Naturally Obsessed

[amy c.]

Thanks for the defense, all, but I think puffin was actually paying compliments in my direction. Of course, I am hardwired to hear things that way....

The screening here's happened, but I've heard no reaction at all, which isn't unusual for the midwest. I may go try to dig a reaction of of my crystallographer TA this morning after class.

[challenge]

I'm late to the party....

I think maybe a repeat of the Forum rules may be of interest> "Not being abusive and remembering that we all are people behind the avatars. A respectful manner when discussing is best in order to get a good discussion. Verbal attacks are not considered respectful manner. And, sometimes it is better to post smaller posts than one super long."

If we all consider this, we are good. I'm here and keeping an eye on things.....

All the best,
/the moderator

[Puffin]

Hola Laboratory Literati,
Daddy Puffin used to say I spent too much time with the pirates and not enough time with the whalers, I guess by now most of you would agree.

amy c.- I would sooner lose my last good eye than insult your piece on Carole Rifkind's movie. I would like to correct the record if I may.
The sentence in your piece about ..."Gabe's gentle wife"... made my bird brain slosh, not spin.
Puffins are birds monkee brains!

editor- my mate made the suggestion that internet forums are more akin to cocktail party conversation than real criticism, therefore not to be taken too seriously.
In light of that idea I want to apologize for seeming mean spirited.

Is it too late to ask what you thought the point of your post was? Obviously, I thought it was a bit irresponsible to say anything good, bad, or indifferent ,second hand, without any substantiation. This movie deserves to be criticized from many points of view but in the first person. Do you disagree with that?

Dr. Mike- I felt we would get around to discussing national differences in the response to this movie.There must be some no? I believe what you say about there being a European v. American philosophy to training Doctorates (and MDs for that matter.). It always seemed the European mode was more mature and adult like, definitely more pro-family.How can you raise Wee Puffs and work weekends and after hours? The American mode is almost like ritualized hazing.


To the rest of the Literati-Please pardon poor pitiful Puffin.
I promise to play nice. Except with Mad Dan Eccles.

Ta Ra for now
Puffin

[Mad Dan Eccles]

/me circles

my mate made the suggestion that internet forums are more akin to cocktail party conversation than real criticism, therefore not to be taken too seriously

and compares with

Is it too late to ask what you thought the point of your post was?

That is all.

[The Prof]

It's an interesting point, made above, about whether young scientists are less 'naturally obsessed' now as in my day. There may be something in that. My stint in the States was a very long time ago, but I do believe that the previous generation of British PhD students worked harder than they do now - at least where I am. As Jenny says, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Although the time in the lab has decreased, I don't think there's been a corresponding drop in output as measured by papers. I think it's more common these days to collaborate, so there are more people working towards a common goal, rather than that lone student labouring alone late into the night.

But it's true that my colleagues do tend to mutter in the 'kids these days' sort of vein.

[John from Florida]

I saw the movie last week. I was a little disappointed because it was hyped up a lot and in the end, I found myself more interested in the other characters that they chose to downplay, because for some reason couldn't relate/sympathize much with Rob. I wanted to see a bit more of the other characters in the lab - obviously there were restrictions but if there was limited time I would have preferred a broader view of the group as a whole instead of zeroing on the squeaky wheel. I will say however I am glad that this was attempted and I'd love to see more of the genre. It certainly gives a flavor of the profession and I'd love to know what nonscientists think of it.

p.s. Editor, FWIW cf. Puffin's complaint I don't think most people mind if you relate second-hand information about things. I for one trust your judgement, and you have access to many key people in the field so are likely to have your ear to the ground where it matters - and anyway the informality of this place is what I like, and probably others too. Plus with an anonymous venue it's not always possible to flesh things out. I think you're doing a great job and I'm sorry I've been absent here for so long - totally crazy at work etc.

[Octavia]

I finally had a chance to check out that reference Puffin alluded to above, or at least the abstract -I've pasted it below for those of you non-scientists who don't know your way round PubMed. It's really interesting, but I'm not sure I understand what is meant by 'implicit stereotypes'. And what does it mean, 'self-reported' - does that mean that if a girl thinks 'girls are crap at math' it doesn't predict her performance, but it does if the country she's from generally thinks that girls are crap? Probably the answer is in the full paper, which I'll have a look at when I get a chance...but in the meantime...

National differences in gender-science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement.

Nosek BA, Smyth FL, Sriram N, Lindner NM, Devos T, Ayala A, Bar-Anan Y, Bergh R, Cai H, Gonsalkorale K, Kesebir S, Maliszewski N, Neto F, Olli E, Park J, Schnabel K, Shiomura K, Tulbure BT, Wiers RW, Somogyi M, Akrami N, Ekehammar B, Vianello M, Banaji MR, Greenwald AG.

Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA. nosek@virginia.edu.

About 70% of more than half a million Implicit Association Tests completed by citizens of 34 countries revealed expected implicit stereotypes associating science with males more than with females. We discovered that nation-level implicit stereotypes predicted nation-level sex differences in 8th-grade science and mathematics achievement. Self-reported stereotypes did not provide additional predictive validity of the achievement gap. We suggest that implicit stereotypes and sex differences in science participation and performance are mutually reinforcing, contributing to the persistent gender gap in science engagement.

[scurry_imperial]

Well our screening at Imperial has come and gone. I have to say I very much enjoyed the movie, though recognise some of its limitations. Full story here.

[Beatrice]

Excellent blog post Stephen! Thanks so much for that.

I suspect it may reverberate less powerfully with non-crystallographers and less still with non-scientists, who will certainly see and feel the students’ frustrations and joys (either through success or self-revelation) but may to not fully understand their origin.

Do you think it's important to understand the underlying origins to fully appreciate this I guess it's a question for Amy, who saw the film without being an expert in the underlying science. Does it matter? After all, we can enjoy technical descriptions (e.g. in SF stories) without truly knowing what the authors are on about. Provided it's portrayed in an engaging way.

[Dr Mike]

Thanks for the stereotype link, but that's actually not what I meant by 'stereotypes' in my initial post. I was referring to the popular assumption that we're all obsessed geeks.

[Joao]

Just saw it as a pre-screening for the PhD class (12 souls), it will be screened Tuesday for the Center as part of our Annual Meeting.
I have a lot of upcoming classes, so I'll keep it shorter than it perhaps should be. I had two main thoughts.
1-It is a brilliant idea/concept and I enjoyed watching it
despite:
2- Not caring much for the filmmaking itself.

(SOME SPOILERS!)
As we all learned in film class, documentaries are not necessarily about "truth", but about a story, and the devil is in both the initial choices and, most crucially, the editing. In this case the editing revisits the past by hyping a triumph (from the first moment we see the character to the "this is my last chance" speech to the symbolic climbing of a mountain to the paper headlines trumped by sound effects), and lets failure slide (literally). Yes, you can read it as "not exactly failure, but coming to terms with ones limitations, finding happiness elsewhere", etc etc etc. But that's not what the film "says" in my opinion. In that regard I do understand it if people mention "types", especially as PI and successful student, while widely diverse, share some traits (I didn't feel so inclined when I saw it, but am still rethinking this, see below).
Nothing wrong with that, it's an option, and the proportions (1 out of 3) actually seem accurate in some fields/labs/institutes I know. But I would have liked to know more about the other characters, their projects, etc. I do understand that there might be issues (eg., someone else in the lab picked up the projects and they weren't ready to be published), but still there would be ways. I would have liked something to surprise me and it didn't. It was not lack of empathy, like my namesake John from Florida describes (and I totally understand), but lack of balance.
Also, The majority of my captive audience was female and some of them jumped on the fate of the only female character as yet another example of overt sexism in the profession, something I did not think of while watching.

In short: it stimulated discussion, and made me want to see more such projects, so it is definitely worthwhile.

[Puffin]

Hyvaa Literati,
Momma puffin warned me about provoking the Literati, "Literati are very different from pirates and whalers," she'd say.

Dr. Mike- Did you see the movie? Your original unnamed source was very close to the mark,the central Boffin in this tale is a white, bearded, male with glasses and crazy hair (he even wears a lab coat, no one wears a lab coat).But it gets worse, he is obsessed, unbalanced and a bit demented. You couldn't make up a fictional scientist like him. He makes Melville's Ahab look laid-back and well balanced. For this reason alone you might want to rate this movie R, no one under 18 without a parent. To my mind however this is a sideshow compared to the more obvious distructive stereotype perpetuated in the film...chick fails (pardon the avian metaphor, I know how it confuses you monkees). The centgenarian filmmakers must have gotten tired during the editing because Gabe's story gets reduced to chick fails. "I'm left wondering where is Gabe's gentle wife."

Joao- I love this ...
documentaries are not necessarily about "truth", but about a story, and the devil is in both the initial choices and, most crucially, the editing

It's easy to want to make a documentary.

Do you have the time and the energy to explain this...

...lets failure slide (literally). Yes, you can read it as "not exactly failure, but coming to terms with ones limitations, finding happiness elsewhere", etc etc etc. But that's not what the film "says" in my opinion. In that regard I do understand it if people mention "types", especially as PI and successful student, while widely diverse, share some traits (I didn't feel so inclined when I saw it, but am still rethinking this...

Ta Ra for now,
Puffin.

[scurry_imperial]

Beatrice - I guess I meant that crystallographers would get the most out of it since they could connect most easily with the types of experiments being performed in the lab. Perhaps I over-egged this aspect in my review - certainly plenty of non-crystallographers seem to have got something out of it.

I agree with Joao that such a film is more about telling a story than getting at the whole truth, though I some some kind of truth did emerge. It is only a brief snapshot, since the filmmakers limited themselves to an hour of narrative so it is hardly surprising that there is a lack of balance. Perhaps a mini-series would have been a better format since it would have allow them to explore in more depth the stories of the other characters.

I can't gainsay the female audience response about the 'failure' of Gabe (and how that perpetuates a stereotype). But in my view the events of the film were just what happen in the particular case of this very small set of people. Knowing the particular challenges of crystallography as I do, it seems to me that it could quite easily have been Gabe who had the twist of luck that saw her project succeed and Rob who 'failed' and bailed. After all, he had form in that regard.

To me it seemed that Gabe assessed her situation with a clear eye, made the choice to quit the PhD program and got a job that she finds much more satisfying. In my book, that's a success.

[amy c.]

Bea, personally, I'd have liked to've seen more science, because I thought that for the uninitiated, too much of it was either handwaving or the scientists' amateur attempts at teaching to several levels at once. The high school teacher I talked to also thought more explanation was needed, and what she saw was that the mysteriousness of the science turned off nonscientist viewers, left them feeling inadequate. I understand the Rifkinds' rationale, and it's true that explaining would've gunked up the purity of what they were trying to do.

In a way, though, the question's similar to the one we've batted around here about science in novels: If you assume that the sci-ed will be aimed at the nonscientists, and it turns out that they don't really want to learn science (but do want to see what scientists do), then you have a problem. I guess the question is "are people interested in scientists also interested in science?"

[Octavia]

Amy, can't we tell stories about the scientific profession without educating? Why does all broadcast science have to have that dreaded 'ed' appended? When I see courtroom drama they don't hammer me to death with subclauses and details of jurisprudence.