ATRIUM: What mad pursuit, and other things
As mentioned, I am giving a talk tomorrow on research at ATRIUM (academic training in undergraduate medicine): how to get on and have some fun —assuming there is still some left to go around. Some of the references I cite are below:
Rees, J.L. (2005). The problem with academic medicine: engineering our way into and out of the mess. PLoS Medicine 2, e111.
Rees, J.L. (2002). Complex Disease and the New Clinical Sciences. Science 296, 698.
Brenner, S. (1998). The impact of society on science. Science 282, 1411-12.
Crick, F. (1988). What mad pursuit : a personal view of scientific discovery (New York: Basic Books).
Feigenbaum, E.A. (2001). Herbert A. Simon, 1916-2001. Science 291, 2107.
Goldstein, J.L. (1986). On the origin and prevention of PAIDS (Paralyzed Academic Investigator’s Disease Syndrome). J Clin Invest 78, 848-854.
Goldstein, J.L., and Brown, M.S. (1997). The clinical investigator: bewitched, bothered, and bewildered–but still beloved. J Clin Invest 99, 2803-812.
Hubel, D.H. (2009). The way biomedical research is organized has dramatically changed over the past half-century: are the changes for the better? Neuron 64, 161-63.
Hubel, D.H., and Wiesel, T.N. (2004). Brain and Visual Perception: The Story of a 25-Year Collaboration (OUP).
Pincock, S. (2007). Bjørn Aage Ibsen. The Lancet 370, 1538.
Pincock, S. (2008). Colin Murdoch. The Lancet 371, 1994.
Semm, T.A.K. (2003). a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery (Obituary). Br Med J 327, 397.
Tuffs, A. (2003). Kurt Semm. BMJ: British Medical Journal 327, 397.
Watson, J.D. (1993). Succeeding in science: some rules of thumb. Science 261, 1812-13.
Alan Kay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_kay
In Order to Learn
I am talking next week at the ATRIUM meeting here in Edinburgh, and musing over what to say. One perspective I wanted to mention, was the likely changes in universities relating to teaching and the influence of MOOCs, student debt, and however broadly defined, ‘value’. There is a fairly uncritical piece in the Economist on MOOCs but some of the readers’ comments are worth a look (they reflect the landscape of viewpoint). Another point is how opting for fashionable areas in science is not always wise: Sydney Brenner wrote a piece years ago in Current Biology, on how important it was to be out of phase with much of what your colleagues do. For some reason this made me google Tim O’Shea, our principal. He has worked on the use of computers in education for a long time, and I think is the author of one of various maxims about technology in education (Q: What was the last useful technology for assisting learning? A: The blackboard, or the school bus?).
Anyway I looked of course at the UoE site, but also Wikipedia. The latter draws attention to his most recent book (he is a co-editor), ‘In Order to Learn’. I haven’t read it, so looked for it on Amazon. If you search for it, the first hit is a book by Bert Weedon on learning guitar. Small world. That was my first guitar tutor and I, and others, think there are big parallels between learning a musical instrument and acquiring high level expertise in medicine (Frank Davidoff, has written on this, as well). There is also a lesson for universities in how expertise can be acquired out with formal structures. O’Shea’s book is there however, too.