A recent op-ed in the Guardian, entitled “I’m not LMAO at ridiculous student emails” lodges a familiar complaint: students don’t know how to communicate with professors in a professional manner, flaunting reasonable social codes and ignoring professors busy lives outside the classroom. Such ignorance and lack of decorum will surely hinder these students future efforts…
Hello readers! Welcome to the new home of Cedar’s Digest. I have decided to integrate my blog with my professional website, no longer putting a wall between my blog and my website that presents a more professional and scholarly profile. I began a blog in 2005, posting some book reviews that I submitted for the Virginia…
Hi folks, been a while since I blogged at ya. School starts in a few short weeks (on Labor Day for us), so I thought I would briefly fill you in on what I have been up to this summer. I have longer posts for each of these planned, so stay tuned in the next…
Scicurious and Kate Clancy recently shared some interesting thoughts about science outreach. Sci was pointing out that scientists have a lot on their plates, and being held accountable for not reaching out to the public doesn’t make sense when all the incentives in science (getting a job, keeping a job) either ignore science outreach or actively…
Here is my final exam for the class I teach of all seniors in psychology. It is a capstone course, intended to provide a capstone experience for the majors in psychology, a required element for all students at Randolph-Macon. I thought some of my readers might find it interesting, and honestly, I am a little…
German pastor Martin Niemoller is quoted as saying First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I…
Attention conservation notice: This post dives into some inside baseball stuff on social psychology, how the science of psychology is practiced, and how science is communicated online. It is kind of long, but I intend it as sort of a reference for this event, but also something to point to for my colleagues who either…
I don’t often write about gender and science, but I have been thinking and reading about it lately. If you were hoping for my typical aloof lecturing, or overblown (yet intellectual) ranting, just wait a few days (or you could revisit what I think of David Brooks and Larry Summers). At a wonderful dinner out…
I had a few thoughts about the big teacher quality and VAM study that came out today that I wanted to share before they float away. My thoughts are less about the methods of the study itself and more about how it moves so quickly from the econometrics to the policy, and how the journalist…
This chapter deals with an enduring theme in my own thoughts, and a tension between the practice of science and the limits of the human mind. Those pieces of evidence which we naturally find convincing do not do real work in science. To understand why, it is important to understand both what makes some types…
