Dear Senator Boxer,
I'm a physics PhD student at Stanford University. I do cancer research and my career goals are to stay in academia and continue doing research into how cancer can be better imaged and treated. I will be graduating in about a year and will soon be looking for post-doctoral research positions.
It is highly likely that my next job will be at a university or hospital. I'd like to find research that will benefit from my skill-set and has the potential to help many cancer patients. But what if that group is at a Catholic Hospital or University? As a student, I have never had to worry about whether my health insurance (provided through the university) covered what I needed. Now my future career plans may be limited or changed based on provided health care.
I have an IUD, which means that I will need to get it replaced or removed in a few years. If I had to pay out of pocket, that could easily be $1000. Without the new health care rules that would ensure my employer would cover contraception, how could I know this would be covered? When looking at a position, will I need to call HR and find out whether the health care plan covers contraception? Who can provide assurance that the plans would not change? There are many leading research universities and hospitals with a religious affiliation, so this is a real concern for me. It isn't one that the men in my lab worry about.
Thank you for supporting contraception access. I find the conversation right now horrifying - a bunch of men thinks it limits their religious freedom if I have access to contraception. I wish I could tell them about my latest cancer treatment research and explain to them that it wouldn't be happening if I had children to take care of at home. I am able to make contributions to science - perhaps that they will benefit from - because I have control over my body and whether I have children.
Thank you for being an elected politician I can count on.
-Nicole Ackerman
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Faculty Benefits
As part of my fellowship, I am visiting a few local campuses this quarter. So far I have visited Santa Clara University and Foothill College. The goal of these visits is to understand different types of institutions, specifically how it differs to be faculty at different types of institutions. I am greatly enjoying these visits and am seeing that there is a lot to be excited about at all institutions.
There are some big questions we are getting answered at every visit: How is hiring done? What is the tenure process? Sometimes the discussion turns to the mundane topics of employment - wages and benefits. I don't feel particularly concerned about these topics. If I was working as a part time faculty (adjunct) I would have issues of low pay and no benefits. But as long as I am full-time (tenure track), I should be able to live, right? As I recently learned, community college faculty are fairly well paid. What would I possibly need to worry about?
There are some big questions we are getting answered at every visit: How is hiring done? What is the tenure process? Sometimes the discussion turns to the mundane topics of employment - wages and benefits. I don't feel particularly concerned about these topics. If I was working as a part time faculty (adjunct) I would have issues of low pay and no benefits. But as long as I am full-time (tenure track), I should be able to live, right? As I recently learned, community college faculty are fairly well paid. What would I possibly need to worry about?
Friday, November 18, 2011
Dear Nature: I have this excellent paper on hypercube...
There was a recent piece (of sh$$) titled "Womanspace" in Nature (a highly prestigious journal) that was meant to be funny, but did it by making an extended "joke" at the expense of women. Both the fact that plenty of readers are female, and the fact that women aren't actually a character out of a 1950's sitcom. The best theory is that this was meant to get a lot of publicity for Nature, given the comments from Nature editors (initially) that they were surprised over the lack of outrage. The journal did publish critiques recently, but that doesn't "fix" what was done.
Many people have given this article its fair criticism, and I yield to their superior blogging skills. What I particularly like is that many have found constructive things to do... I only swore a lot and thought about slashing tires.
Hate misogyny in science? Here are some fun things to try:
Further critiques of the article
Many people have given this article its fair criticism, and I yield to their superior blogging skills. What I particularly like is that many have found constructive things to do... I only swore a lot and thought about slashing tires.
Hate misogyny in science? Here are some fun things to try:
- Occupy Nature! Kate Clancy's blog is through a subsidiary of Nature, but instead of abandoning her blog she has decided to use it to highlight other bigotry. Find other things to be angry about at Nature? Send them to her.
- Submit your own crap! Lab Lemming points out that this is a a call for submissions - anything and everything. This is similar to using "postage paid" envelopes from junk mail to return bricks to them.
- Submit followup articles on gayspace, blackspace, and jewspace.
Further critiques of the article
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Mistakes in Science
While I am happy about the coverage the OPERA faster-than-light neutrinos have gotten, I'm not looking forward to the eventual conclusion. The result will likely be overturned and be due to an uncertainty that wasn't well understood. Will that be reported on? Will the public understand? I know how hard it is to get undergraduate physics majors to understand error bars and error analysis, so I just don't think Fox News will give it a fair coverage. Either it will be "Physicists were wrong" or.... silence.
Biomedicine is a bit different. The rules are less firm, so unexpected experimental results get published much more often. But they also have bigger consequences. Recently a lot of attention has been paid to whether a certain virus causes Chronic Fatigue. One group has experimental results that it does, but many groups have not been able to get the same results. The result? People with CF have paid money for tests (and possibly treatments) that are ineffective.
While CF isn't a disease with many treatment options, some types of cancer are. If a study showed that Treatment A works very well, patients will be given Treatment A instead of Treatments B or C. What if the study was wrong? Patients may die who would have responded well to treatments B or C. A consoling point is that it takes a lot of work to get a treatment to the clinic - many papers that show Treatment A is effective. But what if mistakes get made?
The ethical violations of someone fabricating research are fairly clear. But what about unintentional mistakes? They happen. I've found mistakes in my own work, far after I thought I had a "final" result. I've found mistakes in published papers. Usually these things are small - though really, the big ones stand out. I dread the day that I find a mistake in my own work - after it has been published. The best thing we can do, as scientists, is to remember that the entire enterprise is meant to be like a conversation. We share ideas and data with each other in order to get feedback and improve our work. We must give reasonable feedback, be open to criticism, and be very honest.
The public has a right to expect us to not fabricate research, but they must understand we are only human.
Biomedicine is a bit different. The rules are less firm, so unexpected experimental results get published much more often. But they also have bigger consequences. Recently a lot of attention has been paid to whether a certain virus causes Chronic Fatigue. One group has experimental results that it does, but many groups have not been able to get the same results. The result? People with CF have paid money for tests (and possibly treatments) that are ineffective.
While CF isn't a disease with many treatment options, some types of cancer are. If a study showed that Treatment A works very well, patients will be given Treatment A instead of Treatments B or C. What if the study was wrong? Patients may die who would have responded well to treatments B or C. A consoling point is that it takes a lot of work to get a treatment to the clinic - many papers that show Treatment A is effective. But what if mistakes get made?
The ethical violations of someone fabricating research are fairly clear. But what about unintentional mistakes? They happen. I've found mistakes in my own work, far after I thought I had a "final" result. I've found mistakes in published papers. Usually these things are small - though really, the big ones stand out. I dread the day that I find a mistake in my own work - after it has been published. The best thing we can do, as scientists, is to remember that the entire enterprise is meant to be like a conversation. We share ideas and data with each other in order to get feedback and improve our work. We must give reasonable feedback, be open to criticism, and be very honest.
The public has a right to expect us to not fabricate research, but they must understand we are only human.
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