"This One Quick Trick!" didn't replicate

I haven't had time to digest this article, but the latest PNAS has a report of a failure to replicate a study that supposedly showed that simple little tweaks of wording could increase voter turnout.  Since the modern zeitgeist is big on the idea that tiny little linguistic nudges matter, it is satisfying to see this sort of research out there.

The Age of Reform, Chapter 3

Blah, boring.  The partisan politics and economics of late 19th century farmers.

Chapters 4-6 hold promise, though.  Chapter 4 is titled "The Status Revolution and Progressive Leaders" and the sections are titled "The plutocracy and the mugwump type", The Alienation of the professionals", and "From the mugwump to the progressive."  Sounds more like ideas and psychology than agricultural economics.

The Age of Reform, Chapters 1-2

Not much to say here. Chapter 1 is spent debunking the myth of the self-sufficient yeoman farmer. Hofstadter argues that for most of US history, and certainly by the early 19th century, farming was a capitalistic enterprise, where families were not farming merely to produce for their own table but to produce a surplus that they could sell for profit.  The idea of a farm where people grew all of their own foods, raised the sheep or plants that produced their clothing, did their own blacksmithing, etc., was largely a myth.  Of course, since farming was a for-profit endeavor in a wider economy it was subject to ups and downs, bubbles of land speculation, and all of the other risks that come when rewards go up.

He also spends a lot of time in the first two chapters arguing that the myth of the virtuous farmer as some simpler, purer being than city folk came from a lot of romantic speculation that never matched reality, including speculation by plantation owner Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson could only be considered "self-sufficient" if (1) you ignore the fact that he used slave labor and (2) had 300 people working on his plantation, i.e. enough people that they could specialize in different things, so what he had was less a model of self-sufficiency than a model of a diversified and specialized (though thoroughly unfree) local economy.  The myth of the self-sufficient and virtuous farmer only grew larger as family farming declined, the industrial economy rose, and farmers and immigrants alike left their homes for American cities.  That era saw a lot of xenophobia, and a lot of militarism in isolationist guise:

On the surface there was a strong note of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism in the Populist movement and Bryan democracy.  Populists were opposed to large standing armies and large naval establishments; most of them supported Bryan's resistance to the acquisition of the Philippines.  They looked upon the military as a threat to democracy, upon imperialist acquisitions as gains only to financiers and "monarchists", not to the people.  But what they chiefly objected to was institutional militarism rather than war itself, imperialism rather than jingoism.  Under a patina of pacifist rhetoric they were profoundly nationalistic and bellicose.  What the nativist mind most resolutely opposed was not so much war itself as co-operation with European governments for any ends at all. (page 85)

I didn't intend to use this blog to talk about Brexit or Trump, but all of this has happened before and will happen again.

Next Book: The Age of Reform

Since I love Richard Hofstadter so much, my next read will be The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter.  This book is, on the surface, not about education at all, but about the Progressive Era and (to a lesser extent) the New Deal Era.  The book is not offered as a detailed account of policy-making and the associated negotiations among players, much less a detailed and quantitative account of the consequences of those policies.  Rather, it is a story of the ideas that were popular in the broad middle of American culture, to get a sense of Americans as a people.

Already, just in the introduction, I can tell that I will like this book.  I shall quote from page 16:

A great part of both the strength and the weakness of our national existence lies in the fact that Americans do not abide very quietly the evils of life.  We are forever restlessly pitting against them, demanding changes, improvements, remedies, but not often with sufficient sense of the limits that the human condition will in the end insistently impose upon us. This restlessness is most valuable and has its most successful consequences wherever dealing with things is involved, in technology and invention, in productivity, in the ability to meet needs and provide comforts. In this sphere we have surpassed all other peoples. But in dealing with human beings and institutions, in matters of morals and politics, the limits of this undying, absolutist restlessness quickly become evidence.  At the so-called grass roots of American politics there is a wide and pervasive tendency to believe--I hasten to add that the majority of Americans do not habitually succumb to this tendency--that there is some great but essentially very simple struggle going on, at the heart of which there lies some single conspiratorial force, whether it be the force represented by the "gold bugs", the Catholic Church, big business, corrupt politicians, the liquor interests and the saloons, or the Communist Party, and that this evil is something that must be not merely limited, checked, and controlled but rather extirpated root and branch at the earliest possible moment. It is widely assumed that some technique can be found that will really do this, though there is always likely to be a good deal of argument as to what that technique is.

Indeed, am I not myself pitting myself against the perceived great evil of edufads?  What could be more American than for me to go off on this crusade?

Edufads come, of course, from our adorably earnest belief that there is some secret trick that will surely fix our social problems.  We need only find it and adopt it whole-heartedly and it will be great, and if it isn't it will be because some insufficiently dedicated professors didn't really adopt them with the proper enthusiasm.  It was our selfishness and conservatism that kept us from fixing timeless problems.  But if we had just adopted the fad then we could have made American schools great again and there would have been so much winning on the international comparisons that we'd frankly get bored of it.

Anyway, it occurs to me that not only do edufads come from this restless desire to fix problems, but also that the particular form of edufads these days arises from the determination to personify the stubbornness of educational problems.  There are many things that one can do to improve the structure of a course and help students learn more, including more frequent tests and checkpoints (as noted in the book Make It Stick), and better-crafted assignments, but education reformers in higher ed mostly aim their fire at professors for their manner of presenting and interacting and discussing.  I am more personified in my presentations and Q&A's than I am in my assignments, so that is what physics education reformers largely focus on.  Interestingly, the physics education community has put a lot of effort into developing online homework systems, and there's even a buzzword called "Just In Time Teaching" (JITT) which involves a lot of pre-lecture quizzes to help the professor make better use of class time and incentivize students to prepare (and also echoes a buzzword in business management), but most education reformers aim most of their rhetoric at the professor for being a "sage on a stage."  It fulfills our need to personify the perceived obstacles to achieving universal success.

(A tempting rejoinder to my contention that edufads fit this cultural strain identified by Hofstadter might be that some of the most enthusiastic adopters and promoters of edufads are immigrants, but, as I have said before, immigrants are Americans par excellence. If even the immigrants are playing along that's just another way of saying that you're tapping deep into the American psyche.)

Finally, I continue to find comfort in the fact that the things that frustrate me have happened before and will happen again.

Who knew?

I normally hate NYT articles that mention This One Program, but here's an article with 3 examples of This One Program, and at least two of them involve financial support and incentives to get students to attend school full-time.  Who knew that focusing full-time on school would lead to greater academic success than dividing your attention between school and a job?

(The only exception to that observation is students who have internships in their fields:   Many of those students do better than students who are only focused on school, but that's a bit different from working a job unrelated to your major.)

Book review: Academaze

I'm posting my thoughts on Academaze as a single review rather than a series of chapter responses, because I was asked to post a review in exchange for an advance copy of the book.  The book is written by the pseudonymous Sydney Phlox, also known by the pseudonym Xykademiqz, under which she has a blog.  If you've been reading her blog for several years (as I have) then the book may be more valuable as a reference than as a cover-to-cover read.  The book is not a transcript of her blog, but many sections are edited versions of her blog posts.  Fortunately, it can be read in pieces or in nonlinear order, for those who want to just focus on certain topics.  However, you really should read the whole thing at some point, because she builds up a pretty comprehensive view of an academic career.

The best audience for this book is new professors.  "How to survive the tenure track" seems to be a staple of the academic blogosphere (blogs being a genre that were big in the early 2000's, but now seem a little musty compared to short clickbait articles linked on Twitter or Facebook or whatever Kids These Days are using), but this one is better-written and more thorough than most writings in that genre.  Also, so much of the academic blogosphere is either focused on biomedical researchers (a very different path than physical science) or humanities and social science (great people, but very different career issues). The book and blog by Xykademiqz fill a void for physical scientists. Also, she says plenty of things that are conventional, but she says plenty of things that are just her own genuine opinion, and she neither treats The System as cruelly illegitimate and in need of being completely trashed and replaced with something "transformative" (which the enthusiastic types of the Right-Thinking Classes seem to like) nor does she act as an apologist.

I would highly recommend her book for anyone who is considering a career at a research university, at least in physical science or engineering.  She's pretty practical about what it takes to get tenure.  For people like myself, at undergraduate-focused institutions, I would still recommend it, but with the explanation that while some of it is absolutely dead-on applicable to places off the R1 pedestal, other parts are a way to learn the things you didn't know about "how the sausage is made" when you were a grad student or postdoc.  People at undergraduate-focused institutions will face a lot of similar issues with teaching (only moreso), we still need to get onto sustainable research trajectories (only without quite the same dizzying heights of money-grubbing and name recognition), and we still gripe with colleagues (even if the specifics of the political battles are a bit different when you're not fighting over massive research lab space).  If you're at a research-focused institution read it as a manual.  If you're at an undergraduate-focused institution read it as an exploration of faculty psychology with some practical specifics mixed in.

One nice feature of the book is her cartoons, mostly from 1 to 4 panels, done by herself.  They add a nice mood to the book, injecting some levity into a genre (advice books) that too often induces either neurosis or a feeling of "I Am Now Enlightened!"

Finally, although her academic readers won't need to be sold on this, the book does a nice job of conveying all of the many things that professors do when we aren't in the classroom.  The general public seems to think that our only "real work" is teaching classes and any time not in the classroom (especially summer!) is just for slacking off.  Because so much of it is an insider take with advice for aspiring insiders, it's probably not quite the right book to recommend to non-academics who think we're lazy and under-worked, but it is in the right direction.  Maybe some excerpts would be useful reading for the non-academic public.  Even better, maybe she could write a second book telling the public what professors do when we're not in a classroom!

In short, buy this book as a gift for anyone seriously considering a career at a research university, and share excerpts with anyone who thinks professors  don't do much work.

Theranos is falling in the marketplace, Lizzie is at risk of being banned

(Post title should be read to the tune of these opening lyrics.)

OK, you loyal followers of my grumpy blog.  We need to talk about Theranos, the start-up that got so much attention for its claims that it can do medical tests with just a tiny pin-prick's worth of blood instead of the larger samples that medical labs usually require.  Why do we need to talk about Theranos?  It's not that I know anything about blood testing, but rather that Right-Thinking People drank that kool-aid and drank it hard.  Just today I came across an article (from last fall) by a very enthusiastic and progressive-minded professor talking about how wonderful Theranos is and how visionary their CEO is.

Why did Right-Thinking People develop such a massive crush on Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes?  Well, first and foremost, Holmes dropped out of Stanford, always wears a black turtleneck (just like another sainted figure that Right-Thinking People idolize), and has given a TED Talk.  She uses phrases like "transformative change."  To a breathlessly enthusiastic person, that's pretty much all you need to be great.  Bona fide achievement is optional, and that's good because in the past few weeks Theranos has lost their biggest customer and Holmes' net worth estimate has been downgraded to zero. The federal government is also considering whether to impose sanctions on her.  It seems that this is related to the fact that her company had to repudiate two years' worth of test results.  Oops.

And a lot of doubts were already swirling around at least by last fall, if not earlier.

I don't have anything against Holmes.  I don't know her, and I understand that some great ideas are worth trying even if they fail.  Thing is, the vast majority of the people idolizing her also didn't know her, didn't work with her or for her, and didn't invest in her, but they had no problem going all ga-ga about transformative leadership and big ideas and OMG TURTLENECK!!!

Right-Thinking People are so enthusiastically gullible.

Interestingly, the Theranos board is very heavy on military and government types, and somewhat light on medical types.  This might have something to do with the fact that her father held high-level positions in the CIA...um, I mean, the US Agency for International Development.  I have to love the idea of Right-Thinking People getting suckered by a daughter of great privilege.  It's a metaphor for, well, just about everything that's wrong with the Right-Thinking classes.

But, if you are dismayed by my harsh and sarcastic writings, here's my parting conciliatory comment:  It's quite likely that the next person who excites you will be exactly what they seem to be and not someone with a high ratio of hype to results.  There's hope!