Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Ambidexterity Premium in Football


Alex Bryson, Bernd Frick and Rob Simmons: Wage returns to scarce talent: The case of professional football players:

The value of two-footedness

Two-footedness is the ability to use both feet to pass, tackle and shoot. Unsurprisingly, this versatility is strongly related to player performance. Furthermore, it is a fairly unusual talent – around one-sixth of the players in the top five European leagues are two-footed. Although it can be taught from an early age, it rarely occurs. This is changing. A football school was set up in the UK in 2004 claiming to be “the first and original soccer school that concentrates solely on improving the other foot”1. Nevertheless, this training of two-footedness is something that can only be properly developed at an early age in the formative years of a player’s career and is difficult to instil in today’s established professional players. Furthermore, a recent study of amateur and professional players found a “surprising absence of plasticity in foot use, given the importance of learning, experience, and culture in models of handedness and footedness” (Carey et al., 2009). Hence, we can treat footedness as a pre-determined specialist ability that is capable of generating a return.

Does this talent translate into wages? The answer is “yes”. [...]

Annals of Academic Productivity


Two links:

  1. Arunn has a post on Quantifying Research Quality through Article Level Metrics.

    The beginning of the end for impact factors and journals, a neat online article by Richard Smith [3], explains the newly introduced ALM indices with examples. Another recent article published in PLoS by Cameron Neylon and Shirley Wu [4] discusses the pros and cons of the newly introduced ALM indices. But both these articles leave out in their discussion, certain key journal requirements for proper functioning of the proposed ALM and their related shortcomings.

    Also, journal impact factor is being seen as a very poor measure of article impact. One distinction is essential in such generalization. Because we are able to debunk the efficacy of impact factors, we are not debasing the reputation earned by research journals.

    In this article, we discuss the efficacies of the proposed ALM indices, journal impact factor contrasted with the prevailing journal reputation and related issues in detail. In the summary, we provide possible rectification measures for ALM.

  2. Sachin Shanbag has one on Quantitative v/s Qualitative Evaluations: Impact Factors and Wine Experts:

    I think they are a lazy substitute for actually reading a person's research and evaluating its worth individually. While it is fashionable, and getting increasingly so, I've never really been a big fan of using purely quantitative factors to measure the worth of an individual, university, or country.

    You wouldn't necessarily think that the musician who sells the most records, or has the most covers made is necessarily the best (that would rate the likes of Back Street Boys over bands like Dream Theater).

Monday, December 07, 2009

Scientific Eye Candy


  1. Mathematics: Awesome roots of polynomials. [Via Arunn].

  2. Physics: Art inspired by quantum mechanics [Via Philip Ball].

[Update: In his comment, Rahul suggests 3D Mandelbrot.]

Sunday, December 06, 2009

What not to say in a recommendation letter ...


Omar Lizardo digs up evidence from social science literature to support his advice that we should avoid "grindstone words" (hardworking, for example!)

So for the love of everything that is holy ...don’t pepper (I don’t and I have been able to fill up up three or more single-spaced pages) your recommendation letter with allusions to hard work.

Luis Von Ahn's Advice on Grad School Applications. In his set of quirky-but-good advice, there's one about what not to say in recommendation letters:

4. DON'T have your recommenders write that you are "from a good family." Unless that family has a Turing Award or two, we don't care.

Related: Matt Welsh's post on How to Get into Grad School

Links ...


  1. Tara Brabazon in Times Higher Education: Universities' use of YouTube. Discusses many models of use, with caveats such as this one:

    Watching academics lecture is as exciting as changing the time on a microwave oven. The idea that underprepared PowerPoint lectures are uploaded so that even more people can feel their higher intellectual functions leak through their nose with boredom is a decision worthy of some attention.

  2. Inside Higher Ed interviews John C. Knapp and David J. Siegel, editors of The Business of Higher Education.

  3. Alan Osborne in University World News: European Universities Still Lack Autonomy:

    The study looked at four key areas of autonomy: organisational autonomy (academic and administrative structures leadership, governance); academic autonomy (defining study fields, student numbers, student selection, and structure/content of degrees); financial autonomy (the ability to raise funds, own buildings, borrow money); and staffing autonomy (the ability to independently recruit, promote and develop academic and non academic staff).

    In only half the countries do universities have the right to own their buildings, and even those with ownership are not always free to sell without government supervision. Most systems (22) allowed universities to borrow money but legislation could restrict the amounts.

  4. Robert Frank in NYTimes: How To Run Up A Deficit, Without Fear.

  5. Jared Diamond in NYTimes: Will Big Business Save the Earth?

Saturday, December 05, 2009

The unravelling of Shiva Ayyadurai ...


... has begun.

Vinod Scaria has started a forum discussion thread on Ayyadurai at the Nature India website [Update (6 December 2009): Scaria's post has been removed by the forum administrators at Nature India; it's archived here, though]. Scaria is a scientist at IGIB (a CSIR lab), New Delhi; in his post, he says quite a few things that shatter Ayyadurai's self-portrait as a professional who -- before he gave up, or, was fired -- fought against immense odds for 'freedom for science' at CSIR.

Sidebar: Updates
(in reverse chronological order)

4. Rahul has an update in which he questions the ethics of Nature Network's removal of the forum posts by Scaria and Sivasubbu, while keeping alive Ayyadurai's 'commentary' on the front page of Nature India.

3. This post at The Shiva Ayyadurai Fan Club presents quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Ayyadurai may have misrepresented his affiliation with MIT. If this suggestion proves true, it will completely damage his credibility.

2. Wow. Things are happening fast. A second CSIR scientist, Sridhar Sivasubbu of IGIB, has joined the fray, with a separate post in Nature India forums [Update (6 December 2009): This post has also been removed; it's archived here, though].

1. Check out the blog of The Shiva Ayyadurai Fan Club.

* * *

While we are not in a position to comment on what really went on in those meetings (for example, Scaria paints him as not just unprofessional, but unethical as well), we can certainly form an opinion on what is available on the web. Scaria does a good job of unearthing this stuff for us:

... I am not amused to find a Nature Biotechnology in his CV with the word “submitted” in small type and his claim to have written a commentary in Nature , while it is nothing but a Blog in nature India.see it for yourself here. The homepage even features a PDF with a complete nature.com logo.

Here's the entry for his 'commentary'; as of now, it's No. 1 in Ayyadurai's resume under "Selected Publications":

S. Ayyadurai, Commentary: Innovation Demands Freedom, Nature, December, 2009.

Scaria is right: this 'commentary' is something that appeared in the Nature India website -- which is distinct from Nature, the science journal. To claim that it's a commentary that appeared in Nature (within a couple of days after it appeared at Nature India) says something about the man who has cried 'unprofessional' at every bloody opportunity.

[Thanks to this comment, I checked out this page that reproduced his 'commentary'; at that time, it featured 'Nature.com' logo prominenty, right at the top, as some sort of a 'masthead'. Evidently, Ayyadurai has been following blog comments; the masthead now features Nature India.]

[Similarly, I'm not able to locate the 'Nature Biotechnology' paper (which Scaria refers to in his scathing post) in Ayyadurai's CV, probably because this entry has now been 'corrected'.]

Science, Bureaucracy, Government


In an op-ed in the The Hindu, Narlikar, one of the finest popular science writers in India, describes recent experiments by Indian scientists from TIFR, CCMB, NCCS and ISRO, with very interesting the (sci-fi like) implications in astrobiology.

Astrobiology not the only topic that animates Narlikar's article, however; here's how he sees the impact of this work on Indian science:

This inter-institutional accomplishment illustrates the indigenous capability in successfully fabricating experimental set-ups of entirely new types. This trend for originality and creativity augurs well for Indian science. With fresh wind blowing in bringing global competitiveness and collaboration, attitudes to scientific research will change from that of a routine job to an adventure in creativity.

While that's a pretty positive outlook, there are concerns:

Perhaps the greatest hindrance to planning exciting experiments and achieving important results is the bureaucratic framework of our research institutes. The hierarchical structure, especially pay scales of our research institutes mimic the government’s administrative structure. However, the creativity and efficiency of a scientist vis-À-vis the administrator evolve differently, with the scientist bringing differential skill and qualification requirements to the table. Besides, a young scientist is in the prime of his creative life and an administrator, on the other hand, gains maturity with age. To base the promotion criteria of a scientist on the same pattern as for an administrator is to ignore this fundamental difference. This more often than not leads to frustration among the younger generation of scientists as they see their bright new ideas getting ignored or going unappreciated.

Narlikar's views reminded me of a perceptive analysis of science administration in India in a presentation by T. Jayaraman (ppt). Since our government funds scientific research, it treats science as a 'government department', with pretty serious consequences in the way it impacts the scientists' ability to get on with their work:

  • Scientific research is incidental to smooth functioning of the institution.

  • Individual research work (as opposed to `projects’) [is] simply a route to acquiring `personal benefits’ for the individual researcher.

  • Increasingly, even routine requirements (like adequate funding to invite and host visiting scientists program) have to be bundled as `projects'.

  • Financial and administrative accountability is central while scientific accountability is pushed to the background.

  • Mobility for research work [is] seriously affected.

  • Human resource management practices [are] hooked to that of government.

Here's an earlier post about Jayaraman's talk.

This is a good place to link (yet again) to Jayaraman's stinging critique (from 2005!) of the way our science policies are made and our science institutions are run.

Friday, December 04, 2009

Manu Joseph on 'the comic side of the right wing'


A fun read. I'm linking to it because of this:

In some prominent men, who looked sane and wise, I had to just scratch the surface to see their incurable conviction that Hindus are historically special. A senior scientist from the Indian Institute of Science once told me, as a matter of fact, “A reason why we were so superior in the olden days might have been because of a technology transfer from aliens. Our gods may have originally been representations of extraterrestrial visitors.”

Kumari L.A. Meera Memorial Lecture


This year, the Meera Trust invited TIFR mathematician Professor M.S. Raghunathan to deliver this public lecture, and he chose to speak on The Queen of Sciences: Her Realm, Her Influence and Her Health.

* * *

Sidebar

Thanks to my friend and colleague Anant, who played a major role in organizing this lecture, we now have the text of the talk, as well as the slides. They may eventually be posted on the website of Kumari L.A. Meera Memorial Trust; in the meantime, I've posted them on Posterous, where they can be viewed online. You may also download them -- look for the links there.

* * *

In his talk (delivered yesterday at the Indian Institute of World Culture, Bangalore), Raghunathan started with what really sets mathematics apart from the other sciences. The answer, he said, lies in what their practitioners are after: a mathematician's primary quest is for higher levels of abstraction and beauty, while other scientists' primary motivation is to 'crack' -- understand -- a 'real' phenomenon. While 'unreasonably effective' connections between math and physics (or other sciences) may exist or emerge, they are purely incidental to the mathematician's quest.

The way mathematics develops is mostly determined by an internal dynamic, the imagination of the mathematician. It does every now and then draw upon natural sciences for inspiration, but even when that happens, the new mathematics that is born takes on a life of its own and often charts a path that has little relevance to its origins: the mathematician's imagination takes over.

Raghunathan peppered this part of the talk with interesting episodes from the history of mathematics. Here's one of them:

It would appear that great mathematicians tend to set greater store by mathematics that is concerned with its own constructs rather than mathematics that enlists itself into the service of other disciplines. ... When admonished by Joseph Fourier, a major figure of eighteenth century mathematics for pursuing useless mathematics, his greater contemporary Carl Gustav Jacobi responded with “A savant like Fourier ought to know that the sole end of science is the glory of the human mind and under that title, a question about numbers is worth as much as a question about the system of the world”.

The second part of his talk was an extended detour into some of the greatest mathematicians who had wide interests and / or led colourful lives. The idea, I believe, was to dispel the stereotype that mathematicians -- with their heads filled with 'cold logic,' as it were -- are socially inept nerds.

Raghunathan then turned to the 'health' of Indian mathematics. He expressed his deep concern about the state of mathematics education -- especially at the school level. He ended with a plea for making teaching an attractive profession for our bright young people.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Dr. Shambu Nath De: A hero whose pioneering work went unappreciated at home


From the Wikipedia entry on Dr. Shambu Nath De (1915-85):

De made significant contributions to our recent understanding of cholera and related diarrheal diseases and set a permanent milestone in the modern view of diseases caused by bacterial exotoxins. [...] The seminal works of De in Calcutta (now, Kolkata), during 1950-60 breached several qualms pertaining to the enteric toxin produced by bacteria including V. cholerae and Escherichia coli. [...]

Says Eugene Garfield,[6] founder-editor of Current Contents and Science Citation Index and publisher of The Scientist, in his 1986 tribute to De: "In 1959 De was the first to demonstrate that cholera bacteria secrete enterotoxin. This discovery eventually promoted research to find a treatment aimed directly at neutralizing the cholera enterotoxin. De’s paper “Enterotoxicity of bacteria-free culture-filtrate of Vibrio cholerae,” while initially unrecognized, today is considered a milestone in the history of cholera research." [...]

... De was never elected a fellow of any Indian academy and never received any major award. Indeed as Professor Padmanabhan Balaram pointed out in an editorial in Current Science, “De died in 1985 unhonoured and unsung in India’s scientific circles. That De received no major award in India during his lifetime and our Academies did not see it fit to elect him to their Fellowships must rank as one of the most glaring omissions of our time.

In 1990, some five years after his death, Current Science devoted a special issue to Dr. S.N. De and his pioneering work on cholera [contents can be accessed through links in this page -- scroll down to July]. Even if you don't read all of it, do read Eugene Garfield's 1986 article on the impact of De's work. This issue also carries a short piece by Prof. Balaram -- the above quote is from this piece.

I learned about Dr. S.N. De, his scientific work and the lack of appreciation of his work by the Indian scientific community over several conversations with Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, whose views are featured in Garfield's article.

Rahul Siddharthan on the Infosys Prize


Some of you asked for an appreciation of the Infosys Prize winners. Rahul has a great post on Prof. K. VijayRaghavan (Director, NCBS, and winner of the Prize for Life Sciences) with whom he has an ongoing collaboration.

[While there, make sure you also read Rahul's other post where he has a fantabulous one-liner: "With enemies like Ayyadurai, who needs friends?"]

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Nobel : Mathematics :: Infosys : Chemical Sciences


There are some wacky stories about why there's no Nobel in mathematics.

But why is there no Infosys Prize in Chemical Sciences?

Could it be because of all those tirades against India's infotech industry by this icon of Indian science?

Inquiring minds always want to know ... ;-)

Shiva Ayyadurai ...


... is back in the news.

  1. Through a blog -- Freedom for Science -- written by card-carrying members of Ayyadurai Fan Club. The blog has also made public the report by Ayyadurai and Sardana (check the side bar of that blog). The really juicy bits that led to Ayyadurai's dismissal (he claims that he resigned) are in Chapter 7. The report is also noteworthy for its atrociously sappy (and shall I say, 'unprofessional' -- see below) 'Dedication.'

  2. In Heather Timmon's NYTimes story on how expats who choose to return to India find stuff here to be "inefficient" and "unprofessional". And the poster child for that stereotype-laden story is none other than Ayyadurai, whose saga at CSIR occupies over a third of it.

    [Do make sure to read Timmons' report all the way to the end, to learn a bit more about DG-CSIR's unique skills in handling journalists!]

    I have only one comment: Ayyadurai may have a "fistful of American degrees," but his tenure at CSIR was a disaster. For someone who was hand-picked by the top honcho, he had every opportunity to make his job a success -- but he botched it. As Timmons' story reveals, "Within weeks, he and his boss were at loggerheads." [See also Ayyaduraii's report -- with its 'Dedication', the stuff in Chapter 7, the stupid 'historical time-line' in Chapter 1. If that damned thing is not unprofessional, I have to wonder what is...]

    When outsiders fail in their jobs, it's natural for some of them to blame the environment, the 'inefficient' and 'unprofessional' culture of the natives. Timmons has been rather uncritical in peddling the stereotypes mouthed by those who failed in their jobs, fled, and now use martyrdom as a mask.

  3. Also in a Nature - India article -- Innovation Demands Freedom [free registration required] -- penned by Ayyadurai himself.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

'The danger of a single story'


Watch this 18-minute TED video of a talk by Chimamanda Adichie on The danger of a single story.

That's all.

The Grand Prize for Epic Fail goes to ...


... the Infosys Science Foundation!

For its immense failure -- Epic Fail! -- to find a single Indian researcher for the Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Sciences.

The Infosys Science Foundation is being recognized for:

  1. Its failure to grasp the magnitude and the extraordinary symbolism of its assertion that there's no one in India deserving of the Engineering Prize right in Year One.

    [It's not as if this Prize has already been awarded to some five people in the past, and the jury is now unable to find anyone in the same league as those past winners. This is Year One we are talking about, and the jury has declared there's no one who measures up to The No One!]

  2. Its failure to realize that if no one deserves this Prize in Year One, its Prize in Year Two is in deep doo-doo.

    [If the Prize in Year Two goes to someone from the present set of nominees, the question would be, "What changed in the last year?". If it goes to someone else, the question would be, "Why was he/she not considered last year?" Either way, the jury for Year One ends up looking incompetent, if not downright stupid.]

  3. Its failure to, simply, get Prize-worthy nominations.

    [What good is a jury if they could not reach out to people who can nominate Prize-worthy candidates? I mean, what good is your Prize -- that too, one that carries the highest monetary award in India -- if all you can attract is spam?]

  4. Its failure to see the irony in no one getting the Engineering Prize from a foundation set up by what is arguably India's leading tech company.

That was one moronic decision from you, Infosys Science Foundation! Perhaps we should have expected a screw up from you, but we could never have expected such a big one right in Year One.

Congratulations!