This is what happens when you don’t declare potential conflicts of interest

Senator Grassley of Iowa is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association be transparent about its financial relationship with pharmaceutical companies:

The worry is that this money may subtly alter psychiatrists’ choices of which drugs to prescribe.

An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs are not approved for most uses in children, who appear to be especially susceptible to the side effects, including rapid weight gain.

Senator Grassley’s investigations have not only detailed how lucrative those arrangements can be but have also shown that some top psychiatrists failed to report all their earnings as required

–IP

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. On academic boycotts

Previous posts on this issue can be found here, here, here, and here.

Limiting academic freedom is poor and morally inconsistent way to further the growth of constructive communication.  And constructive communication is precisely what is needed in the Israel/Palestine conflict.  If an academic body wants to put their spoon in there are moral and cosntructive ways to do that that preserve academic freedome and further the growth of communication and the pursuit of knowledge.  For example, the University and Colleges Union could issue a statement in in support of Palestinian education and academic pursuits, or the UCU could twin with a Palestinian university, or could offer scholarships for Palestinian students, or could offer resources for Palestinian educational institutions.

The UCU has recently passed Motion 25 which effectively advises members to boycott Israeli academics, but does not use the word “boycott” (unlikely previous UCU attempts to pass policy of this kind).  The full text of the motion is here.  In particular, among it’s resolutions is the following:

colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions

There is now debate on whether the motion violates the Race Relations Act of 1976.  More about that here. (Via Normblog.)

Via Engage, I also learn that St Peter’s College, Oxford, has passed a resolution against Motion  25.

–IP

A pleasant surprise

I got a small research grant for an academic project. My very first grant. I keep looking at the letter and I can’t stop smiling.

–IP

Recent studies on academia and parenthood

Two recent studies on parenthood and academia have turned up some interesting findings (h/t Feministe).

The first study is entitled “Alone in the Ivory Tower: How Birth Events Vary Among Fast-Track Professionals” and is by Nicholas Wolfinger (University of Utah), Mary Ann Mason (UC Berkeley), and Marc Coulden (UC Berkeley).  It compares academics to professionals in other fields, tracking households with children aged one or younger, and found that academics were much less likely than other professionals to have had a child recently, and that women were less likely than men to have had a child recently:

The study, based on 2000 Census data, finds that academics are the least likely to have experienced recent birth events, and that the gap is greatest for women. (Physicians are most likely to have had children recently, and lawyers are in the middle.)

[...]

One factor that makes it easier for the male doctors to have recent offspring is that, in addition to earning more than professors, the M.D.’s are less likely to have child-care needs. That’s because male doctors are almost twice as likely to have spouses out of the labor force as are male academics (40 percent vs. 22 percent). In another sign of the impact of academic careers on parenthood, male professionals whose wives are physicians or lawyers are disproportionately likely to have had recent birth events, while male professionals whose wives are academics do not have any greater than average chance of new parenthood.

The second study is the COSWA Academic Climate Report 2008, which can be read here.  It finds

Key differences were found with regard to work/home balance: men in the field are more likely to be parents, but women are more likely to be more responsible for child care or other family obligations. For instance, of men who experienced a career interruption, 7.4 percent cited child care as the reason and 3.7 percent cited the experience of being a “trailing spouse,” one who moves when a partner is hired elsewhere. Of women who experienced career interruptions, 22.9 percent cited child care and 9.1 percent cited being a trailing spouse. And women were much more likely (52.9 percent to 5.6 percent) to anticipate a future career interruption due to child care responsibilities.

Check out the article.  Note also the interesting comparisons of percentages of white and non-white academics with children from the COSWA report in the table at the bottom of the article.

–IP

The end of an age?

In generations to past, philosophy and logic students have stood outside ugly concrete buildings in the bracing Scottish wind as the night draws in, and arguing furiously because someone is wrong about politics and philosophy of science. (Even though it was definitely only going to be a five-minute-chat, but now that so-and-so has said such-and-such about Karl Popper or Palestine and before you know it, you’ve been huddling in the cold for two and a half hours arguing about whether their premises were sound…)

But future generations of students they won’t be huddling around the Existentialist’s or the Logic Lecturer’s conical roll-up cigs for warmth anymore. They’re both quitting the smokes.  Maybe it will be too cold in Decembers to come, without the cigarettes to huddle around. Maybe in future, the arguing will have to be done in the pub, or via listserve or something.

Reminds me of the old xkcd:

Image description: the cartoon shows someone sitting at a computer. The speech bubbles are transcribed:

Person outside room: Are you coming to bed?
Person at computer: I can’t. This is important.
Person outside room: What?
Person at computer: Someone is wrong on the internet.

–IP

Congested and confuzzled

I’m bored. I’m fed up of being ill. It’s been two months now, of post-virus exhaustion and aches, and more recently a sinus issue that caused some unpleasant dizziness. I’ve not done significant academic work for two months.

I’ve always been happiest when I’m productive or active. At the moment, I’m neither productive nor active. I always feel short of a nap, spaced out, forgetful, achey.

I am deeply uncertain and frustrated about my academic options. I have exams this spring, but having missed the better part of a term’s worth of work, and with no sign of getting better yet, it’s not clear that I’ll be caught up in time for my exams in the spring. I can sit some exams in August instead of in spring, but that completely buggers up my summer in a number of ways:

I was planning to work on my article for publication in the early part of the summer, then visit family for a bit, then come back to work on my dissertation and possibly further research (if I get a small research grant), and work a proper paying job until the start of the next academic year. With exams in the summer, the possibility of further research goes out the window due to time constraints; and due to practical considerations, the proper paying job may go out the window or be limited too (I do special needs care work. It’s a highly demanding and tiring job and there is no way I can study and work at the same time. Plus, it’s difficult to get time off, and I don’t get paid for hours I don’t work). I may or may not get to do as much work on my disseration as I would like.

So…I can apply for a hardship fund to help cover the unforseen cost of sitting exams when I would have otherwise been working.

Someone suggested that I consider switching to part-time study given that health issues have impacted my coursework every year that I have been at university. But that opens up a financial minefield — part-time students are not entitled to a council tax exemption, and are only entitled to less than one sixth of the loan that full-time students can receive. So I’d have to navigate a benefits system that assumes (contrary to all sense) that people are either capable of working full time, or incapable of working at all, and I have to “exhaust all other possible source of income” — apparently, you are expected to take out loans, use all overdraft, and max out all credit cards before you get financial support — a policy that is morally repulsive as well as fundamentally stupid. It stops looking like a great option, eh?

Anyway, I’m not sure that part time study is actually what I need. I’m actually reasonably good at managing my chronic health problems — the arthritis and migraines. What messes up my academic work and planning is actually short-term illness that exacerbates my existing medical conditions. I’m reasonably good at looking after myself — I follow medical advice, I eat reasonably well, I rest as much as I can, I do all the sensible stuff. My immune system is still pretty rubbish, though.

I wish there was someone who knew what this was like, and could talk me through my academic and medical options in that light. My GP focuses on short-term medical issues, for the most part. She’s good at her job, but I do have to insist about monitoring for inflammation indicators and other long-term care issues, and she’s not an academic or an academic advisor. My academic advisor and lecturers are good at their jobs, but to my knowledge they don’t have experience of long-term health problems. I’ve had useful advice in the past about pain management and pacing and longer-term management of my health from physiotherapists. But I rather wish there was an academic I could sit down with and chat to about this stuff, and how it impacts my studies, and what I can do about it from the academia side of things.

And all this is throwing up a lot of questions for me, about my ability to continue in postgrad studies or full-time work.

–IP

Thoughts on outreaching

Clifford’s reposting of an xkcd cartoon sparked a familiar discussion on women in science, which made me think about how science is “sold” (for want of a better word) to women and minorities considering entering the sciences.

From time to time, my computer science department sends out bulk emails to it students to the effect of “how would you impecunious geeks like to earn a couple of quid for taking some schookids round campus at the next open day and telling them how much you love studying computer science here?” Since I’m very much pro-outreach, I have often considered applying for this, but haven’t actually done it. Over the last few years, I have either been busy on the open days or not well enough to commit to taking on the job. But I’ve thought about it a great deal. I’ve thought about what I would like to tell prospective compsci students, especially women and minority students.

The fact is that I don’t love studying compsci here (would I love it anywhere else?). I do find compsci really interesting, and I do love studying formal language processing. I love the university I’m at, and the city in which I live. I just don’t like the department. I don’t like a lot of my classmates. I don’t like that I come out of meetings and lectures from time to time thinking “Did the lecturer/student really just say/do that? What part of someone’s head makes them think that’s an ok thing to say/do?” So I don’t feel I can, in all honesty, tell kids how much I love studying computer science here.

I am also aware that there have been changes in the department. My experience of studying here has changed with the start of an active group for women in computing. My experience of studying here has also changed when I realised that pushing in the right ways for fairer treatment of women and minority students can sometimes result in positive departmental policy changes.

So this is what I’d like to say to girls and minority kids thinking about studying compsci here: You will be underrepresented, with all that that entails. You’ll have it harder than your classmates. You will work your arse off learning cool stuff. You will be pioneers in your field. If you wish to be, you will be instrumental in change. Are you up for it?

–IP

Responses to sexism in academia

Recently an even was held on campus for women in computing. After the event, it was discovered that some of the posters advertising the event had had sexist messages graffitied on them.

The director of teaching for that school sent out an email to all students in the school informing them of what happened and emphasising that this behaviour is not on, and that the university takes it seriously. A good response.

I can’t say I’m all that surprised at the graffiti-ing of the posters. It’s no secret to most aware people that there are individuals in that school who are less than courteous to women. I am disappointed and angry, however, at whoever graffitied the messages.

I do think though that sexist messages on posters is not an isolated event — it’s symptomatic of a misogynistic environment. This may have been a particularly obvious instance of misogynist behaviour, but misogynist sentiment gets thrown around not infrequently in conversation in the school. It just happens that sexist graffiti is more obvious.

A better response would be to tackle the misogynistic environment as well, by putting serious departmental resources into encouraging the recruitment and retention of women and minorities, and better behaviour towards women and minorities on a day-to-day level, rather than just when bad behaviour is particularly obvious and gets out of hand. Disciplinary action is easier, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problems.

–IP

scientiae-carnival

An observation of debatable import

Have you ever noticed anything about the names academics and teachers pick for their example characters in papers and handouts? “Example characters” being those pseudonyms picked for examples or word problems, as in:

Alice has 5 marbles. John has 12. Charlie has 17. How many marbles do John, Alice, and Charlie have altogether?

Some people give feminine names to half(ish) their characters, and masculine names to the other half(ish), as in the example above. Others give masculine names to all or nearly all their characters.

Most university academics in the US and UK that I have encountered use only Western names, such as Ann, Fred, Kate, George, etc. My school textbooks were a bit better on cultural diversity of names. There were Western names, and also names like Parvati, Rajesh, Jorge, etc.

What, if anything, does this indicate? I don’t want to make a huge meal out of it, but part of me can’t help thinking that the tendency to “normalise” Western men, when it occurs, is somewhat indicative of a general social trend.

I do remember thinking, as a child, “Why do they put these weird names in my math textbook? Ann or Bob would be easier.” It didn’t occur to me that most English-speaking Westerners probably think my real name is “weird”. It also didn’t occur to me that math textbooks can teach more than just that. And it didn’t occur to me that the Parvatis and Rajeshes and Jorges in the class shouldn’t have to feel they’re weird.

When you’re writing examples, you pick the first name that comes to mind. I am rather surprised to think that there are people who can write a whole paper full of examples, and never once think of a feminine or non-Western name. I also wonder if the people who make half of their examples feminine and half of their examples masculine do so out of a deliberate attempt to be egalitarian, or do so without thinking about it.

Sometimes in my science lectures, I can’t help noticing gendered language. I’m sure it’s not deliberately gendered, the vast majority of the time. It’s interesting that it works out that way though. And I do wonder how much of that is that women simply are largely invisible to those particular academics.

–IP

On garden paths and what I want to be if I grow up

There are times when we realise things about ourselves that other people have known for ages.

In my first term at university, I came home from my first Logic lecture and burst into tears because I was convinced that it was hard and I couldn’t do it. But it was required course so I went back. Three weeks later I was reading everything I could get my hands on that had formal semantics in the title. When I started computer science, I again panicked about it being new and hard, and then found that I loved hearing about logic and language processing from three openly antagonistic perspectives. I knew I would enjoy linguistics, but I hadn’t yet found the kind of linguistics that really made me buzz.

Now, a few years on, I picked my linguistics courses this year on the basis of what fit my timetable, and on the basis that some empirical research methods couldn’t hurt (the courses I really wanted to do where all held at the same times as my required courses).  So I didn’t expect to become quite so captivated  by the course I picked.  And now I’m awake at night wanting to take apart the cogs and wheels of every linguistic study I’ve read to see how the numbers work, where they come from, what they mean. I want to hold each token in my hand and watch what it’s doing and why. I want to know its formal purpose, but I also want to know its social purpose. What do we pay attention to? But more precisely, how does we pay attention to it? How do we pick up on the things that signal social and linguistic differences? How to we process that stuff? Where does variation come into it, and why?

The week before submitting my project I was working 10+ days on 5 hours of sleep while feeling crap. What I wanted to do most was go to bed for at least a week. But after that, what I most wanted to do was find out what the next result was. I’m not sure I could have maintained that kind of drive and focus in those circumstances with philosophy or computer science or even with another branch of linguistics. I still just want to go back to my numbers and my tokens — to tinker with the little cogs and wheels, and maybe supplement them with formal semantics and garden paths and parsers.

I have to make some serious decisions in the next two weeks or so. I have to decide where I’m going with this stuff in terms of dissertations. I think I know now I’m not really a straight philosopher. I’ve tried it on for size, I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve spent hours upon hours thinking about philosophical stuff. But I need my numbers and cogs and wheels and facts. Which makes me a scientist, I think. As for informatics, I think I just don’t really care enough about the artifical intelligence models and cognitive science models. At least not right now. Maybe I just don’t know enough about them — that’s always a possibility. But I want to know what real people do with real language. I expect philosophy and informatics to continue playing a part in what I do, but I’m thinking that right now, linguistics is what I want to focus on.

Does that make any sort of sense?

–IP

GoldVarb bring-and-share

People with answers to GoldVarb X¹ issues, or with other GoldVarb questions should feel free to post them in this thread.

(Tangentially, maybe I should have a series of “tips and tricks” type posts for academic programs.)

Anyway, this post is based on my experience of working with GoldVarb X on a Mac and also on PCs. Mandatory caveat: I have not done extensive testing on GoldVarb, this post is based solely on my experience of working with it during the last semester. The tips I propose are meant in good faith, but they are not guaranteed solutions. The management of Modus Dopens accepts no responsibility for lost or cocked-up files. No tokens were harmed in the making of this post.

Right. The first thing to note is that there are far fewer compatibility issues with Macs. Yet another reason why Macs are just sexier. Files created on a Mac can be open and run on that Mac just fine, and files created on a Mac can usually be transferred to a PC and run on the PC without problems, but the inverse does not hold. I have not experimented with transferring files from one Mac to another, however. Files created on a PC are highly problematic to transfer to another PC or to a Mac, and can then either not be opened, or the computer does not identify them as GoldVarb files, and will identify them as executables or other odd things. Sometimes the files get reformatted (eg, with apostrophes replaced with other symbols), and I haven’t worked out a way around this yet. The answer might be to save as .txt rather than .rtf in step (1) below, although I have not tried this myself — when I used the steps below, I saved as .rtf.

Usually the safest is to do the following:

1. Copy the contents of the token file to a simple text editor (eg TextEdit) and save as .rtf or .txt. Be sure to have saved your factor specifications before you do this. Do the same with the the condition file, but save it as a separate document. (And the same with your results file if you’re wanting to save and transfer it).

2. Zip the .txt or .rtf and the GoldVarb versions of the files (since you might be lucky), and transfer.

3. On the machine you’re transfering to, unzip the files.

4. Launch GoldVarb. From GoldVarb, go to File -> Open and select the GoldVarb version of your token file. (NB, if you’re trying to open a condition file, ignore the previous sentence. Instead, go to the directory to which the file is saved, not from within GoldVarb, and double click on the file to open). If the file doesn’t immediately open as a GoldVarb file, it’s probably not worth continuing to try to open the GoldVarb versions of the files.

5. If (4) is unsuccessful: open the text versions of the files. Launch GoldVarb if you haven’t already. Go to File -> New -> New Tokens and copy and paste your tokens into the token file. Save. Scroll down to the bottom of the token file and check to see whether your factor specifications have been copied over as well. If they are showing up as text in the token file, you may need to re-enter the factor specificiations into the factor specification dialogue (but this should be easy as you can copy and paste from the text at the bottom of the token file). Delete the text from the bottom of the token file before you try to run any analyses. If your factor specs are not showing up in the bottom of the copied tokens, check your factor spec dialogue. They may have copied over anyway, but often they don’t. If you lose the factor specs you’ll just have to enter them again.

6. Go to Tokens -> No Recode to get a new condition file. Copy and paste the conditions from the text file into the new condition file and save.

7. If you will be transferring GoldVarb files between those machines more than once, it’s worth saving your token file to the machine you transferred to as a GoldVarb .tkn file. That way, the next time you transfer files to that machine, if you lose your factor specs and the factor specs are the same, you can open this token file, delete the tokens, copy in the new transferred tokens, and select File -> Save As and rename the file. NB, if you do an ordinary save or you do not rename, you will lose the old token file!

–IP

¹Sankoff, David, Sali Tagliamonte, Eric Smith. (2005). Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto.

In praise of naked cucumbers

Praise be to:

1. Scotland’s Co-op for selling naked cucumbers; they expect to save 8 tonnes of plastic per year in so doing. I’m pleased about this, and hope it gets extended to other unnecessarily-overpackaged produce, and retailers. Tesco’s habit of placing their “Finest” range tomatoes in protective plastic trays and then wrapping the whole lot in plastic bewilders me. This is a good example of a little step that can make a big impact and doesn’t inconvenience anyone much. Not that I’m opposed to changing habits for environmental welfare, mark you. Just that I recognise that there are some adjustments that some people are not able to make.
2. LED headtorches. I got the Existentialist an LED headtorch for his birthday. This is a partial experiment. Firstly, we are hoping that it will be useful for him when he travels and stays in hotels/friends’ houses where the default is fluorescent lighting, and he can then turn off the fluorescents in his room and just use the headtorch instead.* The experimental bit is this: we’re hoping that he may be able to use the headtorch in public places where fluorescent lighting is default (eg, university lecture halls). Possibly if he can illuminate just his desk/notes with the headtorch, the fluorescent ceiling lights will be less bothersome. That’s the hypothesis anyway. We’ll see how it works. If the experiment is successful, I may invest in a headtorch too in the hopes that this will increase the amount of time I can work productively in the labs without getting migraines.
3. TENS machines, and all the people who have recommended them to me. The Existentialist got me one for my birthday, (also as an experiment). I tried it for my back, and the first few minutes felt weird, but I definitely felt better after 15 minutes. Yay! I am so pleased at having another non-medicine option for pain.

In other news, my research group and I have finished and submitted our project. It is done done done! Ask me anything you want about variational analysis of verb inflection. Go on, I dare you.

I only have two minor gripes:

1. I will never ever be able to believe statistics again. Not unless I’ve processed them myself and even then I’m not so sure. You would not believe the stats I have been crunching this week, to make something comprehensible out of what can only be described as a mess. I mourn the lost era of innocence and simplicity. But at the same time, the mourning is tempered by the fact that I’ve never been so fascinated by a problem in my life. I don’t even mind that I’m losing sleep, waking with urgent and important thoughts about multi-variate analysis that I cannot then remember upon waking. I worry that I may be becoming another spaced out obsessive academic, with all that that entails.
2. I’m exhausted. I do mind, actually. I know that contradicts the above, but there we go. Possibly a proper academic or a logician (or both) will have to sort that out. Maybe there should be an Academic Theory of Truth, or possibly an Academic Logic to accomodate that sort of contradiction (or non-contradiction, as the case may be) in very specific domains.

–IP

*For those who don’t know, both the Existentialist and I are sensitive to fluorescent lights, due to unrelated chronic medical conditions. Mine is migraines — I find I am sensitive to changes in light intensity and, when migraines are starting or when I have lower-key continuous headaches (which may be several days a week) I am sensitive to fluorescent lights.

“Unscientific” does not mean “controversial”

No, really, it doesn’t. I looked both words up in a dictionary just to double check, and nope, they don’t mean the same thing:

Unscientific:

1. not scientific; not employed in science: an unscientific measuring device.
2. not conforming to the principles or methods of science: an unscientific approach to a problem.
3. not demonstrating scientific knowledge or scientific methods: an unscientific report.

Controversial:

1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of controversy; polemical: a controversial book.
2. subject to controversy; debatable: a controversial decision.
3. given to controversy; disputatious.

(Courtesy of Dictionary.com*)

Scientists shouldn’t be afraid of tackling contravertial issues. Science shouldn’t be limited by social controversy. Academic freedom means being able to talk in a scholarly manner about things that may be controversial. And yes, if you are a scientist, then offering an unscientific opinion about science is unscholarly.

What science should be limited by is science. That is, science should be limited by the definition of what constitutes scientific research. If a study is unscientific and unscholarly, then it’s not science. If something is not scientific, then scientists shouldn’t be concened about it (in their scientific capacity).

What am I talking about?

James Watson. Larry Summers. The IQ debates. Jensen and Galton. Is-science-PC discussions. The perennial is-gayness-genetic question. Intelligent Design, for that matter. But specifically I’m taing about the reaction to James Watson’s genes-in-mouth debacle.

I was disappointed. Not by James Watson, because frankly, it’s not as if we didn’t know before that he’s chauvinist down to his bootstraps. I was dissapointed by all the people who defended him on the basis of academic freedom, that thus win prizes for phenomenally missing the point of academic freedom.

Quoth Watson:

James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Watson was later suspended from his post at Cold Springs Harbour Lab, and uninvited by at least one university a which he was scheduled to give a lecture.

Over at Harry’s Place, Alec McPherson responded:

I don’t think this was even refusing to allow him to promulgate his wretched views instead of publicly repudiating them, which would be questionable enough. This strikes as silencing him in one field, where he may well excel, because of his opinions in another, which we are told is unrelated. As so often is said in the hallowed pages of Harry’s Place, this is the Stalinist approach to debate.

PZ Meyers commented:

It’s a sign, though, that CSHL will not be administered by anyone willing to assert controversy, and that’s too bad.

It’s worth reading Zuska’s take on the matter, by the way (not quoted because the quotes would be too long, just hop on over and read).

I would argue that Myers and McPherson have simply missed the point of the controversy about Watson’s comments, since it wasn’t the case that Watson was drawing a scientifically justified conclusion. He was just expressing racism. It wasn’t scholarly, it wasn’t scientific, it wasn’t academic. It’s not a matter of academic freedom. In what way is Watson being silenced in genetics? He was suspended from Cold Spring Harbor Lab, that’s true. That was a post he got because of his scientific acheivements, and since his suspension was a response his talking about social policy in an unscientific and unscholarly manner. Suspension may or may not have been the appropriate response, but it hardly prevents Watson from talking about his field in a scientific and scholarly manner, especially since the post he was suspended from was not an academic post but an administrative one. It’s not his scientific career that’s suspended, it’s his administrative tasks.

He was also uninvited to give a lecture, that’s true, but having freedom of speech doesn’t mean people have to give you a platform if they think you will use it for speaking about unscholarly unscientific matter. So yes, one has the right to spout any old nonsense one fancies, but that doesn’t mean you’re automatically entitled to a platform.

I think crying academic freedom in this case is not only misguided, it is also irresponsible. To do so is to conflate science with social policy. Supporting Watson’s unscientific comments while attempting to distance onesself from the sentiment they express does nothing to highlight the fact that his statements were not based in science. Basically, the message is “his comments are valid even if I don’t like them”. But Watson’s comments are not valid — they are prejudice masqerading as science. We should be criticising the lack of scientific rigour in his conclusions and the prejudice that led him to his conclusions. That’s not an attack on academic freedom – it’s upholding scientific standards.
–IP

*Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 27, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/controversial and http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/unscientific.

Quality, not quantity

Are you wise in the ways of word counts? If so, would you happen to know a nifty method of accurately counting the words in LaTeX documents?

I’ve tried converting the .pdf to a PostScript or ASCII file and counting the words in that with a simple wc command in shell, but that doesn’t work — it just returns 0.

So I just tried a normal wc command for the PDF document

 wc myfile.pdf

and a detex command on the .tex file

detex myfile.tex | wc

and I tried copying and pasting from the .pdf into Word and using Word’s word count tool*. And all three of these are giving me different answers, with the difference in answers being up to 102 words, which seems just silly.

So I could just pick the wordcount that is most convenient for my purposes, but that goes against the “quality not quantity” pedantry that grips me in moments of, well, pedantry.

Nevertheless, methinks there must be a more accurate way, although that more accurate way might be for me to write a program myself in Haskell or Java to do the count. Is there a non-effort-consuming alternative?

–IP

*Relying on Word when one has the option of TeX seems plain embarrassing.

Please, encourage me to take tutorials seriously

By publishing the tutorial sheet at least a couple of days in advance of the tutorial, so that we can actually do tutorial preparation like we are supposed to! Is that an unreasonable request?

–IP