It covers everything from the history of scicomm to press releases, #SocialMedia, #science shows, risk communication, engaging with policy makers, language, you name it... Highly recommended!
A conversation on another site reminded me of something fun that happened on one of my exams last fall.
If class attendance gets low enough, I'll walk off camera and/or turn off the mic to give the attending students the answer to a bonus question on the exam. The question is a fill-in-the-blank question with the prompt something like "What did I draw on the board on October 15?"
On one of the exams, about 3x as many people had the correct answer as had actually attended. I realized I wasn't rewarding those who attended so much as rewarding those who had a friend who attended.
My horror at this realization was offset by my amusement at another realization. There was at least one student who refused to provide the correct answer -- there was a sizable number of students (about 2x as many as had attended) who all had the same incorrect answer.
When we teach WW1 history and show photographs of men in the trenches, and no one knows if they are real or midjourney fake then we are in deep trouble. Or teach scientific principles through research papers and don't know if the text is authentic human created or response engine output, we are in deep trouble. Imagine a hundred other contexts and you understand why gen ai is such a massive problem.
I finally did it: I went to the top of MBS like a proper tourist.
I spent so many good times at GBTB.
Especially at the beginning, when I was still staying at hotels in SG's Central area, I spent many a first date strolling through the gardens or around Marina Bay at night.
My colleague and I went flying his kite on Marina Barrage. When my parents visited, they posed for pics in front of MBS and we saw a drone show in the gardens.
My best friend and I went to the flower dome together, and to the GBTB Christmas Market.
The supergrove trees are a popular location for visiting geocachers to host their Singapore events, so I've experienced the Garden Rhapsody many times, also at special occasions like LNY.
One of the things I'm going to miss most is all the lush green here in SG. It's beautiful and always cheers me up. I'm sad every time a tree gets taken down by a thunderstorm. I had an amazing view of all that green from the top of MBS.
Question: in your professional life, I'm assuming that you have some people in mind who you respect and admire, and whose behaviours you try to emulate?
I'm curious if those are mostly fellow academics, or mostly people outside of academia, or a pretty even mix? Does the set of people whose behaviours you try to emulate vary much over time?
Grading a couple of #chatgpt generated papers.
Controversial opinion: I prefer that the students use it over old school plagiarism. Because old school, the papers were good and you would have to prove the plagiarism in an ever escalating Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Now, you can’t prove anything but the papers are shit and you can just grade on the (lack of) quality. #academia#academicmastodon#academicchatter
A paper was just accepted by an academic conference being held in Chicago. I’m excited to present the paper and to visit Chicago. I’ve never been. To be clear: I will eat the hotdogs but not the pizza. #academia#academicmastodon#professorlife#chicago
At risk of blowing my own trumpet, here's my work on the uni repo. Missing one paper, but otherwise a complete record of published work (so far!). Id encourage everyone to put their accepted papers on their Inst. repo, it increases visibility and is usually permitted in author license agreements.
ps I know its not a great number, but Im a late starter at this ;)
Does anyone else take issue with, or have profound concerns about, platform science?
For clarity, it refers to the tendency the last decade for science to be organized into top down meta level networks (which at times, or more often than not, share a political and economic reality not to dissimilar to market based platform economics).