Research / Scholarship posts

July 21, 2010
04:44 AM
576 views

Clever New Scheme

CNS Response are a California-based company who offer a high-tech new approach to the personalized treatment of depression: "referenced EEG" (rEEG). This is not to be confused with qEEG, which I have written about previously. What is rEEG? It involves taking an EEG recording of resting brain activity and sending it - along with a cheque, naturally - to CNS Response, who compare it to their database of over 1,800 psychiatric patients who likewise had EEGs taken before they started on various drugs. They look to see which drugs worked best in people with an EEG profile similar to yours, and give you a fancy report with their recommendations.That's not completely implausible. It could work. Does it? CNS Response and some academic collaborators have just published a paper saying yes: The use of referenced-EEG (rEEG) in assisting medication selection for the treatment of depression. How solid is it? Well, it would be wrong to say that there are many problems with this study. But then if you run off a cliff and plummet into a volcano, you've only made one mistake.Depressed patients were randomized to one of two groups: treatment-as-usual, which generally meant the common antidepressants bupropion, citalopram, or venlafaxine, vs. rEEG-guided personalized drug treatment. The trial was pretty large, with 114 patients randomized, and pretty long, 12 weeks. The patients had failed to respond to at least one antidepressant (mean: 1.5) during the current episode, so they were slightly "treatment-resistant", though not extremely so.What happened? The rEEG-guided group did better on the QIDS16SR self-report scale, and on most other measures. Not enormously: take a look at the graph, notice that the vertical axis doesn't start at zero. But better.Great, they did better. But why? The problem with this study is that the rEEG-guided group got a very different set of drugs to the control group. No less than 55% of them got stimulants, either methylphenidate (Ritalin) and dexamphetamine (speed). These drugs make you feel good. That's why they're illegal, that's why people pay good money for them on the street.It's debatable whether stimulants are clinically useful as antidepressants in the long term, but they've got a good chance of making you feel nice for a few weeks, and make you say you feel better on a rating scale. Plus there's nothing like a pep pill to drive active placebo effects.The authors say that "Almost all of the studies with depression not associated with medical disorders have reported minimal or no antidepressant effect of stimulants", and refer to some 1980s studies - yet their own trial has just shown that they do work in more than 50% of patients, and the latest Cochrane meta-analysis finds stimulants do work in the short term...The other big names in the EEG group were MAOis (selegiline or tranylcypromine). These are often effective in treatment-resistant depression. Not necessarily more so than other drugs, but remember that these patients had already failed at least one SSRI(*). Yet the control group were, it seems, almost all given SSRIs - either citalopram, or venlafaxine, which is effectively an SSRI at low doses, e.g. the average dose used here, 141 mg. (It does other stuff, but only at higher doses of 225 mg or 300 mg.)In summary, there were two groups in this trial and they got entirely different sets of drugs. One group also got rEEG-based treatment personalization. That group did better, but that might have nothing to do with the rEEG: they might have done equally well if they'd just been assigned to stimulants or MAOis etc. by flipping a coin. We cannot tell, from these data, whether rEEG offered any benefits at all.What's curious is that it would have been very simple to avoid this issue. Just give everyone rEEG, but shuffle the assignments in the control group, so that everyone was guided by someone else's EEG. So you'd give control Patient 2 the drugs that Patient 1 should have got, and vice versa; swap 3 and 4, 5 and 6, etc.This would be a genuinely controlled test of the personalized rEEG system, because both groups would get the same kinds of drugs. It would have been a lot easier too. For one thing it wouldn't require the additional step of deciding what drugs to give the control group. The authors decided to follow the STAR*D treatment protocol in this study, which is not unreasonable, but that must have been a bit of a hard decision.Second, it would allow the trial to be double-blind: in this study the investigators knew which group people were in, because it was obvious from the drug choice. Thirdly, it wouldn't have meant they had to exclude people whose rEEG recommended they get the same treatment that they would have got in the control group... and so on.Hmm. Mysterious. Anyway, we may be hearing more about CNS Response soon, so watch this space.(*) - Technically, some of them had failed an SSRI and some had failed "2 or more classes of antidepressants", but one of those classes will almost certainly have been an SSRI, because they're the first-line treatment.DeBattista, C., Kinrys, G., Hoffman, D., Goldstein, C., Zajecka, J., Kocsis, J., Teicher, M., Potkin, S., Pre... Read more »

DeBattista, C., Kinrys, G., Hoffman, D., Goldstein, C., Zajecka, J., Kocsis, J., Teicher, M., Potkin, S., Preda, A., & Multani, G. (2010) The use of referenced-EEG (rEEG) in assisting medication selection for the treatment of depression. Journal of Psychiatric Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.009

July 20, 2010
05:05 PM
700 views

“Privatizing” the Reviewer Commons?

by jebyrnes in I'm a chordata, urochordata!

Let’s face it. The current journal system is slowly breaking down – in Ecology if not in other disciplines as well. The number of submissions is going up exponentially. At the same time, journals are finding it harder and harder to find reviewers. Statistics such as editors contacting 10 reviewers to [...]... Read more »

Fox, J., & Petchey, O. (2010) Pubcreds: Fixing the Peer Review Process by “Privatizing” the Reviewer Commons. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 91(3), 325-333. DOI: 10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.325

Stefano Allesina. (2009) Accelerating the pace of discovery by changing the peer review algorithm. arXiv.org. arXiv: 0911.0344v1

July 20, 2010
01:41 PM
1,017 views

Librarians need to publish in non-library journals

by bjms1002 in the Undergraduate Science Librarian

Now that I’ve convinced everyone to stop going to library conferences, I’d like to make the argument that we also need to start publishing in non-library journals. Luckily, someone has already made the point for me, in a 2007 journal article that I just came across in the Journal of Academic Librarianship by Christy Stevens. [...]... Read more »

STEVENS, C. (2007) Beyond Preaching to the Choir: Information Literacy, Faculty Outreach, and Disciplinary Journals. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33(2), 254-267. DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2006.08.009

Research / Scholarship

July 20, 2010
07:09 AM
950 views

Why you REALLY can’t trust small studies: the small study effect

by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus

You’ll often see loony zealots refer you to a study showing how effective their preferred treatment is — there usually is some small study supporting the use of almost any treatment.
You’ll also often hear people reply that the study was only small, so shouldn’t be trusted. But why shouldn’t you trust small studies? Sure, they [...]... Read more »

Nüesch E, Trelle S, Reichenbach S, Rutjes AW, Tschannen B, Altman DG, Egger M, & Jüni P. (2010) Small study effects in meta-analyses of osteoarthritis trials: meta-epidemiological study. BMJ. PMID: 20639294

July 19, 2010
07:40 PM
775 views

Time to Review Online: National Research Council Framework for Science Education

by Jack Hassard in The Art of Teaching Science

In a post that I wrote in February, I announced that the National Research Council had received funding from the Carnegie Foundation to develop a “conceptual framework for a new generation of science standards.” The conceptual framework has been completed in a public draft that is now ready for review. There is an online questionnaire [...]

Related posts:Students Lag in Science So Says the National Center for Education Statistics
New Generation of Science Standards: Part of the Common Standards Movement?
In a Liberal Democracy, Can Science Education Flourish With Common Standards?
... Read more »

Rodriguez, A. (1997) The dangerous discourse of invisibility: A critique of the National Research Council's national science education standards. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34(1), 19-37. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-2736(199701)34:13.0.CO;2-R

Collins, A. (1998) National Science Education Standards: A political document. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(7), 711-727. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-2736(199809)35:73.0.CO;2-O

Krajcik, J., McNeill, K., & Reiser, B. (2008) Learning-goals-driven design model: Developing curriculum materials that align with national standards and incorporate project-based pedagogy. Science Education, 92(1), 1-32. DOI: 10.1002/sce.20240

July 19, 2010
06:00 AM
1,237 views

Article Review: Facebook, Professionalism, and Physicians

by Michelle Lin in Academic Life In Emergency Medicine

Facebook is worldwide. The medical educator's dilemma about Facebook and professionalism seems universal. How do we teach medical students the importance of the digital footprints on publicly viewable websites? A landmark article, published by Dr. Chretein in JAMA in 2009, surveyed U.S. medical school deans on unprofessional behavior on Facebook. She found that 60% of medical schools documented incidences of unprofessional online postings.In contrast, Medical Education just published a cross-sectional study whereby individual Facebook accounts were searched for publicly available content (rather than depend on recall by medical school deans). This study was conducted at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand. The authors assessed recent medical school graduates and their use of Facebook (338 graduates from 2006 and 2007). They particularly focused on the following 3 pages:Info (personal information)Wall (comments to and by user)PhotosOutcome measures included:Facebook membershipExercising the privacy optionNature of publicly available contentResult220 of 338 graduates (65%) had a Facebook account.138 of 220 (63%) restricted their information to just Friends.82 of 220 (37%) allowed their account to be publicly viewed.38 (46%) showed photos of user drinking alcohol35 (43%) revealed relationship status30 (37%) revealed sexual orientation13 (16%) revealed religious views8 (10%) showed images of user intoxicationMy comments about the studyTwo things have changed since 2006-07 with Facebook. Facebook's active user base has increased from 100 million (2008) to 400 million (2010) users.Dr. Chretein's 2009 publication in JAMA has generated much publicity about Facebook, transparency, and professionalism in Medicine. Medical students and regulators may have changed their social media practices since then.A followup study should be done to see if these findings are still true and whether more than 65% of medical students have a Facebook account. But what IS professionalism in this Web 2.0 age that we live in? Many experts state that the overarching principle of professionalism in Medicine is to "sustain the public's trust in the medical profession." With it being so easy to sign up and share information on various social media platforms, how do physicians divide their personal and professional lives? How do you balance the right to free speech with the potential effect of making you and the medical profession look unprofessional The strengths of social media (transparency, immediacy, connectivity) are offset by potential pitfalls for medical practitioners.One approach is to avoid posting any personal content on publicly viewable sites. Another is to tell your patients that, as a policy, you do not "friend" patients. Check out this great commentary in USA Today.There is no perfect answer. Here's my personal approach-- Before publishing anything on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, this blog), I use this litmus test: "Is this something that I would be embarrassed to share with my idol, my patient, my boss, my future boss, and my grandparents?" How do you define professionalism on social media?ReferenceMacdonald J, Sohn S, & Ellis P (2010). Privacy, professionalism and Facebook: a dilemma for young doctors. Medical education, 44 (8), 805-13 PMID: 20633220... Read more »

Macdonald J, Sohn S, & Ellis P. (2010) Privacy, professionalism and Facebook: a dilemma for young doctors. Medical education, 44(8), 805-13. PMID: 20633220

July 19, 2010
02:15 AM
1,372 views

Surgical Residents more health complaints than other employees

by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD

In a recent study in The Netherlands the researchers found that surgical residents experienced more health complaints than the average member of the Dutch working population (4.0 versus 2.5; p = 0.000). Residents in training (n= 400) were sent self report questionnaires of which 254 of 400 (64%) residents returned questionnaires that were eligible for [...]

Related posts:Psychiatric Residents in Psychotherapy
5 Motives for Residents to Stay Late at the Hospital and Why that is a Bad Idea
Cinemeducation Improves Communication Skills of Residents
... Read more »

Boerjan, M., Bluyssen, S., Bleichrodt, R., Van Weel-Baumgarten, E., & Van Goor, H. (2010) Work-related health complaints in surgical residents and the influence of social support and job-related autonomy. Medical Education, 44(8), 835-844. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03724.x

July 17, 2010
10:30 PM
674 views

Collaboration 2.0

by Aurametrix team in Health Technologies

Information technology is letting people around the world come together in unprecedented ways. Wikis, blogs and microblogs like twitter, crowdsourcing and crowd-task-solving sites continue to flatten the planet. Scientific innovation used to be a private endeavor, with very narrowly specialized scientists. The Internet changed some of this but there is plenty of room for improvement.... Read more »

Johnston SC, & Hauser SL. (2009) Crowdsourcing scientific innovation. Annals of neurology, 65(6). PMID: 19562693

Wright MT, Roche B, von Unger H, Block M, & Gardner B. (2010) A call for an international collaboration on participatory research for health. Health promotion international, 25(1), 115-22. PMID: 19854843

Marsh A, Carroll D, & Foggie R. (2010) Using collective intelligence to fine-tune public health policy. Studies in health technology and informatics, 13-8. PMID: 20543334

Huss JW 3rd, Lindenbaum P, Martone M, Roberts D, Pizarro A, Valafar F, Hogenesch JB, & Su AI. (2010) The Gene Wiki: community intelligence applied to human gene annotation. Nucleic acids research, 38(Database issue). PMID: 19755503

Butler, D. (2010) Open-source science takes on neglected disease. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/news.2010.50

July 17, 2010
12:47 PM
909 views

Across disciplines, what motivates or prevents faculty staff archiving?

by Christina Pikas in Christina's LIS Rant

This article is in early view at JASIST. It looks like it comes from the author's dissertation. It isn't terribly earth-shattering, but it's well done, it provides more evidence, and there are definitely some implications for library/IR manager practice. Here's the citation: Kim, J. (2010). Faculty self-archiving: Motivations and barriers Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology DOI: 10.1002/asi.21336 The author went through a complicated process to identify 1,500 faculty members at 17 research institutions with DSpace IRs (not immediately clear why only DSpace IRs). The faculty members were at all levels (associate, assistant, full) and from several areas of science (includes math), several areas of engineering (includes CS, hm), several areas of social science, and several areas of the humanities. Some had items in their IR and some didn’t. There was a web-based survey and with a 45% response rate (sounds good, but the author mailed the people and e-mailed them a bunch of times, so she worked for it). The survey is included in the appendix. It has a bunch of likert scale questions, some yes/no, some multiple choice, and some open questions. Forty-one telephone interviews were done with survey respondents to get more in-depth information. So what did she find? Altruism – but this isn’t exactly what you think. It’s more like generalized reciprocity combined with quid pro quo combined with access for those in less developed countries. Coming from a self-archiving culture. Some actually mentioned peer pressure – if it weren’t expected of them, they wouldn’t do it. Copyright concerns. Some don’t self archive because they believe they don’t have the right. The nice part is that at least a few knew that they could amend the publication agreement. This sort of counteracts the idea that faculty don’t know about or get copyright. These folks were pretty clear on it. Technical skills and age. Younger and those who rated their technical skills more highly were more likely to self archive. Impact on tenure or promotion. They all seemed to think there would be a positive or no impact on promotion and tenure. Time and effort. It’s too much of a PITA for its priority. Applications/implications for librarians: If concern about copyright is preventing a lot of self-archiving, then there's real education that can be done. Also - the fact that it's a hassle. If they can populate their website by using a badge or widget from the IR, that would make things easier, eh? A couple of trivial things about the article: it seems really redundant - it repeats itself a lot. Some good editing would make it a bunch tighter. It has a great reference list - this might be a useful collection for anyone writing or presenting on the topic. Read the comments on this post...... Read more »

Kim, J. (2010) Faculty self-archiving: Motivations and barriers. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. DOI: 10.1002/asi.21336

July 16, 2010
08:59 AM
1,126 views

Parrots, People and Pedagogies: A Look at Teaching and Education

by GrrlScientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Like anyone who has taught science courses, and probably like anyone who has ever taught anything to a classroom in the history of mankind, I've wondered how to motivate my students to really care about the material they are learning, beyond simply "studying for the test." For example, I have used a group method of study where groups of 4 students are each assigned a specific task: to become an expert in a particular area and to share their knowledge with the other groups. This method is only partially successful since it is dependent upon good classroom rapport and careful management by the professor, otherwise, each group of "experts" can selectively withhold or misrepresent information that is important for developing a better understanding of the topic at hand. ... Read more »

McCallum, M. (2010) A Method for Encouraging Classroom Discussion of Scientific Papers. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 91(3), 363-366. DOI: 10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.363

July 15, 2010
07:00 AM
621 views

How many journal articles have been published (ever)?

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Earlier this year, the scientific journal PLoS ONE published their 10,000th article. Ten thousand articles is a lot of papers especially when you consider that PLoS ONE only started publishing four short years ago in 2006. But scientists have been publishing in journals for at least 350 years [1] so it might make you wonder, how many articles have been published in scientific and learned journals since time began?... Read more »

Oldenburg, H. (1665) Epistle Dedicatory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1(1-22). DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1665.0001

Jacsó, P. (2010) Metadata mega mess in Google Scholar. Online Information Review, 34(1), 175-191. DOI: 10.1108/14684521011024191

Jinha, A. (2010) Article 50 million: an estimate of the number of scholarly articles in existence. Learned Publishing, 23(3), 258-263. DOI: 10.1087/20100308

July 14, 2010
08:00 PM
532 views

Sit less, Move more

by Aurametrix team in Health Technologies

I am typing this standing in front of my computer. My tall chair is aside. About a year ago I discovered that life is better if I stand while working some of the time. Then I found out that other people discovered it too, and more keep discovering. We hear it often: eat less and exercise. But this may not be enough. As shown in a recent study, exercise does not counteract the ill effects of sedentary lives, we should keep moving throughout the day too. New York Times article about the study (The men who stare at screens) immediately got up-votes from over 100 hackers - the men who stare at screens to write software, along with 100 comments from those staring at screens to read the news. Stand up while you read this, asked NYT earlier this year. Prolonged sedentarity affects not only cardiovascular and metabolic health, blood clotting, diabetes and cancer. Countless hours of sitting could cause many other ailments reducing the quality of life such as skewed microbial ecology accompanied by strong body odor. Health promotion efforts targeting physical inactivity should emphasize both reducing sedentary activity and increasing regular physical activity for optimal health. The lead author of the 2010 study says: "Stand up. Pace around your office. Get off the couch and grab a mop or change a light bulb the next time you watch ‘‘Dancing With the Stars.’’Stand-up desks and treadmill desk were available years ago, a web site just stand was created for office workers who sit long hours each day, but either the desks are not very usable yet, lobbying your boss for a stand-up workstation is still tricky or most people just like sitting too much. Let's hope this will change. ReferencesWarren TY, Barry V, Hooker SP, Sui X, Church TS, & Blair SN (2010). Sedentary behaviors increase risk of cardiovascular disease mortality in men. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 42 (5), 879-85 PMID: 19996993 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181c3aa7eDunstan DW, Barr EL, Healy GN, Salmon J, Shaw JE, Balkau B, Magliano DJ, Cameron AJ, Zimmet PZ, & Owen N (2010). Television viewing time and mortality: the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab). Circulation, 121 (3), 384-91 PMID: 20065160 DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.894824Katzmarzyk PT, Church TS, Craig CL, & Bouchard C (2009). Sitting time and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 41 (5), 998-1005 PMID: 19346988 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181930355Healy GN, Dunstan DW, Salmon J, Shaw JE, Zimmet PZ, Owen N. (2008). Television time and continuous metabolic risk in physically active adults. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 40, 639-645.(PMID: 18317383) Khaw K-T, Wareham N, Bingham S, Welch A, Luben R, et al. (2008) Combined Impact of Health Behaviours and Mortality in Men and Women: The EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Population Study. PLoS Med 5(1): e12. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050012 (PMID: 18184033)Beasley R, Raymond N, Hill S, Nowitz M, Hughes R. (2003) eThrombosis: the 21st century variant of venous thromboembolism associated with immobility. Eur Respir J. 21(2), 374-6. (PMID: 12608454... Read more »

WARREN, T., BARRY, V., HOOKER, S., SUI, X., CHURCH, T., & BLAIR, S. (2010) Sedentary Behaviors Increase Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in Men. Medicine , 42(5), 879-885. DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181c3aa7e

Dunstan, D., Barr, E., Healy, G., Salmon, J., Shaw, J., Balkau, B., Magliano, D., Cameron, A., Zimmet, P., & Owen, N. (2010) Television Viewing Time and Mortality: The Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab). Circulation, 121(3), 384-391. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.894824

Katzmarzyk PT, Church TS, Craig CL, & Bouchard C. (2009) Sitting time and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 41(5), 998-1005. PMID: 19346988

KATZMARZYK, P., CHURCH, T., CRAIG, C., & BOUCHARD, C. (2009) Sitting Time and Mortality from All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer. Medicine , 41(5), 998-1005. DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181930355

July 12, 2010
06:00 AM
347 views

Article Review: What do EM learners want from teachers?

by Michelle Lin in Academic Life In Emergency Medicine

Evaluations of clinical faculty typically incorporate comments from rotating medical students and residents regarding their teaching ability. In the Emergency Department (ED), how do you balance your pressing clinical responsibilities with teaching?There were 28 Canadian medical students and residents in their focus group interviews in this qualitative study. Learners were asked what qualities made a good EM teacher. Answers were transcribed and coded. There were 14 positive qualities identified. The top 5 were:Has a positive teacher attitudeTakes time to teachUses teachable moments wellTailors teaching to the learnerGives appropriate feedbackWhat exactly does a "positive teacher attitude" mean? Learners wanted a teacher to be:Attentive to the learnerEnthusiasticApproachableCommunicatesTakes initiativeHonestEncouragingOpen to questionsPatientFlexibleSense of humorWhat were qualities #6-14?Demonstrates useful ED skillTreats learner as a colleagueProvides independenceSets expectationsTeaches skills effectivelyUses formal teaching techniques or sessionsPossess formal training in educationUses teaching visual aidsMy trickAt the beginning of the shift, I try to ask the learner what field that are in (if resident) or are intending to pursue (if student). I ask them if there's something that they want to learn more about while on the ED rotation. This already tells them that I'm invested in their education and will try to tailor teaching based on their interests. It's quick and simple.ReferenceThurgur, L., Bandiera, G., Lee, S., & Tiberius, R. (2005). What Do Emergency Medicine Learners Want from Their Teachers? A Multicenter Focus Group Analysis. Acad Emerg Med, 12 (9), 856-861. DOI: 10.1197/j.aem.2005.04.022... Read more »

Thurgur, L., Bandiera, G., Lee, S., & Tiberius, R. (2005) What Do Emergency Medicine Learners Want from Their Teachers? A Multicenter Focus Group Analysis. Academic Emergency Medicine, 12(9), 856-861. DOI: 10.1197/j.aem.2005.04.022

July 11, 2010
05:05 AM
1,042 views

Academic capitalism and the spread of English

by Ingrid Piller in Language on the Move

In 2009, I contributed a chapter about the social inclusion of migrants in Australia to an edited book about immigration policy published in Japanese in Japan. The book is doing well – a second edition has just been published – … Continue reading →... Read more »

Choi, P. (2010) 'Weep for Chinese university': a case study of English hegemony and academic capitalism in higher education in Hong Kong. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 233-252. DOI: 10.1080/02680930903443886

July 8, 2010
10:56 AM
1,656 views

Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?

by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles

Kevin Drum has done a couple of education-related posts recently, first noting a story claiming that college kids study less than they used to, and following that up with an anecdotal report on kids these days, from an email correspondent who teaches physics. Kevin's emailer writes of his recent experiences with two different groups of students:

Since the early 1990's, I have pre and post tested all of my introductory mechanics classes using a research based diagnostic instrument, the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation. This instrument is based on research by Ron Thornton at Tufts that identified a reproducible sequence of intermediate states that all people seem to pass through in the process of gaining a Newtonian understanding. So it can give me not only a do they get it/do they not measure, but also, along several conceptual dimensions, a measure of how close they are to getting it.

My first job out of graduate school was at an unranked tier 4 institution in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Coastal Carolina "University" to be specific. It was the 13th grade. [...] I pretty reliably got 50-60% normalized gains on the FMCE.

Normalized gain is the ratio of how much their scores increased compared to how much they could have increased -- (post-pre)/(100-pre). 50-60% is actually pretty stupendous on this particular measure. It means they were typically getting 80-90% of the questions right.

[His current employer] Spelman [College, in Georgia] is a top 75 liberal arts college, according to US News, and top 10 according to the Washington Monthly. My personal impression of the students is that the average is generally much higher than it was at Coastal. These are students who can think around a few corners.[...]

I think I'm at least as good an instructor as I used to be, and probably a lot better. I know quite a bit more about developmental psychology and cognitive science as a result of my job at Georgia Tech and I think that improves my instruction considerably.

And yet, in a good year I get about 20-30% normalized gains.

I don't really know what is different but something clearly is.

I have seen a few comments about this questioning the validity of "normalized gain." The argument is, basically, that if you start with students who know nothing, it's easy to teach them quite a bit, but if you start with students who already know quite a bit, it's difficult to raise their scores significantly.

This is true if you're talking about absolute gain, but normalized gain is supposed to take that into account. That's why it's a fairly standard measure used by the physics education research community to compare instructional methods across courses and institutions.
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »

Hake, R. (1998) Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66(1), 64. DOI: 10.1119/1.18809

Coletta, V., & Phillips, J. (2005) Interpreting FCI scores: Normalized gain, preinstruction scores, and scientific reasoning ability. American Journal of Physics, 73(12), 1172. DOI: 10.1119/1.2117109

July 7, 2010
03:30 AM
1,356 views

Top Ten Excuses for World Cup Football Failures (with citations)

by Duncan Hull in O'Really?

Football fever grips the globe as we reach the final stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Alongside the traditional game where one winning team takes all, leaving 31 losing teams to go home earlier than expected, there is another competition running in parallel. Which losing team can come up with the [...]... Read more »

Travis, K. (2010) Scoring a Career in Sports Science. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.a1000067

Lucifora, C., & Simmons, R. (2003) Superstar Effects in Sport: Evidence From Italian Soccer. Journal Of Sports Economics, 4(1), 35-55. DOI: 10.1177/1527002502239657

Zak, P., Kurzban, R., Ahmadi, S., Swerdloff, R., Park, J., Efremidze, L., Redwine, K., Morgan, K., & Matzner, W. (2009) Testosterone Administration Decreases Generosity in the Ultimatum Game. PLoS ONE, 4(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008330

Elmar Bittner, Andreas Nussbaumer, Wolfhard Janke, & Martin Weigel. (2006) Football fever: goal distributions and non-Gaussian statistics. Eur. Phys. J. B 67, 459 (2009). arXiv: physics/0606016v1

Goff, J., & Carré, M. (2010) Soccer ball lift coefficients via trajectory analysis. European Journal of Physics, 31(4), 775-784. DOI: 10.1088/0143-0807/31/4/007

Kranjec, A., Lehet, M., Bromberger, B., & Chatterjee, A. (2010) A Sinister Bias for Calling Fouls in Soccer. PLoS ONE, 5(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011667

Abell, J. (2010) ‘They seem to think “We're better than you”’: Framing football support as a matter of ‘national identity’ in Scotland and England. British Journal of Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1348/014466610X514200

Wayne C. Naidoo, & Jules R. Tapamo. (2006) Soccer video analysis by ball, player and referee tracking. SAICSIT '06: Proceedings of the 2006 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries. DOI: 10.1145/1216262.1216268

July 6, 2010
05:36 PM
513 views

Rethinking Criminology(ies)

by Kevin Karpiak in Anthropoliteia: the anthropology of policing

As I try to put together a course on “Policing in Society” for the upcoming semester at the same time that I try to figure out for myself the place of anthropology in criminology (or vice versa, or somesuch). I came across this article, which I think has particular potential for our discussions here: Rethinking [...]... Read more »

Felices-Luna, M. (2010) Rethinking Criminology(ies) through the Inclusion of Political Violence and Armed Conflict as Legitimate Objects of Inquiry. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice/La Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale, 52(3), 249-269. DOI: 10.3138/cjccj.52.3.249

July 5, 2010
10:05 AM
316 views

Losing the scientific lede

by Jeremy Yoder in Denim and Tweed

Over at SEED, Dave Munger reflects on how online publishing and dissemination methods can strip the nuance from scientific news:I thought I was being careful to explain the results of several studies, showing that suicide is a difficult problem with many potential contributing factors and confounding variables, including mental illness, depression, and the seemingly contradictory influences of intelligence. Yet on social-networking sites, many readers latched on to one finding: That countries with higher average IQ tend to have higher suicide rates.Munger suggests that this problem can be mitigated by careful consideration of both the nut graf sent out via Twitter and RSS and the audience receiving them, and that's clearly right. But I think it's also worth considering whether some subjects are less appropriate for blogs.

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-frameright { float: right; text-align: left; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; width:40%;}.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Consider your medium! Photo by K!T.Blog posts are best when they're less than 700 or 800 words long, and their contents are readily summed up in a headline and only slightly expanded upon by the first paragraph. Think newspaper, not magazine articles. Do people read posts longer than that? Sure they do. But the longer a post is, the more possibility there is that some fraction of the readers will quit reading before the end, and maybe even pass on links or comments based on that incomplete understanding. I realize I'm not in the majority of online science writers in taking this position, but I think this better reflects how the average online reader reads.

Posts about individual, straightforward results work well in that context. For example, my colleague Jeanne Robertson recently discovered that desert lizards under divergent selection for camouflage have also become confused about visual mating signals. It's simple—one lizard population moved to white sand dunes and evolved lighter coloration, so now light males think that dark males from the ancestral population look like females—and it supports a lot of catchy headlines that don't sacrifice accuracy. The title of the talk at Evolution 2010 in which Robertson presented the discovery was "Dude looks like a lady." I'd say the Wired Science article I linked to above captures all the interesting details.

Complexity doesn't work so well. Scientific papers based on broad surveys of the literature, or many interrelated experiments, are inevitably going to lose some potentially important nuance when translated into an RSS-suitable post title, and explaining them accurately may take a lot more than 700 words. I've run into exactly this trying to write about complicated papers—either I go on for longer than I think my readers are likely to follow, or I have to omit detail and rely on readers to follow up with the links to the literature.

Mind you, this length-versus-content balance is a universal problem in disseminating scientific results—just look at the short-form journals Science and Nature. Some results are perfectly suited to the three-pages-and-online-supplement format, like an experimental result showing that sexually-reproducing lines of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans maintain more fitness in the face of mutation than asexual lines [PDF]. (I've posted about another result in this experimental system.) It's a simple result easily understood even without getting into the Supplementary Material. Compare that to a recent statistical survey of evolutionary trees that concluded species interactions weren't important in the history of life [$a]. That, too, fits into three pages of Nature, but the result is deceptively simple—even after delving into the Supplementary Material, the statistical reasoning underlying the core result isn't clear, as the comments thread on my post about the piece reveals.

Which isn't to say that online science writers should stick to covering simple experimental results or flashy natural historical notes, any more than scientists should never tackle complicated projects. They do, however, need to consider the limitations of the medium in which they report scientific results. Is a topic too complicated to fit in a single post? Maybe it's suitable for a series of posts. I like how Slate handles this, building collections of interrelated articles that can stand alone, but link into something like a long-form magazine article—see Will Saletan's great series on memory manipulation for a recent example.

And now I've blown through 700 words in the service of an extended, hopefully nuanced, discussion. Take from that what you will.

References

Morran, L., Parmenter, M., & Phillips, P. (2009). Mutation load and rapid adaptation favour outcrossing over self-fertilization. Nature, 462 (7271), 350-2 DOI: 10.1038/nature08496

Venditti, C., Meade, A., & Pagel, M. (2009). Phylogenies reveal new interpretation of speciation and the Red Queen. Nature, 463 (7279), 349-52 DOI: 10.1038/nature08630

... Read more »

Morran, L., Parmenter, M., & Phillips, P. (2009) Mutation load and rapid adaptation favour outcrossing over self-fertilization. Nature, 462(7271), 350-2. DOI: 10.1038/nature08496

Venditti, C., Meade, A., & Pagel, M. (2009) Phylogenies reveal new interpretation of speciation and the Red Queen. Nature, 463(7279), 349-52. DOI: 10.1038/nature08630

July 5, 2010
08:29 AM
464 views

XMRV and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Continued (Again)

by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic

Yet more twists have emerged in the already serpentine tale of XMRV, the virus that may or may not be responsible for causing some cases of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), aka myalgic encephalomyelitis, (ME).First off, on Saturday 2nd July, a news item in Science magazine reported that two papers on XMRV were about to be published, but that the publication of both was "on hold" because they contradicted each other. One paper, from the US federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), supposedly found no evidence of XMRV infection while the other one, from the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration (NIH/FDA), did.The papers were only rumored to exist at that stage, and the story behind the NIH/FDA paper was particularly complicated. A Dutch magazine called ORTHO reported that NIH virologist Harvey Alter had given a presentation in Zagreb, Croatia, in which he reportedly said that the original Lombardi et al 2009 results, which first implicated XMRV in CFSare extremely strong and likely true, despite the controversy...We (FDA & NIH) have independently confirmed the Lombardi group findings.This was in reference to the still unpublished NIH/FDA paper, which according to Science, has been accepted for publication but currently put "on hold" by the journal PNAS.However, the Science news was obsolete as soon as it appeared, because the other "on hold" paper, the negative one from the CDC, turned out not to be on hold for very long, if at all. It's now available online at the journal Retrovirology: Switzer et al's Absence of evidence of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-related virus infection in persons with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and healthy controls in the United States. It's listed as being published on the 1st July.The CDC paper Switzer et al, as the rumors predicted, is negative. The authors tested blood plasma from 51 CFS cases and 53 healthy controls and found no evidence of anti-XMRV antibodies; they sent the same samples to a German lab and they confirmed the results. They then tested DNA extracted from blood samples in the same CFS patients and 97 controls, finding no evidence of XMRV DNA using a number of analytical methods; again, a second lab confirmed this. The paper is open access, so you can read it for more details (there are lots).This is a big deal, because this is the first paper to attempt to replicate Lombardi et al's results in American patients. Several studies have appeared in the months following the original paper, and none of them found XMRV infection in any of their patients or controls. This is mysterious because Lombardi et al found XMRV in 67% of patients, but also in 4% of controls. However, these studies all used European people, raising the possibility that XMRV is just not found in Europe, for whatever reason.So what exactly is going on here? Maybe only Lombardi et al used the appropriate methods which were able to detect XMRV, and everyone else has been failing to pick it up. However, in my opinion, while this was a reasonable suspicion months ago, it's very unlikely now because (by my count) 6 labs have not found XMRV in CFS patients, using lots of different approaches.In most cases these labs showed that they were able to detect small quantities of XMRV added into a sample, as a positive control. Switzer et al, for example, say that they were able to detect 10 copies of the virus (not many) mixed into a sample of human DNA; one of the labs they used for a confirmation analysis could detect 4 copies.There's another possibility - maybe only Lombardi et al were studying the right people. Lombardi et al used a carefully selected subgroup of CFS patients with various neurological and immunological abnormalities suggestive of a "medical" as opposed to a "psychological" disorder. However, the most popular 1994 criteria for CFS are a lot broader than this. Supporters of the XMRV-CFS link say that XMRV is probably associated only with some cases of CFS, and the various failed attempts to confirm XMRV have been looking in the wrong people.Bearing this in mind, it's notable that the latest Switzer et al paper didn't actually recruit patients who considered themselves to have CFS: rather, they went through the telephone directory of Wichita, Kansas, calling random numbers, and asked people whether they were suffering from CFS-like symptoms such as fatigue. People who answered "yes" to enough questions were invited for a medical exam and interview and were diagnosed with CFS if they met the 1994 criteria, as long as their symptoms weren't explained by a known, current medical or psychiatric disorder.It's fair to say that this will have recruited a very different cross-section of patients than Lombardi et al did. However, in my opinion, while this is important, it doesn't resolve the fundamental mystery of why no-one had XMRV, not even the healthy controls, given that Lombardi et al found XMRV in 4% of healthy people. To my knowledge this questions remains unexplained. Maybe the "on hold" NIH/FDA paper will shed some light, when and if it appears.Switzer, W., Jia, H., Hohn, O., Zheng, H., Tang, S., Shankar, A., Bannert, N., Simmons, G., Hendry, R., Falkenberg, V., Reeves, W., & Heneine, W. (2010). Absence of evidence of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-related virus infection in persons with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and healthy controls in the United States Retrovirology, 7 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1742-4690-7-57Enserink, M. (2010). Conflicting Papers on Hold as XMRV ... Read more »

Switzer, W., Jia, H., Hohn, O., Zheng, H., Tang, S., Shankar, A., Bannert, N., Simmons, G., Hendry, R., Falkenberg, V.... (2010) Absence of evidence of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-related virus infection in persons with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and healthy controls in the United States. Retrovirology, 7(1), 57. DOI: 10.1186/1742-4690-7-57

Enserink, M. (2010) Conflicting Papers on Hold as XMRV Frenzy Reaches New Heights. Science, 329(5987), 18-19. DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5987.18

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