john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

teaching

  • My turn as a science fair judge in Italy

    Sun, 2011-05-22 18:30 -- John Hawks

    Yesterday I had the distinctive experience as a judge of a scientific poster session, featuring the work of Italian high school students. The session was in the main lecture hall in the Physics building at the University of Rome "Sapienza".

    The students, around eighty of them, were from the Liceo Scientifico Statale Augusto Righi, a science-themed school with a long history in Rome. The session was the conclusion of an educational program with the anthropology section of the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnographico "L. Pigorini". The program gave the students an exciting chance to work with the museum's human skeletal collections from Classical and pre-Classical contexts, testing hypotheses from historical and archaeological contexts. The poster session was the climax of the program and gave the students a chance to show what they had learned with their hands-on projects.

    Students at the poster session

    Students getting ready for the program

    For example, one group of students examined teeth from the Bronze Age necropolis of Gricignano d'Aversa, in northern Campania. This site was a center of weaving and textiles, and women commonly used their teeth during one of the steps of threadmaking, leaving a distinctive pattern of grooved wear on them. The students studied the etiology of these grooves -- making casts of the teeth for microscopy, sexing the associated skeletons, and tabulating the results. They were able to show that only female skeletons had the distinctive pattern of wear on their teeth, and that the obvious signs of wear developed over many years, preceded by wear that was detectable only with a microscope.

    Great posters in Rome

    Some of the great posters on exhibit

    Another of the projects did a similar comparison for men from a Classical-era coastal village. A high proportion of the men developed small growths of bone in their ear canals, called auditory exostoses. These can result from repeated exposure to cold water, an occupational hazard of diving for fish. The students were able to show the increase in exostoses with age, and confirm they were present only in men. They also got to compare the exostoses with stable isotope data from an ongoing study that is trying to open a window on diet and work occupation in Classical times.

    Italian poster session!

    These kinds of projects are part of the ongoing scientific work at the Pigorini museum. My friends Luca Bondioli, Alessandra Sperduti, and Paola Francesca Rossi at the Museum facilitated the program, and they were able to pick projects that were just the right level for the students. Each presented a combination of sophisticated science being done on the materials by professionals, such as electron microscopy or stable isotopes, with the osteological and dental basics that students can engage with. With this combination, they got to see the anthropology develop a picture based on testing more and more detailed hypotheses about behavior.

    Alessandra Sperduti and Luca Bondioli

    Alessandra Sperduti and Luca Bondioli

    I was a little worried about the language barrer. As I told someone, my Italian is limited to morphology and menus. But the students did my work for me. For one thing, every poster had abstracts in Italian, English, and Latin. A couple added German or Russian!

    More important to me -- every group, as it turned out, had someone with very good English, and three or four other students who got along fairly well. I got them to help by asking questions of the other group members; I gave them a real grilling on their subjects. I'd say they did very well, and the posters -- obviously with a little help -- were very professional.

    Proud students at their poster

    Some proud students at their poster

    I got to talk to some of the parents, and had some good conversation with the director of the school. All were very proud of their students. As they should be! Some of them might have a future in this field!

    I do a lot of outreach, and this program was a really unique opportunity for the students. It coupled a unique research collection with some great historical topics. There are a few other programs like this going on internationally, and I wish we could bring this kind of work to many other schools. Maybe a virtualized version of certain exercises would help, but nothing beats the engagement with real active, and interesting, science!

    Tags: 
    teaching
    education
    science communication
    travel
    Hawks sightings

  • Finals season

    Tue, 2011-05-03 22:02 -- John Hawks

    This is the time of year when hapless students all over the world turn to my blog to answer their exam questions.

    Of course, they don't know they're looking for my blog. They just turn to Google, cut and paste their exam question, and let their computers do the walking.

    Google has always been a good friend of mine, and is really good about leaving a calling card when people use it to find me. So this time of year I get a lovely report listing exam questions from around the world. I thought I would share a few that have stumbled onto my doorstep this month.

    Every one of these is a real question referred by Google to my site. They aren't punctuationally correct, of course, because they were entered into a Google search box, and many are compacted in some way. But many of them are obviously cut-and-pasted from some exam or study guide. For example:

    2._explain the main point concerning exponential growth and whether it is good or bad. compare exponential growth to a logistic growth curve and explain how these might a-

    What kind of instructor asks a question that starts that way? "Is exponential growth good or bad?" I say it's good for my savings account and bad for my mortgage!

    african nariokotome boy homo ergaster and describe the cranial traits which arehomo erectus-like such as the crania from java and china.

    I think the student here ought to tell her instructor that the Daka and OH 9 crania are much more relevant to the question.

    after hundreds or even thousands of generations both alleles are still common in those of african ancestry. how would you explain this

    I have a feeling this is a sickle-cell question, trolling for balancing selection. The missing first part would lay out the homozygote fitness.

    comment on why trinkhaus et al. believed the skeleton to be a mixture of human and neandertal characteristics and why tattersall argues against them. make sure to give information for each researcher's case not just one of them

    That's such an interesting question, even if your professor couldn't spell Trinkaus right. But I haven't written about it. Sorry!

    how do scientists use living animals to uncover mysteries about prehistoric animals

    I think that's why Mary Leakey kept dalmatians.

    if we find a new fossil hominid and notice that there is a large diastema between the lower canine and incisors which of the following can we infer about that hominid's dentition

    "Lack of honing" is not the answer...

    you find a fossil primate. it's arms and legs are approximately equivalent in length. this primate most likely had the locomotor pattern of a

    Ardipithecus!

    in lecture i explain why some anthropologists believe ardipithecus was a biped. briefly describe the anatomical evidencefor bipedality inardipithecus.

    Hmm..."arms and legs the same length" is not the right answer here...

    describe the important aspects of the cranium teeth hand pelvis and foot of ardipithecus

    That's comprehensive.

    Here's a puzzle:

    if 3rd cousins marry are their offspring 4th cousins

    Well, among other things...

    Speaking of dating advice, there is this:

    how long does it take a chimpanzee to have quickie

    Perhaps we should redefine our terms for that one.

    how do the changes in the dentition the reduction in the size of canines and the evolution of bipedalism indicate changes in di-

    Beeeeep! Sorry, we didn't get your message.

    which is strong evidence that similar traits in different evolutionary lineages are the result of homology and not homoplasy

    Which is strong evidence? I wonder...

    the term lithic as in the word paleolithic or as used in the phrase lithic tool or lithic industry refers to:

    Stone, man, stone!

    Here's a barrage of "what" questions:

    what factors reveal the reduction and simplification of the human dentition

    what fundamental questions of interpretation do the fossil hominids from dmanisi raise

    what is buller's argument against massive modularity as is found in traditional evolutionary psychology

    what is the key criterion of the recognition species concept

    what morphological traits tell you that a primate was bipedal

    what is so special about homo the upper paleolithic when does it first appear what characterizes it what does it tell us about early human cognitive abilities

    what has been learned from the sequencing of the denisovans and neanderthals genomes

    what is similar between clams and humans

    Filter feeders.

    what is hillary clinton's blood type

    B negative?

    what has 138 eyes and enough cognitive power to create a life colony on mars

    I do not remotely comprehend how that search led to me.

    what anatomical characteristics define modern as compared to premodern humans or non-human primates assume that you're analyzing an incomplete skeleton that may be early modern h. sapiens. which portions of the skeleton would be most in-

    what does evidence from fossils archaeology and dna tell us about which one is more correct

    Well, depends on the question. A good week for fossils on these questions:

    what did a robust australopithecine eat

    what dentition tells about diet

    But maybe not this one:

    who are the people that inhabited europe during the middle and late pleistocene

    What a joyful question. I would love to answer this one! I could come up with a different answer for every day of the week.

    who first proposed out of africa hypothesis

    This one is interesting, because my answer is Reiner Protsch.

    what is the most likely explanation for the extinction of the early small-brained hominins (gracile and robust) and the survival of the early homo genus

    Teh stoopid.

    what kind of genes are the _ majority of differences between humans and chimpanzees. give an example of how such a gene could work (it needn't be real).

    What the heck? "It needn't be real"? This seems like a professor trolling for "regulatory genes", where the student is supposed to regurgitate the Mary-Claire King argument. Don't do it!

    Here's a return of the first exam, I think:

    7-_according to gould what is the range of years when the ape-hominid split (divergence) occurred what group of compounds did they base their hypothesis o-

    What class is this? Why the heck would they be reading Gould on this? If you're this student, drop now before it's too late. Your professor has no clue!

    why don't we see this same type of symbolic expression with earlier hominins such as homo erectus

    Teh stoopid.

    Lots of questions start with "compare". Such as:

    compare and contrast the organization of the y chromosome in humans and chimpanzees

    That seems like a pretty advanced question, it would take me hours to make sure I had this one right. Maybe it's a qualifying exam? At least my post would have pointed them to the right research paper.

    compare the bones of forelimb and hindlimb

    Uh...this seems pretty open-ended. All the bones of the forelimb are shorter than the bones of the hindlimb...

    compare two different hypotheses that attempt to explain the origins of hominid bipedalism.

    I'd pick the trenchcoat hypothesis.

    what evidence proves that a.afarensis exists (fossils)

    Um, hmm. Is that self-answering, or is there something more here?

    compare kenyanthropus and ardipithecus

    That question clearly should be answered in the form of a haiku:

    Two fossils glued in
    Matrix of Google search for
    Tim White distortion

    Finally, there are the questions that are tinged with sadness and desperation. I have to suspect this one was googled from the middle of somebody's lecture:

    here they will experience obisity boredom loss of purpose

    Oh, my. But that's nothing compared to the problem here:

    does the student need to spend the next two weeks re-preparing protein or is there still hope for him to salvage this experiment and graduate bedfore the end f th-

    Oh, my. You know, I think it's the "bedfore" that really tugs at my heart.

    what can i do with a biological anthropology degree

    Oh, my. Talk about twisting the knife.

    world most libidinous women

    Er...well, maybe that one wasn't an exam question, exactly?

    Tags: 
    humor
    teaching

  • Engaging with the public

    Wed, 2011-04-13 20:30 -- John Hawks

    Alice Bell raises an essential question: "What’s this public ‘engagement’ with science thing then?"

    I’m similarly sceptical about lumping this whole ‘science’ thing together (and in particular, lumping together ‘scientists). Science is big and complex, its ideas about itself vary and change over time. Maybe it should be pluralised to sciences, like publics. Or again, maybe we could just talk about specific people, ideas and approaches. Leave loose talk about ‘science’ to philosophers and advertising executives, and instead focus on sharing what you have particular expertise in, be honest about what you don’t know and think about all the new things you might learn from engaging in a bit of broader discussion about your work.

    Like Bell, I favor much more specificity about the "public" we're addressing. I like "people" much better than "publics" plural, because the effective point of contact is the individual, not the committee. People have many different goals in their interactions and experiences with science. When I bring Sophie to the local planetarium for a show, neither she nor I is the "public". We are people with a pre-existing relationship, looking to deepen that by engaging with the particulars of a science both of us have some knowledge about. Other people have their own goals and experiences -- many of them intent on avoiding science. No form of engagement can bring together all these people without addressing their distinct goals and interests.

    On that note, I very much like Bell's final suggestions -- particularly being receptive to serendipity:

    Don’t be silly about ‘the public’. Remember: knowing your audience and targeting specific groups can be very powerful, but so can the serendipitous connections made by packaging your work as accessibly as audience as possible.

    ...

    There is nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, but be realistic. This means keeping in mind the limitations of your project, including pragmatic concerns like money, time, your professional image and the weather. You are unlikely to change the world. You may not even change any minds, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile, you may well have helped move towards a bit of world/ mind changing. These things take time. None of them are easy.

    I would add one thing. This final point may sound a little nihilistic. I mean, if you can't change minds, why even bother?

    But at an early career stage, very few people have the moxie to change minds. The point of engagement is to become a better scientist. Like all things, it takes practice to master. It may take many failed efforts to arrive at success.

    You are only a reed. But you are a thinking reed.

    Tags: 
    metascience
    public engagement
    teaching
    politics
    science communication

  • E-mail etiquette guide

    Wed, 2011-03-30 17:03 -- John Hawks

    This etiquette guide from Nature Education is enormously useful for students: "How to send a professional e-mail to a professor".

    I could not possibly count the number of "Hey, John" e-mails I've gotten from undergraduates who were never taught any better. I'm not an e-mail snob, but some do get answered much more promptly than others.

    Tags: 
    teaching

  • Science Pub, day of creationism

    Tue, 2011-03-29 18:52 -- John Hawks

    I had a wonderful afternoon Sunday at the Madison Science Pub. The featured guest was Ron Numbers, the historian of science at UW-Madison whose research has focused on the origins and history of the creationism movement in the U.S. and worldwide. Ron drew a crowd well over 50 people -- I didn't count, but the large salon at Brocach was packed high and tight.

    The conversation was a rollicking exchange -- Ron told a story about his meeting with Turkish creationist guru Harun Yahya, gave some insight on the very earliest origins of the creationism movement, and shared his good humor. He reminded us that the fraction of Americans who claim belief that humans were created within the last 10,000 years has basically remained unchanged above 40 percent for three decades.

    Attendees came from every walk of life and many had their own stories. My favorite was the inside view of the home-schooling movement, with some groups banning publishers that print science curricula, others banning prominent creationists.

    Invariably, when a group of well-thinking people get together and start talking about creationism, the discussion drifts toward speculation about why folks would turn to creationism -- especially young Earth creationism -- when it means they must reject the most basic principles of almost every branch of natural science. In a crowd of people there will always be several who turn to stupidity as an explanation for different beliefs. Very few things irritate me more than witnessing people's biases coming out in this way. Yet there were many at the Pub who had close and direct experience working with and confronting creationism, and I think we gave some needed perspective.

    Science Pub organizer Skip Evans, speaking from experience at the NCSE and as an organizer of the Wisconsin Citizens for Science, noted that most students who resist the idea of evolution are actually driven by convictions about what will happen to them after they die. Many perceive that religious doctrine about eternal life and personal salvation can be maintained only if other literalist aspects of religion are accepted without question.

    Explaining the history and diversity of life is simply not an issue of great concern to most people except as a marker of belief system. On that score, many "evolution believers" have knowledge that is just as shallow as creationists. They simply nod and smile in response to different cues. Professing a belief in evolution or creation is a not-so-secret handshake that signals membership in a loose clan. That's why the press is so insistent that presidential candidates take some position on the issue; it marks them like a scarlet letter.

    Some committed creationists are simply ignorant of biology -- not stupid, but unschooled in the facts. These can be foiled, and sometimes even persuaded, with a few simple, widely-known examples.

    But many are well practiced in the art of debate and will not easily play into your hands. They will have taken your measure and they know the ground well. The stakes are higher for the creationist, souls hanging in the balance. Wrestling with skunks, you'd be a fool to think you'll keep the stink off.

    As with most things, becoming skilled at advocating for evolution requires much practice. When it comes to debate, many trained students of science are not merely wet behind the ears, they are still tadpoles breathing with gills. Producing simple, effective examples of evolution does not come easily to those untutored in the skills of rhetoric. Yet few things serve a teacher so well as a handful of two-minute examples, told with some style. Saying something credibly means saying it easily and self-evidently, in terms that are familiar to the audience.

    This is the essential skill for every kind of science communication.

    Tags: 
    teaching
    Hawks sightings
    politics
    creationism
    science communication
    education

  • Making scientific minds

    Tue, 2011-03-08 09:30 -- John Hawks

    Lena Groeger begins a stint blogging at Rationally Speaking with this entry, "So, what's science good for?". She briefly discusses the usual rationales for "broader impact" of scientific work, as well as the intrinsic rationale -- science for the sake of knowing. I might call this one the "epicurean" rationale for science.

    The meat of her essay is this proposal: We value science because it makes a different kind of person:

    What I don't hear much in this Useful/Its Own Sake discussion is a third factor, one that seems to get overlooked in the haste to divide by two. And that's the value to the person — the habits, the values, the character that a person develops by actually doing science. The ability to think critically, exchange ideas, imagine alternatives, ask questions, invent new possible worlds and go on speculative adventures, present reasoned arguments and retain a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt; these are all deeply scientific and deeply formative values. You become a different person with scientific training, and we do science because we value that kind of person. Science is not only bridge-building (usefulness and technology driven) and knowledge-building (adding to the pile of facts we know about reality) it is also people, character, and citizen-building.

    I think this comes closest to a reason for science grounded in ethics.

    The remainder of Groeger's essay, by comparing the "critical thinking" of the humanities to that of science, I think actually minimizes her point -- and the comment section comes alive with humanities defenders. Frankly, as someone who started in the humanities and turned to science, I do not agree that "critical thinking" means the same thing in these fields.

    Oh, as a matter of practice, I think there are many excellent humanists who would make good scientists, and vice versa. There is a common intellectual grounding to the two enterprises. But I think there are logical reasons why the "two cultures" remain separate. They are not at all the same kind of thing.

    Tags: 
    teaching
    metascience

  • Falling in love with your research

    Thu, 2011-02-03 16:41 -- John Hawks

    Matt Wedel of SV-POW gives advice on "How to find problems to work on".

    I don’t describe this as “falling in love” lightly. That’s what it feels like: a positive feedback loop wherein the more you engage with a subject, the more you enjoy engaging with it, and so on. A few rounds of that and you may find yourself in a committed relationship, also known as a “research program”, because that’s how you maximize your time with the object of your affection.

    The whole series of tutorials on research is useful, many of them cover the difficulties engaging with research as an outsider to academia.

    Tags: 
    metascience
    teaching

  • High school genomics

    Wed, 2010-12-15 07:30 -- John Hawks

    Ronald Bailey writes in the January Reason about his experiences with personal genomics ("I’ll Show You My Genome. Will You Show Me Yours?"). He's a booster, and much of the article is a review of basic objections (privacy concerns, weakness of gene-phenotype associations, imprecision) and some replies to them. He has several passages worth quoting, including this one:

    Some time before the end of this decade, kids are going to be running gene scans and maybe even whole genome sequencing experiments in their ninth-grade biology classes, just the way some of us did blood typing experiments back in the mid-20th century. Then they are going to share that information with their friends on whatever social media follow Facebook and Twitter, and they’ll do it without parental consent. Nerdy high school sweethearts might swap DNA profiles and run them through computer programs designed to predict what their potential children might look like. In the process, of course, they will also be sharing information about their parents’ genes.

    We're just starting a new decade, I had to remind myself. Gene chips probably will be cheap enough then to run in high school labs. Is there anyone who's thinking about the need to teach high school kids about factor analysis? Bayesian inference? Because I find a twisted appeal in the idea that postdocs now are doing what high school science projects will be about in ten years.

    I've thought for a long time that most of the basic analysis of genomes is undergraduate-level work. Most of the effort is learning how to use software, which is not mathematically demanding but does take time.

    Writing the software is a different issue. But as we apply the same techniques to more and more organisms, there will be no new software to write for most analyses. Plug in your data, assuming that you've been sensible enough to define an appropriate sampling strategy, and the software will give you an answer.

    Consider a time when genotyping can be done for $2 a chip in bulk. Each year, a new chip design is distributed to high schools across a state. One year, it may be dandelions. The kids sample yards across the state, collect plant phenotype data, and submit data to a common pool. Dispersal patterns, flowering time, other phenotypes are all possible targets of study. A structured population enables them to stratify their sample, exploit linkage due to historical events, and study traits linked to biological invasion.

    For the price of one R01 grant, kids across a whole state might develop a new model organism, learn the principles of genomics and produce the data equivalent of dozens of research papers.

    (via Razib)

    UPDATE (2010-12-15): A reader writes quizzically:

    I can't figure out what you are saying here. That it's all so simple that high school kids will understand it without any training in statistics? That all possible analyses of genomic data have already been devised, and all that's left is to turn the crank? Maybe I'm just dense, but I think you need to describe the twisted appeal you're experiencing, not just report it.

    What good will the data be from gillions of dandelion gene chips, if the kids don't have the time to measure umpteen different dandelion phenotypes to correlate with the gene data? Whose judgment will decide which traits to consider, and will high school teachers have that judgment? Etc.

    Are you saying the software already exists to correlate (or fail to do so) the mountains of new human gene chip data with all of the subjects' medical and life history data? Or are you saying that this is exactly the problem?

    I'm honestly not sure if you are in frank trans-humanist pro-technocracy mode, or if you are ironically alluding to its liabilities.

    Never assume a blog post has a well-formed point.

    I think the potential study I describe is one with enormously more power than anything being done today on plant dispersal, and with power at least equal to the best work on gene-phenotype associations in model organisms (setting aside developmental biology).

    Kids in school aren't statisticians, but thousands of them do have brute force on their side. I don't see any obvious reason why software can't be written to spit out these answers. Naturally that software will have to make lots of assumptions, which means that somebody is going to have to design a sensible sampling scheme that can be carried out by students, allowing for their lack of training. It's an educational challenge, but I'd say it's' doable.

    This means, of course, in 10 years the statistics that support this kind of study won't be interesting to the kinds of people who write such software. The science progresses. I hope that in 10 years the real scientists will be doing something a little better than what the software will be able to spit out.

    At the same time, I think we have to acknowledge that most of what today's genomics postdocs are doing is exactly the kind of analysis that I'm describing for high school kids in 2020, except with much smaller, poorly-designed samples. What makes this Ph.D.-level work is that our current software is not very good at it -- in large part because the current software is mostly written by postdocs with little training in systems design.

    Tags: 
    high school genomics
    metascience
    education
    genomics
    teaching
    ethics

  • Doodling during class

    Fri, 2010-12-03 15:40 -- John Hawks

    Nothing makes quite as good a time-waster as the comment threads to posts where professors complain about students. Especially students using computers.

    Janet Stemwedel: "Things observed while sitting in on colleagues’ classes."

    My favorite comment, from Mike Hoye:

    Here’s an exercise that may be revealing: Have somebody, maybe a student or an automated system, whatever, make a transcript of everything you said during a two or three hour lecture, verbatim. Then read it, front to back. It won’t take you three hours. It will take you fifteen or twenty minutes. That should tell you what the real information density of your lectures is like to people who used to have the option of reading other books, making doodles or just struggling to stay awake, but who now have the option of wifi.

    Professor Bainbridge: "How to handle classroom chaos."

    My favorite comment, from Fr. Philip:

    One summer I noticed that a few students were facebooking during class. These students became my favorites for calling on to look up classical texts on-line and reading them aloud.

    My attitude: I'm there for the student who wants to learn, who is the first in his family at university, and to whom the tuition money is a hardship. If any of the other students interfere with his learning, they'd better watch out for me.

    Tags: 
    kids these days
    teaching

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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.