause cancer by influencing apoptotic pathways, for example). Even more worrying, they observe inflammation and then, without any evidence, make the jump to a number of pathways which for the most part just regulate basic cellular functions such as cell growth and metabolism. It is not mentioned that they monitored anything related to aging at all, just inflammation, and the rest is just pure speculation. Anyone actually involved in research would not classify what followed as theory, but pure speculation. NMN has shown some beneficial effects, but specific to vascular aging in rodents. And there are things one could monitor there. However, I am highly suspicious of any report where folks apparently just label arbitrary pathways as anti-aging pathways and exhibit a poor understanding of how science is normally conducted and presented.. It really looks too much like a snake oil sales pitch.

I would like to add that folks here are not medical experts nor do we provide medical advice. What you see in this thread are speculations by laypersons, based on reasonable assumptions (such as sugar content). I.e. one should never treat things found on the internet as medical advice without consulting a medical practitioner. Even a medical researcher generally can only speak to a very narrow aspect relating to their expertise, and one has to be careful to interpret things being said in that context. It should also be noted that the cited study above is likely of no relevance. The paper discusses specific mechanisms relevant for infections affecting the brain (i.e. breaching the blood-brain barrier) which is quite a different and far more serious issue.

Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated.

Sorry, my knowledge is very limited but hasn't the case only recently reached the Federal Court of Appeal? I.e. the case has not reached the Supreme Court, yet? Maybe it is another case but I vaguely remember Sheer promising to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court, but experts mentioned that there is really no mechanism for that.