Good morning.
Many
Minnesotans love to bemoan, celebrate, or at least remark about the
weather. I do all three, at various
times of the year. I'm not sure,
however, that I needed to live through three record-setting meteorological
events in April of this year: the most
snow ever recorded in the Twin Cities in the month of April, the single largest
snowfall ever recorded in the Twin Cities in April, and the most snow on the ground
ever recorded at this time of the year. Our
yard reflects these records: looking out
the back door at about 8:15 a.m. on April 16.
The deck table has ~16 inches of snow on it.
Even if Kathy and I were already
snowbirds, wintering elsewhere for a few weeks, we'd have returned to this
mess. We may have to reconsider our
return date. Or, as Kathy said, if our
apartment/condo lease has run out, we might just stay in a hotel a few more days
and at least wait until the plows have done their work.
In the meantime, this is how we
Minnesotans deal with winter.
(courtesy of my friend Roberta Sonnesyn)
* * *
The statement that "No book is
worth reading that isn't worth re-reading" is attributed to Susan
Sontag. I'd like to ask her about the
claim (but I can't, because she died in 2004), because I don't agree. For those of us who like junk
murder/detective stories, for example, it is a happy pastime—but few of the
books are worth re-reading. Even outside
that genre, I've read plenty of books that I enjoyed but that were not worth a
second time through.
The key phrase may be "worth
reading." I suppose Ms. Sontag
might not put murder mysteries in the "worth reading" category. If so, then I'd still disagree with her
because they provide pleasure on reading once.
* * *
One hopes
that this discovery isn't going to be especially pertinent to the U.S., or to
our children and grandchildren, but it's an interesting one. Last year there were 9,272 cases of
tuberculosis (TB) in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease
Control. In 2010 there were 11,182, so
the number has declined. Unfortunately,
the CDC also reports that "one fourth of the world's population is
infected with TB. In 2016, 10.4 million
people around the world became sick with TB disease. There were 1.7 million
TB-related deaths worldwide."
The
research finding won't treat the disease—but it will help in diagnosis. It seems that when "trained rats were
given children's sputum samples to sniff, the animals were able to pinpoint 68
percent more cases of TB infections than detected through a standard smear
test." The discovery was made at
the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania (no, even after a career in
higher education, I've never heard of this place, but the research was
published in what appears to be a distinguished journal under the auspices of
the International Pediatric Research Foundation). The impetus for the research was anecdotal
evidence that people with TB have a peculiar smell.
As the
numbers suggest, TB is a significant problem in parts of the world. This discovery allows better detection—and
treatment. (The kids who were in the
research study who, it was learned from the rats but not the standard smear
test that had TB, were sent to clinics for treatment.)
Some
organization will have to start training rats.
* * *
"Murky
world of 'science' journals a new frontier for climate deniers" is the
title of an article by Graham Readfearn in the [British] Guardian. It's a growing
problem in a number of academic disciplines but it becomes more alarming in
fields that are heavily politicized and where decisions will have a profound
effect on life. In the case of the
journals that Readfearn highlights—similar to those in other fields—these fake
science journals often publish without peer review, or with very little peer
review. As my friends in higher
education know, with rare exceptions, articles that aren't peer-reviewed and in
journals that don't insist on peer review are usually not worth much credit or
attention.
Here
are some of the titles that Readfearn calls out; don't they sound like they
should be credible sources? International Journal of Earth and
Environmental Sciences, International Journal of Research in Earth and
Environmental Sciences, and the International Journal of Environmental
Sciences. (I italicized them, as
journal titles, but holding my nose while doing so.) Some of these journals are "predatory": they seek academic authors but neglect to
inform them of fees that the author will be charged for publishing in the
journal or declaring they have peer review when they don't—or at least not in
any professional sense of the phrase. As
Readfearn informs us, "journals that are 'open access' make their money by
charging academics or institutions a fee for peer reviewing and checking
submitted academic manuscripts, and then publishing them. There are many reputable publishers working
this way."
Also
predators, Readfearn maintains, are the "climate science deniers looking
to take advantage of the questionable quality controls in return for getting
their work published in what the publishers claim are 'peer-reviewed journals'
but that, in reality, are not."
More than one distinguished academic scientist has dismissed the papers,
one calling them "laughable" and another maintaining that none of
them would pass legitimate peer review used by reputable journals.
Part
of the problem arises because of the pressure on young academics—in almost all
fields—to publish in order to obtain tenure or advancement. There aren't enough journals in some fields
to accommodate the demand, so these shady journals begin publishing and have
far lower standards for evaluating papers.
Online journals, of course, are extremely cheap to create. I could start one if I were of a mind to do
so.
Reading
this piece from the Guardian dismays
me because it is so easy for people to be duped by these phony journals and the
phony "science" they publish.
I've spent a good part of my professional life reading academic journal
articles, and examining the sources, the author credentials, and the journals,
so I think I can usually distinguish between the legitimate and the not, but
that isn't experience or training that most people have. (As I have written before: Elliott concluded, after he graduated from
college, that the two most useful courses he took—apart from his art
instruction—were, during the year he was a Psychology major, research methods
and statistics. The former is the kind
of course that teaches students to be on the lookout for publications that are
not credible.)
Shortly after the Guardian piece, space.com published an
article about a phony "experiment" about exceeding warp 10 on Star
Trek. The "experiment"
demonstrates that when people cross that boundary, they turn amphibious, but
they were returned to human form by the end.
The author and his affiliation were fictitious, but out of 10 journals
he submitted it to, five accepted the article and one published it. "The paper calls for future studies on
the impact of warp 10 on human genetics and physical changes. Speaking as though the experiment were fact
instead of fiction, BioTrekkie [the pseudonym of the author] said, 'Given we
now know what to expect, we can impose the intense antiproton burst regiment
treatment early— we can build it into the shuttle as a metamorphosis
compensator.'"
The journals all had high
publication fees and no or trivial "peer review." The journal that published the article, like
many such, has a title that sounds legitimate:
"American Research Journal of Biosciences."
My curiosity was aroused: Did the University of Minnesota libraries
subscribe to any of these journals?
Libraries at large research universities subscribe to hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of research journals. I
believe they are the single largest expense in a research library. I discovered that Minnesota did subscribe to
one of them, the International Journal of
Environmental Sciences. So much for
my long experience in evaluating the legitimacy of journals. I looked at the website; it looked like it
could be reputable, although the editorial board was all over the place, both
geographically and in credentials. So I
asked a long-time biologist friend if the journal was legitimate; she didn't
know but asked one of the University librarians.
The librarian took a look and was
doubtful; she "found a few points that, put together, would cause me to
wonder about its legitimacy." The
librarian's training was evident in her review of the journal. The following itemization is a quote from
her.
-- Very broad topic, as are most of the
journals from this publisher
-- Editorial board with little focus - it
includes chemists, foresters, etc.
-- Two of the three US folks on the
editorial board work in industry
-- Submission via e-mail and not a regular
submission software
-- The
description of the turn-around time makes me wonder how much copy editing
really happens
-- At
least one author [of a journal article submitted] needs to be a "member",
which involves a fee, and this info is buried on the Web pages, not mentioned
upfront as part of the submission instructions
-- Membership
allows publication in any of their journals, which given the wide range of
topics would seem highly unlikely
-- The
list of 40 databases where their journals are indexed is a sorry lot.
Embarrassing, really.
-- No
issues since Jan 2017
She concluded by
writing that "I'd have to say I am with Guardian. We need journals
that provide a platform for researchers from all parts of the world but this is
not the best way to run one." She
was uncertain how the University subscribed to it, but it's free, and if
someone in a department requested it, the library likely accommodated a no-cost
request.
Even the experienced among us can be
flummoxed.
From my
friend who got me connected with the science librarian.
* * *
Two people affiliated with the Urban
Institute, Sandy Baum (senior fellow, Education Policy Program, professor emerita
of economics at Skidmore College, accurately described as "an expert on
higher education finance") and Victoria Lee (research assistant, Education
Policy Program) recently published a piece that should quieten some of the
clamoring about the debt that students are taking on in order to pay for
college. There is clearly a problem (one
that could be eliminated if we made college free for all who qualified, as does
part of northern Europe, but that's another issue), but the recurring media
coverage exaggerates the impact of the burden.
What Baum and Lee point out is that "most
outstanding student debt is held by people with relatively high incomes." While it is true that "too many students
enroll in college but leave school without completing a credential . . . [and]
some students complete their programs only to discover that because of either
the institutions they attended or the fields in which they earned their
degrees, they can't find jobs that reward their education." The problem is exacerbated when unemployment
is high, which it is not right now.
They provide a couple of useful
illustrations.
The data demonstrate that "households
in the top quartile of the income distribution, with incomes above $81,140 in
2016, held about half of all outstanding education debt. The top 10 percent of households, with
incomes of $144,720 or higher, held 24 percent of the debt." As they observe, more debt is typically
associated with more education, and, also typically, more education is
associated with higher incomes. Some of
that debt held by higher-income households is from professional or graduate
school, people who earn degrees that will generate a higher income. "The education many of them borrowed to
pay for is also what helped them rise toward the top of the income
distribution. In fact, 57 percent of
outstanding student debt is owed by households with graduate degrees." While some of the horror stories are truly
horrible, in general they are not, but the horror stories get the headlines.
(I
recall seeing data on student debt at the University of Minnesota and one
example jumped out: some poor kid ran up
over $100,000 in student debt in order to earn a bachelor's degree in the
humanities. That was the extreme outlier
in U of M data, and that kid didn't get good advice. One wonders why he/she didn't receive any
non-loan financial aid; perhaps it was because the parental income was too
high. The U data at the time I saw it
suggested that Minnesota students were not running up inordinate amounts of
debt for their bachelor's degree.)
Baum
and Lee also observe, a qualifier that many commenters miss, that just because
someone has college debt doesn't mean they're worse off than someone who doesn't
have such debt. Many of those with no
debt also didn't go to college or any post-secondary education. Both the near-term and long-term prospects
for the latter group are bleak.
It's
also true that an average debt of $23,800 for households that have an income of
no more than $22,500 is a terrible burden.
The lowest income quartile includes more borrowers than it does share of
debt. People in this quartile may have
some college or perhaps a two-year degree; few have a four-year degree. Their prospects for acquiring a job that will
allow them to pay off the debt are not great.
There's
a policy implication in the Baum and Lee findings:
The
concentration of education debt among the relatively affluent means that some
policies designed to reduce the burden of education debt are actually
regressive. Focusing on lowering the
interest rate on all outstanding student debt or on forgiving large amounts of
that debt would bestow significant benefits on relatively well-off people.
As they observe,
focusing on the plight of the lowest-income group would serve society better
than giving more benefits to the well-to-do.
* * *
It is six
months today since Krystin died (Tuesday, 10/17 – Tuesday, 4/17). I still find it hard to believe she's gone
and I still have the urge to send/forward items to her, before I stop and
realize I can't. I suppose this will
trail off as time passes. I note that a
couple of her friends occasionally post items to her Facebook page. I'm glad they do.
May you
have spring where you live. We don't.
Gary
No comments:
Post a Comment