(The Royal Society publication, The Scientific Century: securing our future prosperity) Click image for original.

Why go to graduate school? To win a Nobel Prize one day? You like the work (me)? Someone has offered you a position (Paid to learn – great!)? There are many reasons to start – and complete – a PhD. Current academic training creates many candidates for limited career positions. Much has been written about this and we’ll be discussing different aspects at #scio13. BioInfoTools wrote a background piece for this session with some great links.

But training many talented people for a few coveted spots is not unique to science; it’s common in classical musicians, athletes, and more. Is a classically trained pop star a failure? Is a hockey player who pays the bills playing in the minors a failure? It depends if you base your definition of success on the training criteria or on other measures. I don’t think scientists who aren’t tenured academics are failing, but it is often a hurdle for trainees to accept new measures of success.

One of the hallmarks of medical genetics is non-directive counselling. Therefore, I was dismayed to read the case for selective paternalism in genetic testing in Wired’s Neuron Culture. In most cases, genetic tests only provide information and patients need to determine if they want the information and/or what to do with it. Genetic counsellors should help patients understand the impacts of the information.

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Science is messy. Yet many students think science is a bunch of facts and/or experiments always work. I loved the #overlyhonestmethods hashtag because it gives a glimpse into the reality of experiments.

In my jobs, I get to work with students starting their first science experiment. They are enthusiastic but also a bit intimidated. Not only does it take time to learn to read the previous research but they want to do science ‘right’. Their experience in school has often had one correct method. Plus papers often present rational reasoning and precise protocols so the students expect obvious directions. This can lead to a scientist version of ‘Who’s on first?‘:

January is once again upon us with all its rain, darkness, winter depression and breaking of New Years resolutions. January 2013 will be no different, but this year a whole community of science-enthusiasts will be sharing it with you.

Why is it socially acceptable to avoid simple math? We were out for dinner and at the next table, we heard one man say, ‘just tell me what I owe because I can’t do math’. The 10 year old with me was horrified and blurted out, ‘he can’t even do simple calculations?!? How embarrassing for him.’ She was amazed that he admitted this freely and she thought this man wouldn’t proudly announce that he couldn’t read.

To highlight our experience, we took advantage of her older sister’s creative talents and made this stop motion video:

Reading scientific papers is difficult, especially when you are new to a field. At our program for high school students, Future Science Leaders, we are trying to give them useful tools for their future as scientists and innovators so reading primary research papers is an obvious choice. But how to do it?

I don’t really remember how I learned to read primary papers. I remember being awed by them as an undergrad and early grad student. My supervisor dumped a stack of papers on my desk with an unreasonable (I thought) expectation of discussing them in 3 days. I was still approaching papers as facts to cram in my head and not as a bunch of connected information. I think after that marathon session, I started approaching papers as proper reference material. So, I thought we should just try reading some papers. I got some ideas from Snow and Science where he introduced reading papers to undergraduate students. This post will outline what we did and I’d love some suggestions on how to do it better next year.

Spoiler alert: students can read papers, especially when motivated.

As part of learning how to read primary research papers, students wrote the following adapted paper. The original paper is Sagiv et. al (2012) Prenatal Exposure to Mercury and Fish Consumption During Pregnancy and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder–Related Behavior in Children (PubMed – paywall).

Note: the pieces of the paper are written by different groups with minimal edits so there may be different styles throughout. The sections were written by each blog group and a link is provided for you to check out their other science writing. If you have suggestions for improvement, please leave a comment and I’ll share it with the students.