Thesis Residue

Writing a thesis is hard. If the act writing of a large body of independent research was not hard, the term ABD would not exist.

Thesis writing can be the time to sharpen writing attitudes and habits. The right attitudes and habits shape a successful career. More often, people create an attitude of fear and a habit of procrastination around creating large, meaningful deliverables.

Compared to the soon-to-be-out-of-date factual content of a thesis, writing attitudes and habits are a more valuable product of the thesis process.

Repost: Stop Stealing Dreams

Seth Godin released Stop Stealing Dreams today. His lastest manifesto directly addresses an issue I care deeply about - Education.

Education has transformed my life. It was my ticket from a lower class upbringing to my current "dream life." I choose to be a teacher to help others reach their dreams (and beyond). The power of education is limited by our current approach. Stop Stealing Dreams is an important step in the much needed full-scale renovation of education. Check it out here.

First Round Knockout

In college, I quickly picked up the "Study Hard, Test Easy" habit. I asked myself harder mock questions than a professor would ever ask on a test. It was much cheaper to fail in my dormroom than in the classroom.

I extended that habit to my science work. The most difficult round of peer review should be my lab group. The time, money, and energy cost of finding errors in the lab group phase is exponentially lower than cost of finding the same errors at the manuscript review phase.

Hire Me as Your Tutor

I am tutoring though WyzAnt.com in the subjects that I most love to teach. Currently, I am offering psychology, statistics, and SPSS. I'm available in-person in the Washington DC metro area or remotely. If you think I could help you, please check out my profile here.

A Better Approach to Methods Section

Today I visited the "Inventing a Better Mousetrap: Patent Models from the Rothschild Collection" exhibit at the American Art Museum. This american art was an artifact of the patent office. In the early days of the patent office, inventors were requited to submit scale models of proposed patents. The models helped patent examiners better understand the new idea. Physical models are easier to understand than words and drawings.

A similar direction would help modern journal-based science. A slideshow or video in the methods section of an experimental paper would help readers better understand the nature of the experiments. Given journals are electronic, a quick embedded video would be worth 10,000 words.

Science Wildcatting

Experimental permutations in science are straightforward. It is easy to run another set of experiments, just add another level to an establishing variable or cross two establishing variables. Experimental permutations guarantee small, limited returns by exploring the known space. It solves the interpolation problem by filling in current knowledge gaps.

The hard work of science is experimental extrapolation. Creating a new variable. Going into unknown space. Most results will be zero. However, the great work of science is there.

On Teaching Introduction to Psychology

How much time is an introduction to chemistry class expected to spend on alchemy? Most people say zero. It is an obsolete paradigm, which does not relate to current thinking in the field.

How much time is an introduction to psychology class expected to spend on Freud? I say zero. It is an obsolete paradigm, which does not relate to current thinking in the field.

In teaching the basics of any field, you either teach how we got where are or where we are. You can not do both well. Every moment you spend on history is one less moment available to spend on trying to understand the world as it is now. Covering the current field of psychology is out of scope for a single course, there is no need add the weight of history.

The history of a field has value. However that value belongs in the history class, not in the introduction class.

Thrashing, Process, & Productivity

How you do convince people to pay attention to their experiment development process?

Everyone makes mistakes. The art of productive science is making and catching mistakes at the right time and place, the best time is the design phase and the best place is on paper. Design time and paper are relatively cheap.

Thrashing on a paper during the design phase is not as exciting as collecting the first data or analyzing the data which supports a pet theory. I created a process which slows me down to catch mistakes of rushing forward. Part of that process is the drawer trick from Stephen King's On Writing.

When I am developing a new study, I design it from start-to-finish on paper from data collection to final analysis with mock figures. I print it out and put it in drawer. I completely forgot about it, that takes ~3 weeks for me. When I revisit the study, I have more detached viewpoint. I catch more mistakes that I care to admit but those are the cheap mistakes.

This process of early thrashing increases later productivity.

Peer Reviewing Gamification

Peer reviewing in scientific journals is a black box. There are known inputs and outputs but the process itself is mostly unknown. As a result, there are few incentives built into the current system to make peer reviewering both quick and high-quality.

Peer-reviewing could be improved by gamification, explicitly defining the rules and what winning looks like. Reviewers/players could be tracked on a public or private scoreboard. Reviewers would earn points for completing their reviews early. They move up to more prestigious journals/leagues by the quality of their reviews. Submitters or editors could then pick reviewers based on objective metrics of their work. It would also provide another data point for merit-based academic promotions.

What I Use: The Two Minute Rule

The Two Minute Rule from Getting Things Done revolutionized how I check process email. I complete every action, that takes less than two minutes, associated with the current email before moving onto the next email. The most common actions are adding events in my calendar, tracking specific next actions, and replying with canned responses, via TextExpander.

Keyboard shortcuts are the engine that drives that machine. I avoid switching costs by not touching the mouse. As my muscle memory develops, I can complete more actions into that same block of time.

The small stuff is off my plate, and my mind, before I enjoy the entrée of the day.

The new face of scientific publishing

I am part of the scientific journal publishing machine.

I have written published papers. Currently, I am peer-reviewing journal articles. I am on the cusp of submitting another paper for review. I truly enjoy that aspect of my science work. However, there is unnecessary friction in the current system, if the goal is to have the best science in the world as quickly as possible for people to read and use.

The paywall issue is a canary in the coal mine for this industry. The journal publishing industry is predicated on a false sense of scarcity. One example is the notion of finite space. This is true for printed journals. That limit no longer exists since journals are now primarily electronic.

I am not ready to completely jump off the sinking ship of conventional journal publishing, but I am willing to work for a system better suited to the digital age.

What counts as evidence in your world?

Is it a story, an individual data point, a single data set, or a meta-analysis?

The hard work of science

A theory can be proved by experiment;

but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

- Manfred Eigen

Proposing new theories is the hard work of science. It requires insights and guts. The theory you propose will be proved wrong, since all theories are wrong. It is far easier to run another experiment. Experiments are usually a series of technical problems (e.g., How do we find subjects? How do we analysis the data?). It feels safe to correctly solve technical problems. It is harder to create the time and space to develop a new theory.