Interesting comment to a Scientist piece about plagiarism -- possible motivation behind falsifying data

The journals must accept some responsibility
by anonymous poster[Comment posted 2010-04-29 11:45:15]
Once upon a time, it was considered perfectly normal to publish warts and all. Graphs were prepared with Letraset with axes and lines that were never quite straight, gels and blots often contained ugly streaks, the odd animal did not respond as expected, clear trends did not achieve statistical significance, negative results were still considered to be of interest, etc. Over the years journals have allowed reviewers to be more and more petty about these issues. Consequently, young scientists have been led to believe that studies must be picture perfect before they can be published. Given the severe competition they face, it is not too surprising that they feel compelled to launder their work to make it look squeaky clean. There are plenty of excellent papers in the older literature (pre-1970s) that simply would not stand a chance of being published today, because of spurious standards of excellence.

Read more: PhD student admits misconduct - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57297/#ixzz0pAYtnmpi

perfect technology for me AND a child in an 'undeveloped' country?

i think I'll buy myself and a foreign kid an XO laptop in November (when O.L.P.C. does their 'give 1 get 1' offer). The little thing has solar power, an outdoor/sunshine screen-reading mode, wireless connectivity, and can read PDF documents in a compact tablet-format. That's what I've been looking for since school started last Spring, and I haven't been able to find anything suitable, at ANY price, let alone cheaply -- I really just need something to help me get all my PDF and Web reading done for school, and maybe do a little note-taking. Being able to do it outside on gorgeous sunny days would be nice! And giving one to a kid is nice, too.

You can read more about the XO here (TerraPass article) and here (NYT article).

ah, summer vacation (all 3 weeks of it, including 10 work days)!

I am enjoying these 3 weeks off from school (between Summer and Fall terms), however, I of course have assigned myself 3 books to read during this time! I am currently really enjoying The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (I have the 1912 edition from my workplace's collection). Some friends told me the text has all kinds of strange history, including translation from English to French and back to English, and revision by Franklin at later points in life, which actually makes it that much more interesting to me because if I wanted just the facts, I would just read the Wikipedia page (or maybe the Encyclopedia Britannica if I felt that would have better accuracy)! The book is an excellent cultural artifact (especially this 1912 edition with its now-dated explanatory footnotes)!

contextualizing a book rather than banning it

I grew up reading Tintin books/comics, and loved them. I never read "Tintin in the Congo," though, currently the topic of news [perhaps it was not available in my leftie-leaning home town?]. This quote from a news article addresses something we discussed for LIS 2000 on the topic of censorship: contextualizing rather than banning.

"Remi later said he was embarrassed by the book, and some editions have had the more objectionable content removed. When an unaltered edition was brought out in Britain in 2005, it came wrapped with a warning and was written with a forward explaining the work's colonial context." [my emphasis]

what a "wikipedian protester" would look like at a political rally

from

"A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language."

He also has comics on things like open source software:

and a blog in which he talks about various things, including this post mentioning Lessig's book "Free Culture"

library science is truly interdisciplinary...

per our [overly plentiful?] discussions about porn (in class during the Cohort on-campus visit), an article on the deviant use of free laptops given to schoolchildren.

bigtime CEOs' personal libraries

Fancy schmancy personal/private libraries of big CEOs; article in NYT

quote:
“As head of a global company, everything attracts me as a reader, books about different cultures, countries, problems. I read for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem..."