Blind Balance...

Themis Goddess of Justice - bronze sculpture, Goddess of Justice, Law and Equity - RoyalDecorations.fr

Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Langston Hughes

I was saddened that names I respect as credible authorities - Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN and PBS News Hour could so botch reporting on cancer cures and climate change. I recall seeing the "possible cure for cancer" on CNN, which put me in a rather melancholy mood: my father died of lung cancer in 1999; my mother had been a smoker and at one time and a breast cancer survivor. She passed in 2009.

There is a false balance, or as I refer to "blind balance" in the news we digest from so many different sources: television, talk radio, the Internet; You Tube. Anyone with a laptop can post a video questioning the history of the moon landing, and get a following whether they were physically on the planet to witness the event or not. Without judge, panel or jury, "everything on the Internet must be true" including cancer cures, climate change deniers, teaching the controversy on evolution and the earth only being around six millennia old. Meanwhile, back at the ranch of global competition, countries that score higher than us in STEM obviously don't consider such delusional machinations.

This is me typing: You can choose to believe it our not, as this particular post is only my humble opinion. However, when I see someones research I find interesting, I post excerpts of the article or abstract in italics differentiating the originator from my commentary (if any). I only post if I have the originator's permission, avoid it if some written instruction prohibits it. Usually at the end of the post, I provide a link to further review if the blog reader's interested. I give credit and links to photos and their origins.

"Fair and Balanced" is in the lexicon, yet we can blithely ignore statistics (or facts) we don't like; science that may put in question our worldviews creating our own realities in the process.

The Internet has made that consumption instantaneous, thus the Fourth Estate is reduced to tabloid journalism, embedded reporters and ratings wars. Facebook and Twitter feeds are scrolled during presented news; in many cases that is the news! The immediate gratification of seeing one's "handle" on the flat screen is probably a rush for some, however Letters to the Editor have to stay within a certain word count, have a subject, make your point to an editorial board. When the National Enquire can break John Edward's affair with Reille Hunter before any legitimate news outlet, we know we've gone past the Rubicon.

I hang my head sadly that the word "shoddy" should become associated with any media coverage on science.

Columbia Journalism Review: Shoddy TV science coverage

Aftermath...

Henry David Thoreau

I recall my father reading either the Winston-Salem Journel or the Sentinel (in those days, there were two daily papers - morning and evening).

"It's a crying shame," he said, holding the paper.

I saw what he was speaking of: a young man's (at the time, about my age) photo graced the front page; one-half of the page, wordy article. His parents, to encourage scholarship, paid him $10 per "A" he made. According to the reporting, he had made straight A's since kindergarten until at that time his most recent report card...

...he had one "B." His first ever.

The article reported, he reasoned his parents would pay him for the other A's he'd made. To his surprise, they gave him zero!

He responded by committing suicide. It was a sad, brutal loss.

The thought of such a violent, self-inflicted reaction to an otherwise excellent report card had my father saying: mmph!

I'd recently read Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt, recalling the chapter in which some graduate students that had not passed their qualifier (an exam given usually after all coursework is completed, and before one is allowed to continue research in their field of study) resorted to violence against faculty, committees and associated people with which they had issue with. I reference a descriptive entry on Dr. Marcella Wilson's web site:

While pursuing my doctorate, I experienced panic attacks, depression, insomnia and phobias. There was a point were I was just really sad and in pain. It’s hard to explain to someone why you are so freaked out or why you are depressed all the time about school. It’s just a really emotional, unstable, high-pressure situation that you have no control over and no one else is going through.

Her lamented entry: "please don't let James Holmes be a PhD student."

I thought about this entry, the carnage wrought, and the possibility it had a genesis; a cause for this horrid effect. I really hope my speculation isn't the raison d'etre.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Henry David Thoreau

Graduate students are intellectually curious; not omniscient. They are human, and many quite young.

Like the young man that did such a rash act thirty-nine years ago and recent tragic events in Aurora, Colorado, previous academic successes may not prepare fragile self-esteems for not passing a final, getting a paper rejected from a prestigious journal; told to leave a program before completion of coursework or research; dismissal from a doctoral program; failure as feedback; setback as setup.

Learning from failure: it is a skill. The same that allowed Edison to fail time and again until finally...insomnia for most of the western world. Einstein's "Miracle Year" was while working in a German patent office with a pencil, several pieces of paper, and a handy wastebasket. In a win-at-all-cost culture, little is appreciated about persistence, moving forward, coming up with a "plan B."

It is a skill we could all spare to learn.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." Confucius

A Sobering State of Affairs...

The US is no longer the Colossus of Science, dominating the research landscape in its production of scientific papers, that it was 30 years ago.  It now shares this realm, on an increasingly equal basis, with the EU27 and Asia-Pacific. In terms of relative citation impact — an indicator of utility, influence, significance and similar concepts — the US still holds a commanding but eroding peak position. Europe is beginning to match US performance in citation impact, and analysts are likely to be tempted to predict that, in a decade or two, Asian nations will do so as well.


But U.S. influence is waning -- not because the United States is doing less, but because other countries are doing more, Thomson's Jonathan Adams and David Pendlebury found.


See: Global Research Report: United States