Blog

Betrayed by the Butchery Bank of England

Keith S. Taber

Image of cattle by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

A recycled man

I am a scientist and well aware that I am – in a corporeal sense – composed of many billions of bits which have been recycled myriad times. At the level of molecules, ions, electrons and the like, bits of me have in the past been parts of other humans, various other animals and plants, in the rocks, soil, seas. Bits of me have been sneezed, urinated, bled and sweated out of many others who had use of my quanticles before me. No doubt my components have been parts of worms and bacteria and dinosaurs and dodos. Some of my bits are extraterrestrial, having drifted in from other parts of the solar system. Ultimately, much of me is stardust, as all the carbon and oxygen and nitrogen etc were forged in nuclear furnaces in a previous generation star. 

Use of butchery products in banknotes

So, it may seen incongruous that I was disappointed, disgusted, and even surprised, that the Bank of England has decide to continue its recent innovation of making its banknotes from a mixture which includes some products of animal butchery. The polymer used in the new notes contains a small amount of fats sourced from animals killed for human use and profit. This was inadvertent, and when discovered there was an outcry, and a consultation.

Although most people in England are not especially concerned that their new notes contain meat products, a number of groups objected and this not only included vegetarians and vegans, but members of some religious groups who are subject to rules about which animals they can consume and handle. Nondescript dead mammal fat products are not something they wish to handle, even as cash.

Given that there was originally no deliberate decision to use butchery products in banknotes, and there was such a strong objection to the accidental development (well people must have known, but not the Bank), and given that usually England is a fairly liberal place where religious groups and eccentric people like myself are at least tolerated, I strongly expected a change in policy: but the Bank has contacted me (and others responding to the consultation) to report that "After careful and serious consideration and the extensive public consultation, the Bank has decided that there will be no change to the composition of polymer used for future banknotes. … The new polymer £20 banknote, to be issued in 2020, and future print runs of £5 and £10 banknotes will continue to be made from polymer which contains a trace amount, typically less than 0.05%, of additives derived from animal products".

Taking an ethical stand

I feel let down by the Bank of England, which clearly does not seek to take into account the reasonable (if to others somewhat picky) views of the full range of people it is meant to serve. Shame on you Mark Carney and your colleagues. You have betrayed many of the people in this country who believe that convenience sometimes needs to be balanced against taking an ethical standpoint, and that in England we sometimes stand up for the beliefs and concerns of others – even when they actually seem a bit quirky to us.

Most people have no qualms about eating and wearing (and gluing with, etc.) the worked-up products of killed animals, even if today few people in England are prepared to do their own hunting and killing and butchery. I am a vegetarian on aesthetic and moral grounds. As a scientist, I  know there is no absolute difference between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. I find meat disgusting, and the idea that animals are put to death so others can enjoy eating them as disturbing.

Purely as an analogy, consider how an anti-slavery campaigner must have felt at the time when most of their peers – most decent, honest, caring, God-fearing, people they knew – seemed to think that slavery was a perfectly reasonable, economically justifiable, activity. Or when polite society thought it was appropriate to hang someone for stealing food for their starving children – after all, if you do not make an example, then before you know it all the poor will be stealing rather than starving quietly, and where might that lead?

An immoral act

The bank notes will not look or smell or feel of meat – but they will contain materials deriving from the commercial exploitation of animals killed because people think they are tasty and that living things can just be treated as economic resources to do with as we wish. (There is no strong global economic argument for the meat industry as we could feed the world more effectively with arable farming.) So, to my mind the new banknotes are unacceptable tokens of immoral actions. Deliberately including rendered animal corpse products into banknotes is, by my own personal ethical standards, an immoral act. 

Most readers will no doubt think I'm quirky. After all, I've no problems with being made of bits of all those dead animals because they did not become part of me by a deliberate act (by myself or agents working for me) of taking life from other creatures – unlike the new banknotes. I'm very aware of my own mortality, and the precious gift of experience in this world. I do not expect other animals to experience life just as I do (I cannot be sure of that even for other human animals) but to be animate is have some level of experience that is ended by being used simply as material for human greed. I do not know what it is like to be a bat (or any other non-human animal, but Nagel (1974) famously chose this example to pose the question), but I can empathise with what it might be like to suddenly be denied being one to become food, or shoes, or banknotes.

I'm happy to be considered quirky all by the meat-eaters out there – except for those of you who think it is okay to eat, say, pigs and cows and – maybe – horses; but not cats or dogs…at least my quirkiness is systematic and coherent as any good scientist's quirkiness should be.

Source cited:
  • Nagel, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435-450.

First published 15th August 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

An unpublished Theory of Everything

Keith S. Taber

A TOE? (Image by congerdesign from Pixabay)

Dear Dr. Prof. Tambara Federico


Thank you for sending me your manuscript reporting your "revolutionary" paper

offering your

"own comprehensive, mass-related physical-mathematical Research Study, proposing new scientific data and formulas [sic] with a view to making it possible to unify the four universal interaction fields…, which as a matter of fact cover all possible physical as well as scientific-mathematical aspects and domains of reality itself…"

and incorporating your "FOUR REMARKABLE CONCLUSIVE THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS".

You ask that I (and the others among the "500 SCIENTIFIC ADDRESSEES" to whom you sent the paper) "will kindly agree to publish" your "Research Study in Your worldwide famous scientific Reviews and / or Journals as soon as possible". I assume you have contacted me, inter alia, seeking publication in Chemistry Education Research and Practice?

I must decline your request, on several grounds.

Your paper does not seen to be within the scope of the journal. That may seem odd when you propose a TOE (Theory of Everything). I am certainly open to the argument that in principle all academic fields could be reduced to fundamental physics, but not that this is always sensible. So for example in chemistry we have concepts such as acidity, resonance, hyperconjugation, oxidation, and so forth. These are probably, in principle, capable of being redescribed in terms of fundamental physics – but any such description is likely to be too cumbersome to be of practical value in chemistry. We have these specifically chemical concepts because the complexity of the phenomena leads to emergent properties that are most usefully considered at the level of chemistry, not physics.

How much more so the concepts related to teaching and learning chemistry! Perhaps pedagogy could (again, in principle) be reduced to physics – but that would be little more than an impressive technical achievement of no practical value. Sadly, a theory of everything tells us very little of value about most things.

Secondly, the journal has peer review processes that need to be followed, and editorial fiat is not used to publish a paper without following these processes. You may well have made major breakthroughs in this fundamental area of science, but science is communal, and your work has no status in the field until other experts have critiqued and evaluated it.

So, thirdly, any submission needs to be made through the journal's on-line review system, allowing proper editorial screening and then – should it be considered suitable (which it would not in this case, see above) allowing it to be sent to review.

However, submitting a manuscript for formal review requires you to make a number of declarations. One of these is that the manuscript you wish to be considered is not published, under review or consideration, or has been submitted to, any other journal. As you have adopted a 'scatter gun' approach to submitting your work, you would need to wait until you have received formal notification that the other 499 scholarly outlets approached are declining your manuscript before you could make a formal submission.

As you are concerned that unless your work is published it may be plagiarised, I suggest you deposit your paper in one of the many repositories now available for posting unpublished documents. This will make your work available and will demonstrate your priority in anything that may later be judged (in peer review) by experts in the field as novelty in your work.


First published 12th March 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Educational fore-hind-sight

Keith S. Taber

Image by kmicican from Pixabay 

Oh dear, a sense of deja vu. One no sooner writes about the errors of the past *, and it is suggested we commit them again.

Return of the 11-plus?

"Return of the 11-plus: Does Theresa May back selective grammar schools?"

Newspaper headline

"It also became clear that although the process was meant to select on the basis of academic ability, to a large extent the outcomes reflected the socio-economic family background of the children.

Where the independent schools largely served the more wealthy in society, the grammar schools admitted disproportionate numbers of children from so called 'middle-class' families (i.e., parents being lower professional and white-collar workers) rather than so-called working class (e.g., children of unskilled labourers). It was found that scholastic achievement at age 11 was strongly linked to social capital deriving from the home background.

If schools are expected to be agents of social change, rather than a means to reproduce existing social differences (and that of course is an ideological choice), then determining a person's educational, and so possibly professional, future at age eleven, based on an examination that did not compensate for levels of educational opportunity and advantage in the home environment, was clearly inappropriate.."

(Taber, 2017: 189)
Source cited:

* First published 22nd January 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Snail e-mail

I received a notification today with the heading:

“Routledge author update: your article is now in the latest issue of Westminster Studies in Education”

The main text read:

“Dear Keith S. Taber, Congratulations! Your article, How Was It for You?: the dialogue between researcher and colearner, has now been assigned to the latest issue of Westminster Studies in Education, Issue 1.”

The email included an image of the journal cover, as above. The eagle-eyed might spot that the journal title is somewhat different. This was not a matter of the wrong journal, but rather that the journal has changed its name. But surely the journal did not change its name between the publisher publishing my article (“now”) and writing to tell me it was in the “latest issue”?

4×108 s later

Actually the new name applied from 2005. The article (Taber & Student, 2003) was actually published in volume 26, in 2003 when the journal was Westminster Studies in Education. It was not published electronically at that time, though. It was only published on-line in November 2006, by which time the journal was re-branded as the International Journal of Research & Method in Education.

Hm.

Clearly there’s been some kind of error here, or else this must be one of the slowest email notifications in history. Electronic messages are meant to travel at hundreds of millions of metres each second – so this would put Routledge’s office some light years away.

On the negative side, I may now get in trouble because the University’s software for supporting our bibliographic records may get hold of this, notify me and demand I take ownership of a new publication; and then tell me I must upload a manuscript copy to the University's open access repository within six months of the article being accepted for publication. That could prove tricky at this point.

On the other hand, I am hoping that whatever has gone wrong might have spread word of my ‘new’ publication more widely – I always thought it was a piece that deserved more attention.

First published 13th January 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

Source cited:
  • Taber, K. S., & Student, T. A. (2003). How was it for you?: the dialogue between researcher and colearner. Westminster Studies in Education, 26(1), 33-44.
facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

A meeting at an 'other place'

Keith S. Taber

The Radcliffe Camera – a well known library building at the other place*: Image by Wolfgang Claussen from Pixabay 

The secret conference I referred to recently was advertised as being "at the University of Oxford". Now this is quite a well known university, considered by some to be very prestigious (there are some who claim it is as prestigious as Cambridge, and indeed some who even suggest more so!) With so many conferences seeking to attract academics and graduate students aspiring to develop an academic career, it is important that potential delegates can determine which are worth considering for attending and presenting work. The conference website tells potential delegates that "[f]ew places are more readily associated with scholarly endeavour [Morse?] than Oxford", and that "whilst some might argue that the city is not as aesthetically pleasing as its arch-rival Cambridge it remains a visual delight and a veritable treasure house of human achievements". 

Organisers vs. facilities-for-hire?

Well a conference organised by Oxford University, or one of its Colleges or Departments, should be taken seriously. However, here this is just the conference venue. That is, the organisers have hired space to have their conference. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, either from the point of view of the conference organisers or the University: but there is a big difference between 

  • a conference organised by a top university, and 
  • a conference hiring rooms at a top university. 

Prestige indicators

I tell students that if they are unsure of the likely merits of a conference they should look for indicators of prestige, such as the membership of the organising committee. An academic conference normally has at least two committees, one local to the event, and another sometimes called the 'scientific' committee or international committee, that looks after the academic programme and organises peer review of submitted contributions. One would expect this latter committee to consist of senior academics, well known in the field, normally based at top universities or institutions of similar standing. 

Oddly, although the website gave detailed instructions on formatting submissions (not as proposals, but as full papers in camera ready form for publication), I could find no information about either peer review, nor any scientific/international committee.  Perhaps I missed this? More likely anyone submitting a paper is accepted for the conference as long as they pay the fee. Again, there is nothing wrong with this in the sense of there being anything underhand – as long as those who were looking for "[r]ecognition of your work on [the] international platform" appreciate that the conference is not peer reviewed and so will count for little on their c.v. 

Still, if you have never been to Oxford, it is certainly worth a visit, even if it is "not as aesthetically pleasing as … Cambridge".

Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice'

First published 13th January 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

Note: * 'The other place'

It is something of a tradition at Oxford and Cambridge Universities to refer to the other as 'the other place', as in "she teaches at the other place", "he did his undergraduate degree at the other place", "they might accepts this kind of nonsense at the other place, but…"

This may seem arrogant to anyone not at 'Oxbridge' (in my experience it is not intended so) given the current higher education context, but for about six centuries it would have referred to the only other place in England where one could get a University education.

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

It's a secret conference invitation: pass it on…

Keith S. Taber

Perhaps I should not be telling anyone this, but I have been invited to register for a conference that "seeks to elucidate a wealth of issues in all aspects of business management" which it was suggested would "be of interest to scholars, practitioners and researchers in management".

That raises the issue of why I was invited, but I have laboured that point before and that was not what tweaked my interest in this message. Rather, it was the strange juxtaposition of a clearly quite general circular inviting me to circulate it even further, suffixed with a statement telling me the email contents should not be further communicated. 

A 'legal' notice

The foot of the message included a 'legal notice' telling me that the contents of the email were "confidential and may also be privileged". This notice told me that 

"If you are not the addressee, do not disclose, copy, circulate or in any other way use or rely on the information contained in this email or any attachments. If received in error, notify the sender immediately and delete this email and any attachments from your system."

Was I the addressee? The message did not have any declared recipient. 

Of course it was delivered to my email address, so I could argue I was the addressee as the email was sent to my address. However, that makes a nonsense of the legal notice: anyone who has this turn up in their inbox is a addressee in that sense, and so anyone receiving the email can ignore the legal notice.

Spread the word?

At the bottom of the message was a subheading "INVITE YOUR COLLEAGUES", where I (or if not me, the intended addressee) was told "We would be grateful if you could forward this email on to your colleagues who might be interested to join with us". 

So if I pass on this message, does that make anyone I send it to an additional addressee (and so again free to ignore the legal notice), or should I actually preface the forwarded message with "Hi Zaniwoop , thought you might be interested in this" to ensure that they need not worry about relying on the information, as they will clearly be the addressee?

This then raises the further question that if I was not the addressee, and so should not pass on the message, and I send it on to someone who I name at the start of the email, so they are the addressee of the forwarded message (I hope you are following that), then are they entitled to ignore the legal notice even though I have circulated it "illegally"? (I would not want to burden colleagues with such worries: I remember at primary school being given copies of Star Trek cards of the type put in packs of bubble gum – only much later to hear a rumour that the bubble gum factory had been broken into: did I inadvertently receive stolen goods?) Luckily I suspected the conference was not worth taking seriously so I did not need to fret too much over what to do.

Pedantry: first duty of an academic

I realise this all seems rather pedantic, but either the legal notice is meant to be taken seriously or it is something we can just ignore. If it is meant to be taken seriously, it should only be attached to messages that have a clear addressee.

To compile a circular that you want distributed as widely as possible, and then attach a notice warning recipients that they should not "disclose, copy, circulate or in any other way use" the information in the circular seems pretty counter-productive. A lot of people seem to assume that rules, laws and regulations do not apply to them and may be ignored at their convenience. This kind of nonsense can only provide support for that kind of thinking.

Image by AllClear55 from Pixabay

First published 5th January 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Keith S. Taber – acclaimed polymath (apparently)!

Keith S. Taber

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

I've always admired those people who seem to be able to turn their hand to a wide range of activities and master them at will: people like Jonathan Miller. Most of us, however, are best advised to find something we are reasonably good at, and that we have a strong interest in, and then to work hard to develop some worthy level of expertise. I always thought that it was realistic to settle for that, but I am increasingly finding that in this post-truth world (where if we say something with conviction often enough it can be treated as reality) I have aimed too low.

The idea that the scholarly world adheres to values of honesty, integrity, balance and so forth seems pretty passé. Rather those arranging conferences, founding journals or setting up book proposals, seem to feel that hyperbole, exaggeration, guesswork, flattery, and other cheap marketing tactics are fair game as they fish (or should that be phish) for contributors.

At least that is the only explanation I've come up with for my apparent reputation as a polymath…

Keith Taber: Eminent biologist

In a previous blog posting I reported how I was surprised to be invited as an eminent Plenary Speaker at an International Conference on Synthetic Biology. I am clearly not qualified to be considered an expert in synthetic biology, so considered this invitation had to be a scam. My reply to the conference organisers (and some of the eminent scientists on the scientific committee) asking why they thought I was suitable to be a plenary speaker on synthetic biology did not get a response.

However, I have just been having one of my periodic attempts to sort my email in-box and could not help but notice that my reputation for expertise is not restricted to science education (which I would claim) and synthetic biology (which I struggle to find a justification for), but rather that I seem to be a recognised authority across a range of scientific fields.

My immense contributions to physics

So I can add areas of chemistry and physics to biology. To be fair I am a chartered chemist and chartered physicist, but had always seen my expertise within these disciplines as limited to chemistry education and physics education. It seems I am selling myself short. Rather, it would appear that I have made "immense contribution to the field" of atomic and nuclear physics. I am not sure what these contributions are, but presumably the organisers of the "International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics" must have something specific in mind?

My eminent contributions to chemistry

I feel I have made some modest contributions to chemistry (and am very proud that this was recognised through the RSC Education Award) – but would certainly not claim anything that goes beyond my educational work. A mild fantasy that the degassing that occurs when dissolving salt displaces dissolved air from water might become know as the Taber effect has yet to come to fruition. Yet apparently I have made "eminent contribution in [the] field" of computational chemistry. Perhaps my undergraduate project on computerised orbital calculations for TTF-TCNQ was not as flawed as I had suspected at the time. Certainly the editors of the Frontiers in Computational Chemistry book series were interested in calling upon my expertise.

 Keith Taber: An expert in computer science

Indeed it appears that my work in computing is more widely recognised. I was invited to join the committee for a conference where the organisers were "very interested in the contributions you have made in Computer Science", considering me "an expert". Amazing considering that I am so 'fingers and thumbs' that I often have to have several attempts at the passwords to get into my personal computers.

Keith Taber: Eminent researcher with excellent contributions to medical sciences

Moreover it seems my strengths are not limited to the so-called pure sciences. Additionally I am told that I have made such "excellent contributions to the field of medical sciences" that  "the scientific committee of the conference [on HIV & AIDS] is aware of your published works in this field". I'm struggling to identify which publications they are referring to, but then my memory is not so good. 

Indeed it seems that I am considered such an "eminent researcher" in Otolaryngology that I have been invited to join the editorial board of a new international journal in the specialism. That, on getting this invitation, I felt the need to check exactly what Otolaryngology is, merely reinforces just how unreliable my memory has become. Indeed, I'm wondering if there are any other areas of expertise I have developed a reputation for, that my modesty has allowed me to forget. 

Addendum: it seems I am considered, at least by by a specialist journal inviting my "prominent contribution", to also be "eminent" in the area of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

First published 3rd December 2016 at at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

(Read about 'Journals and poor academic practice')

(Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice')

Addendum:

My significant contributions to psychotherapy

It seems from an invitation to join the editorial board of another new journal that I am also known as an expert in psychotherapy where I "have made significant contributions, worth mentioning" with "achievements in various stages" indeed. It seems such expertise is very time-sensitive as the invitation "is valid only for one week and expires if no communication is received from" me.

Further addendum: more than a month after that time-sensitive request, I had another invitation to join the editorial board of this 'International Journal' of psychotherapy as my "knowledge of the subject and the contributions to field are noteworthy". I feel a bit bad about not accepting joining the journal as they think my "expertise will surely take it to great heights".

My prominence in immunodiagnostics

I was honoured to be "cordially invite[d] … to be … an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Immunodiagnostics" considering that the journal manager, Maria Carla was able to "assure [me] of international quality and standards of our articles published in our journals, using state-of-the-art prominent reviewers and editorial board". Good to be considered prominent and state of the art.

My remarkable achievements in human resources

I have been invited to join the Editorial Board of Modern Management Forum, a new journal from Universe Scientific Publishing. This invitation has been made "In light of [my] remarkable achievements in Human Resources", which apparently were discernible when reading my review published in Science & Education of a science education handbook.

Is there no end to my (supposed) achievements?

Well, the praise keeps rolling in, as I get asked to write, chair, edit, talk, etcetera in a vast range of fields where, despite claims to the contrary, I clearly have no experise, or where someone (or some machine) imagines that my writngs about science education demonstrate eminence in unrelated areas…

(Read about the faint parise

(Read about the Illogical connections between what is cited, and what they consequently invite you to do)

(Read about examples of vague praise used to justify invitations)

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Senior academics and conference scams

Expertise in the field – science education, and synthetic biology? Senior academics and conference scams.

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay 

It is considered an honour to be invited as a plenary speaker at a major international conferences – and an indicator of recognition as an expert in a field.

So it seems odd when one is invited to be a plenary speaker at a conference in a field that one has never worked in and so has no published work.

On 02/11/2015 17:21, Syntheticbiology 2016 wrote:

 Honorable Invitation from Synthetic Biology 2016 at London UK

Dear Dr. Keith S. Taber,
 
Basing on your expertise in the related field, we are pleasured to welcome your eminent Plenary Speaker at the upcoming 2nd International Conference on Synthetic Biology 2016 London UK, which is going to be held during August 18-20, 2016 London UK.
 
Synthetic Biology 2016, a three day event consisting of a scientific program, workshops, symposiums, comprehensive talks, special sessions, oral and poster presentations of peer-reviewed contributed papers and exciting and innovative research products which can be exhibited for further development of Synthetic Biology.
 
Synthetic Biology research area interconnects Systems Biology, Computational Biology, Nano biotechnology, Biophysics, Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biology, Protein Engineering, Bio-Chemical Engineering and Genetic Engineering. …

[Note – science education does not get a mention here.] …
 

My response:

On 26/02/2016 19:51, Prof Keith S Taber wrote:

Dear Kevin

I apologise for not giving this invitation attention earlier, but for some reason it was in my SPAM folder, so I had not seen it.

I am of course honoured to be invited as a Plenary Speaker at your conference. However, your invitation did not offer any details of what this would involve. I assume you repay travel expenses for your Plenary Speakers, but do you offer free accommodation for the whole conference, or just the day of the Plenary Lecture?

Do you offer a fee to Plenary Speakers, or do you simply cover their conference fees?

I would also be keen to know how you came to choose me as potential Plenary Speaker at this conference – and which area of my research the conference organising committee were especially keen for me to speak to your delegates about.

I look forward to receiving more details relating to your kind invitation.

Best wishes

Keith

This was copied to several academics at prestigious universities who were apparently part of the organising committee that had invited me:

  • Dr. Oscar Ces (OC), a Reader in Chemistry at Imperial College London
  • Professor Krams who holds a Chair in Molecular Bioengineering at Imperial College, London
  • Anthony Forster Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Vsevolod V Gurevich, Professor at Vanderbilt University.

Not surprisingly, I did not receive a reply from ‘Kevin’ (or anyone else) who had written to invite me as a plenary speaker – not to develop the invitation, to explain it, or apologise for it being a mistake (perhaps they meant to invite that other Keith S. Taber well known for his work in synthetic biology?)

This seems another sign of the sad demise of academia as a body worthy of being respected in the public domain. I wonder how many other academics with no connection to this field were invited as plenary speakers (but presumably actually would be charged fees if they did wish to speak). I find this type of scam as annoying (although my email application seemed to know I was being spammed), as I teach research methods, and it is difficult for new researchers to sift the decent conferences from the less worthy ones, when this type of irresponsible marketing ploy is used. I tell students to look to see if conference committees include senior academic they recognise from their reading, as one indicator of conference quality. In this case, committee members from top universities was no assurance of the quality of conference processes.

I am not surprised at some conference organisers behaving in such disreputable ways – I guess to them conferences are just events to be marketed in the search for profits. What I find very sad is that top academics from such highly regarded institutions put their names to these scams*, giving them a veneer of respectability they clearly do not deserve.

Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice'

First published 24th July 2014 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

* This assumes, of course, that the academics named as scientific committee members have agreed to join such a committee, which I found when investigating another dubious invitation is not always the case! ⚗︎

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Why do the thinking, when someone else can give you ideas?

Why do the thinking, when you can use the internet to ask someone else?

Keith S. Taber

Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay 

Good afternoon Sir, I am [name omitted] a student of Chemistry Education at university of [university and country omitted].

I am about starting my Undergraduate degree Project,

I will be glad if I can send my write ups to you subsequently to check and give me ideas.

I will be glad if accept my proposal, longing to hear from you soon. Thanks, yours Faithful.

Dear [name omitted]

Thank you for writing to me to tell me that you are about to embark on your undergraduate project. Your university should be able to provide you with a project supervisor, so if you are unsure about this, please talk to your tutor.

It would not be appropriate for me to check your write-ups and give you my ideas for your work. Leaving aside that I am employed to support students in my own University, your University would likely consider it cheating for you to ask academics elsewhere to provide input to your work.

Best wishes

Keith

First published 24th July 2016 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Learning about natural selection and denying evolution

An ironic parallel

Keith S. Taber

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay 

I was checking some proofs for something I had written today* [Taber, 2017], and was struck by an ironic parallel between one of the challenges for teaching about the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection and one of the arguments put forward by those who deny the theory. The issue concerns the value of having only part of an integrated system.

The challenge of evolutionary change

One of the arguments that has long been made about the feasibility of evolution is that if it occurs by many small random events, it could not lead to progressive increases in complexity – unless it was guided by some sense of design to drive the many small changes towards some substantive new feature of ability. So, for example, birds have adaptations such as feathers that allow them to fly, even though they are thought to have evolved from creatures that could not fly. The argument goes that for a land animal to evolve into a bird there need to be a great many coordinated changes. Feathers would not appear due to a single mutation, but rather must be the result of a long series of small changes. Moreover, simply growing features would not allow an animal to fly without other coordinated changes such as evolving very light bones and changes in anatomy to support the musculature needed to power the wings.  

The same argument can be made about something like the mammalian eye, which can hardly be one random mutation away from an eyeless creature. The eye requires retinal cells, linked to the optic nerve, a lens, the iris, and so on. The eye is an impressive piece of equipment which is as likely to be the result of a handful of random events, as would be – say, a pocket watch found walking on the heath (to use a famous example). A person finding a watch would not assume its mechanism was the result of a chance accumulation of parts that had somehow fallen together. Rather, the precise mechanism surely implies a designer who planned the constructions of the overall object. In 'Intelligent Design' similar arguments are made at the biochemical level, about the complex systems of proteins which only function after they have independently come into existence and become coordinated into a 'machine' such as a flagellum.  

The challenge of conceptual change

The parallel concerns the nature of conceptual changes between different conceptual frameworks. Paul Thagard (e.g., 1992) has looked at historical cases and argued that such shifts depend upon judgements of 'explanatory coherence'. For example, the phlogiston theory explained a good many phenomena in chemistry, but also had well-recognised problems.

The very different conceptual framework developed by Lavoisier [the Lavoisiers? **] (before he was introduced to Madame Guillotine) saw combustion as a chemical reaction with oxygen (rather than a release of phlogiston), and with the merits of hindsight clearly makes sense of chemistry much more systematically and thoroughly. It seems hard now to understand why all other contemporary chemists did not readily switch their conceptual frameworks immediately. Thagard's argument was that those who were very familiar with phlogiston theory and had spent many years working with it genuinely found it had more explanatory coherence than the new unfamiliar oxygen theory that they had had less opportunity to work with across a wide range of examples. So chemists who history suggests were reactionary in rejecting the progressive new theory were actually acting perfectly rationally in terms of their own understanding at the time. ***

Evolution is counter-intuitive

Evolution is not an obvious idea. Our experience of the world is of very distinct types of creatures that seldom offer intermediate uncertain individuals. (That may not be true for expert naturalists, but is the common experience.) Types give rise to more of their own: young children know that pups come from dogs and grow to be adult dogs that will have pups, and not kittens, of their own. The fossil record may offer clues, but the extant biological world that children grow up in only offers a single static frame from the on-going movie of evolving life-forms. [That is, everyday 'lifeworld' knowledge can act as substantial learning impediment – we think we already know how things are.]

Natural selection is an exceptionally powerful and insightful theory – but it is not easy to grasp. Those who have become so familiar with it may forget that – but even Darwin took many years to be convinced about his theory.

Understanding natural selection means coordinating a range of different ideas about inheritance, and fitness, and random mutations, and environmental change, and geographical separation of populations, and so forth. Put it all together and the conceptual system seems elegant – perhaps even simple, and perhaps with the advantage of hindsight even obvious. It is said that when Huxley read the Origin of Species his response was "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" That perhaps owes as much to the pedagogic and rhetorical qualities of Darwin's writing in his "one long argument". However, Huxley had not thought of it. Alfred Russel Wallace had independently arrived at much the same scheme and it may be no coincidence that Darwin and Wallace had both spent years immersing themselves in the natural history of several continents.   

Evolution is counter-intuitive, and only makes sense once we can construct a coherent theoretical structure that coordinates a range of different components. Natural selection is something like a shed that will act as a perfectly stable building once we have put it together, but which  it is very difficult to hold in place whilst still under construction. Good scaffolding may be needed. 

Incremental change

The response to those arguments about design in evolution is that the many generations between the land animal and the bird, or the blind animal and the mammal, get benefits from the individual mutations that will collectively, ultimately lead to the wing or mammalian eye. So a simple eye is better than no eye, and even a simple light sensitive spot may give its owner some advantage. Wings that are good enough to glide are useful even if their owners cannot actually fly. Nature is not too proud to make use of available materials that may have previously had different functions (whether at the level of proteins or anatomical structures). So perhaps features started out as useful insulation, before they were made use of for a new function. From the human scale it is hard not to see purpose – but the movie of life has an enormous number of frames and, like some art house movies, the observer might have to watch for some time to see any substantive changes. 

A pedagogical suggestion – incremental teaching?

So there is the irony. Scientists counter the arguments about design by showing how parts of (what will later be recognised as) an adaptation actually function as smaller or different advantageous adaptations in their own right. Learning about natural selection presents a situation where the theory is only likely to offer greater explanatory coherence than a student's intuitive ideas about the absolute nature of species after the edifice has been fully constructed and regularly applied to a range of examples.

Perhaps we might take the parallel further. It might be worth exploring if we can scaffold learning about natural selection by finding ways to show students that each component of the theory offers some individual conceptual advantages in thinking about aspects of the natural world. That might be an idea worth exploring. 

(Note. 'Representing evolution in science education: The challenge of teaching about natural selection' is published in B. Akpan (Ed.), Science Education: A Global Perspective. The International Edition is due to be published by Springer at the end of June 2016.)

Notes:

* First published 30th April 2016 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/

** "as Madame Lavoisier, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, was his coworker as well as his wife, and it is not clear how much credit she deserves for 'his' ideas" (Taber, 2019: 90). Due to the times in which they works it was for a long time generally assumed that Mme Lavoisier 'assisted' Antoine Lavoisier in his work, but that he was 'the' scientist. The extent of her role and contribution was very likely under-estimated and there has been some of a re-evaluation. It is known that Paulze contributed original diagrams of scientific apparatus, translated original scientific works, and after Antoine was executed by the French State she did much to ensure his work would be disseminated. It will likely never be know how much she contributed to the conceptualisation of Lavoisier's theories.

*** It has also been argued (in the work of Hasok Chang, for example) both that when the chemical revolution is considered, little weight is usually given to the less successful aspects of Lavoisier's theory, and that phlogiston theory had much greater merits and coherence than is usually now suggested.

Sources cited:
  • Taber, K. S. (2017). Representing evolution in science education: The challenge of teaching about natural selection. In B. Akpan (Ed.), Science Education: A Global Perspective (pp. 71-96). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing
  • Taber, K. S. (2019). The Nature of the Chemical Concept: Constructing chemical knowledge in teaching and learning. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.
  • Thagard, P. (1992). Conceptual Revolutions. Oxford: Princeton University Press.

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

Plants mainly respire at night

Plants mainly respire at night because they are photosynthesising during the day

Keith S. Taber

Image by Konevi from Pixabay 

Mandy was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. When I spoke to her in Y10 (i.e. when she was c.14 year old) she told me that photosynthesis was one of the topics she was studying in science. So I asked her about photosynthesis. She suggested that "respiration produces energy, but photosynthesis produces glucose which produces energy". (See 'How plants get their food to grow and make energy'). She told me that she respired to get energy.

How do you get your energy then?

We respire.

Is that different then [from photosynthesis]?

Yeah.

So what's respire then, what do you do when you respire?

We use oxygen to, and glucose to release energy.

Do plants respire?

Yes.

So when do you respire, when you are going to go for a run or something, is that when you respire, when you need the energy?

No, you are respiring all the time.

… What about plants? Do they respire all the time?

They mainly do it at night.

Why's that?

'cause they're photosynthesising during the day, cause they need the light.

I was not clear why Mandy thought that plants should respire less when they were photosynthesising.

So why do you need to respire all the time?

'cause you're making energy and you need energy to do everything.

So are you respiring at the same rate all the time, do you think?

No.

So sometimes more than others?

Yeah.

So when might you need to respire more?

When you are doing exercise. Running around a lot.

So are there time when you do not need to respire as much?

Yeah.

So when might you not need to respire very much?

When you 're sleeping or just sitting watching tele [television].

…Do you have to respire at all during the night – you are not doing anything are you?

You need a little bit of energy.

What for?

Erm, I don't [indistinct], well I suppose it's just to keep everything, cause if you did not have energy then your heart would not beat, and you need it to keep breathing, and your heart pumping.

Mandy recognised the need for people to respire continuously, although she associated this with functioning at the organism level (breathing, blood circulation) and did not seem to be thinking about cellular level metabolism.

Why do plants need to respire? What do they use it, the energy for?

Erm, to grow, and to fix cells that are – broken.

Oh right, like repair damage?

Yeah.

So, do you think they are like us then, that they sort of sleep sometimes and don't need to respire as much, or?

Not as much, I don't know. I don't know.

Do you think a plant sleeps, a tree has a good sleep?

No.

So when do you think plants need to respire the most, or do you think they respire the same all the time?

They respire more at night, because – they do it then instead of in the day because they do photosynthesis during the day, but they still respire a little bit.

So is it difficult to try and do both at the same time?

Probably.

Or just maybe they are too busy photosynthesising to do much respiration?

Yeah, erm, I don't know.

Not sure?

No.

Mandy was not offering any specific reason why a plant should need to respire less at night (and did not seem to have previously thought about this), but simply seemed to assume that when the plant was photosynthesising a lot it would only respire "a little bit". This seemed to be an intuition rather than a considered proposition. It was almost as if she implicitly assumed that the plant would be fully occupied photosynthesising, and so would put respiration 'on the back burner'.

It seemed Mandy's understanding of the roles of photosynthesis and respiration at that point in her learning was limited by not fully seeing how energy was involved in the two processes (i.e., respiration produces energy, but photosynthesis produces glucose which produces energy), and because she was not considering the need for respiration to support ongoing basic cell functions.

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

How plants get their food to grow and make energy

Respiration produces energy, but photosynthesis produces glucose which produces energy

Keith S. Taber

Image by Frauke Riether from Pixabay 

Mandy was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. When I spoke to her in Y10 (i.e. when she was c.14 year old) she told me that photosynthesis was one of the topics she was studying in science. So I asked her about photosynthesis:

So, photosynthesis. If I knew nothing at all about photosynthesis, how would you explain that to me?

It's how plants get their food to grow and – stuff, and make energy

So how do they make their energy, then?

Well, they make glucose, which has energy in it.

How does the energy get in the glucose?

Erm, I don't know.

It's just there is it?

Yeah, it's just stored energy

I was particularly interested to see if Mandy understood about the role of photosynthesis in plant nutrition and energy metabolism.

Why do you think it is called photosynthesis, because that's a kind of complicated name?

Isn't photo, something to do with light, and they use light to – get the energy.

So how do they do that then?

In the plant they've got chlorophyll which absorbs the light, hm, that sort of thing.

What does it do once it absorbs the light?

Erm.

Does that mean it shines brightly?

No, I , erm – I don't know

Mandy explained that the chlorophyll was in the cells, especially in the plant's leaves. But I was not very clear on whether she had a good understanding of photosynthesis in terms of energy.

Do you make your food?

Not the way plants do.

…

So where does the energy come from in your food then?

It's stored energy.

How did it get in to the food? How was it stored there?

Erm.

[c. 2s pause]

I don't know.

At this point it seemed Mandy was not connecting the energy 'in' food either directly or indirectly with photosynthesis.

Okay. What kind of thing do you like to eat?

Erm, pasta.

Do you think there is any energy value in pasta? Any energy stored in the pasta?

Has lots of carbohydrates, which is energy.

…

So do you think there is energy within the carbohydrate then?

Yeah.

Stored energy.

Yeah.

So how do you think that got there, who stored it?

(laughs) I don't know.

Again, the impression was that Mandy was not linking the energy value of food with photosynthesis. The reference to carbohydrates being energy seemed (given the wider context of the interview) to be imprecise use of language, rather than a genuine alternative conception.

So do you go to like the Co-op and buy a packet of pasta. Or mum does I expect?

Yeah.

Yeah. So do you think, sort of, the Co-op are sort of putting energy in the other end, before they send it down to the shop?

No, it comes from 'cause pasta's made from like flour, and that comes from wheat, and then that uses photosynthesis.

Now it seemed that it was quite clear to Mandy that photosynthesis was responsible for the energy stored in the pasta. It was not clear why she had not suggested this before, but it seemed she could make the connection between the food people eat and photosynthesis. Perhaps (it seems quite likely) she had previously been aware of this and it initially did not 'come to mind', and then at some point during this sequences of questions there was a 'bringing to mind' of the link. Alternatively, it may have been a new insight reached when challenged to respond to the interview questions.

So you don't need to photosynthesise to get energy?

No.

No, how do you get your energy then?

We respire.

Is that different then?

Yeah.

So what's respire then, what do you do when you respire?

We use oxygen to, and glucose to release energy.

Do plants respire?

Yes.

So when do you respire, when you are going to go for a run or something, is that when you respire, when you need the energy?

No, you are respiring all the time.

Mandy suggested that plants mainly respire at night because they are photosynthesising during the day. (Read 'Plants mainly respire at night'.)

So is there any relationship do you think between photosynthesis and respiration?

Erm respiration uses oxygen – and glucose and it produces er carbon dioxide and water, whereas photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and water, and produces oxygen and glucose.

So it's quite a, quite a strong relationship then?

Yeah.

Yeah, and did you say that energy was involved in that somewhere?

Yeah, in respiration, they produce energy.

What about in photosynthesis, does that produce energy?

That produces glucose, which produces the energy.

I see, so there is no energy involved in the photosynthesis equation, but there is in the glucose?

Yeah.

Respiration does not 'produce' energy of course, but if it had the question about whether photosynthesis also produced energy might have been expected to elicit a response about photosynthesis 'using' energy or something similar, to give the kind of symmetry that would be consistent with conservation of energy (a process and its reverse can not both 'produce' energy). 'Produce' energy might have meant 'release' energy in which case it might be expected the reverse process should 'capture' or 'store' it.

Mandy appreciated the relationship between photosynthetic and respiration in terms of substances, but had an asymmetric notion of how energy was involved.

Mandy appeared to be having difficult appreciating the symmetrical arrangement between photosynthesis and respiration because she was not clear how energy was transformed in photosynthesis and respiration. Although she seemed to have the components of the scientific narrative, she did not seem to fully appreciate how the absorption of light was in effect 'capturing' energy that could be 'stored' in glucose till needed. At this stage in her learning she seemed to have grasped quite a lot of the relevant ideas, but not quite integrated them all coherently.

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet