Christmas Geekery

Posted by Peter Tennant

'Do scientists get days off at Christmas?'

So asked school pupil Avril Kings during a recent run of the online engagement event I'm a Scientist Get me out of here. Like most things that have nothing to do with my PhD, it got me thinking.

Most scientists, thank goodness, wouldn't dream of working on Christmas day. That's just silly. Christmas is for over-eating, trashy TV, and drunken arguments about the 'true meaning of Christmas'. Besides, as much as we scientists may consider our work to be absolutely life-changingly vital; the outside world can usually afford to wait a few weeks - or decades. Even for those with no choice (i.e. those poor Biologists who have to feed their cells), coming into work on Christmas day isn't made very easy. Most UK Universities shut down between Christmas and New Year, so don't expect a nice greeting. Or heating, for that matter. 

Do geeks get days off at Christmas

But is 'not working' the same as having a 'day off'? Or are we all, to some extent, trapped in our ways of thinking? Do public health practitioners, for example, start Christmas with a bowl of fruit, before having salad for lunch, going for a brisk 30 minute stroll, and finishing with no more than two small glasses of wine in the evening? My own scientific training is tyrannically apparent (or so I'm told) when I cook the Christmas dinner, which I like to organise with laboratory-like precision. And I'm not just talking about my need to weigh-out every ingredient to the last gram. Nope. For me, every good Christmas dinner has a Gantt diagram. In theory, this is supposed to reduce the risk of project slippage (where the meal overruns and 'ruins Christmas'). In practice I'm always outwitted by the roast potatoes.

OK, so I may be confusing being a scientist with being a geek. With so few scientists in the public eye, it's probably not very helpful for me to just trot out the same tired stereotypes (which, by the way, have been excellently satired in this valentine's guide on, 'how to woo a scientist'). Since the abysmal Science: It's a girl thing video, the ScienceGrrl movement has made great strides showing that, contrary to popular belief, science is not exclusively populated by geeky men. More recently, scientists were also central to Twitter-sensation #OverlyHonestMethods, which not only helped to reveal the people under the lab coats, but was also one of the funniest things on the internet.

Which is all very nice, but - scientist or otherwise - I am a geek. And this Christmas, I have some fantastic geekery for you. In the form of another Twitter movement called #XmasSongsAsPapers. The idea was simple (if indeed, there was an idea) - try to make a Christmas song (either the title or content) sound like the title of an academic article. The result: a fantastic collection of mini brain-teasers that makes for an excellent Christmas quiz. Merry Christmas everyone! 

TWEET-TEASERS (answers below):

1) Awareness of Major Christian Festivals Among Populations of Sub-Saharan Africa, by B. Geldof and M. Ure (by @pingulette) – incidentally, this is the tweet that kicked it all off.

2) Ostracisation of an Infant with Congenital Scarlet-Nose: A case-study in a population of flying reindeer (by @Peter_Tennant)

3) Briggs,R. 'Hypothermia and nocturnal levitation hallucination in young boys. A phenomenological study' (by @HeatherTricky)

4) MacGowan & MacColl (1987) Alcohol in domestic disputes: an ethnography of Irish economic migrants in New York City bars (by @sadieboniface)

5) Michael & Ridgeley: Previous cardiac transplant rejection associated with increased donation specifications one year on (by @BroniaArnott)

6) Trapp et al. Rhythmic Repetition and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Case Study of One Boy and his Drum (by @pwhybrow)

7) Favourably regarded, unelected feudal overlord observes cold & clear climatic conditions facilitate biofuel collection (by @DrJPritchard)

8) Gardner D. (1944) “Orthodontics as the facilitator to the individual perceptions of contentment” (by @FuturesSarah)

9) Rea, C. (2007) Use of sedentary modes for seasonal commuting: an ecological momentary assessment of subjective well being (by @BroniaArnott)

10) Impact on childhood perception of family structure following inadvertent witness of suspected maternal infidelity (by @gingerly_onward)

11) Carey, M. (1994) Comparative perceived satisfaction of singular romantic attachment during the festive period (by @dr_know)

12) Cole (1946). Dry heat instigates pericarp rupture and increasing endosperm palatability in the true nut Castanea sativa (by @Aristolochia)

13) Lords-a-leaping: Dismantling hereditary nobility and privilege to demonstrate duodecimal number systems (by @CSUFoE_Research)

14) Sedentary travel using a novel 'one-horse-open-sleigh' is associated with an increase in self-reported well-being (by @Peter_Tennant)

And finally, the picture round:

15) Fig. 1 (Gruber & Mohr, 1818) (by @mc_hankins)

ANSWERS
1) Do They Know it's Christmas?
2) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
3) I'm Walking in the Air
4) Fairytale of New York
5) Last Christmas (I Gave You My Heart)
6) The Little Drummer Boy
7) Good King Wenceslas
8) All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth
9) Driving Home for Christmas
10) I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus
11) All I Want for Christmas is You
12) The Christmas Song (Chestnut's Roasting on an Open Fire)
13) The Twelve Days of Christmas
14) Jingle Bells
15) Silent Night

Three questions

Posted by Lynne Stobbart

Editor's note: Earlier this year, Heather Yoeli suggested a little quiz of three questions. This post is another entry for the quiz. If you want to play, just get in touch.

1. In an entirely hypothetical scenario in which time, money and skill were no object and you could research absolutely anything at all, what would you choose?
Much of my research, whether interventional or observational, has focussed on the emergency clinical situation. For example, pharmaceutical and neurosurgical trials in acute brain injury (e.g. STICH), and observational studies in stroke research (my PhD) and the treatment of ischaemic stroke in the hyperacute period (DASH). By definition, these events are unpredictable and occur erratically, making it very difficult for the lone ethnographic researcher (in particular) to be in the ‘right place at the right time’, to undertake data collection. This was well demonstrated during my doctoral research and later, in the DASH study (perhaps trying to observe emergency interactions across three sites in a 20 mile radius was a little ambitious!), where I attempted to observe patient/family/professional decision making regarding the administration of thrombolytic therapy. Given unlimited resources, I would like to expand the ethnographic work undertaken in my PhD to include other emergency research situations, in order to compare and contrast these scenarios and the associated behaviours of clinicians, patients and their families, when faced with a decision about research participation in the emergency environment. However, this would require either a team of ethnographers available to provide 24 hour on-call facility, or a TARDIS for transportation of the lone researcher – a requisition that might not go down well with the finance department!

A TARDIS - essential research kit for the ethnographer?

So, until time travel becomes a realistic and affordable possibility, I would love to replicate, in the UK, the ethnographic work undertaken by Lesley A. Sharp in the U.S., and presented in her book, Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies and the Transformed Self. I hope that my current work developing funding applications for social sciences research in transplantation will support and facilitate at least some part of this.

2. If you could poach a piece of research from one of your colleagues, which and whose would you pick and why?
For the purposes of answering this question I have chosen to interpret the word ‘colleagues’ in its broadest sense, i.e. other researchers. Apart from the aforementioned work by Lesley Sharp, I also covet the work of Roberto Abadie, who explores the emergence of ‘professional guinea pigs’, individuals who have made a ‘career’ out of serial participation in clinical trials for financial gain. Again, a TARDIS would be useful to take me back to the period immediately prior to the now notorious Northwick Park incident (TGN1412 – ‘We saw human guinea pigs explode’), to enable me to explore the existence and experiences of ‘professional guinea pigs’ here in the UK, before and after this unfortunate event.

3. If you could study and/or work at any university in the world where would you go?
I confess to being something of a ‘home bird’ and therefore thought that I would struggle with this question, however, a couple of places might lure me out of my comfort zone. Purely for personal reasons, and based on a sense of familiarity, I would love to live and work in either Edinburgh or Glasgow. I have no familial or historical links to either as far as I am aware, but always feel a strong sense of belonging when I’m there – hardly an ‘academic’ basis for upping sticks though.

My other choice however, would be much more rooted in my academic interests – research and clinical ethics. In 2007, as part of my doctoral training, I attended a week long intensive bioethics course at The Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. The Institute is renowned as the home of the 'four principles approach’ to medical ethics, sometimes referred to as ‘The Georgetown Mantra’. During this course I had the opportunity to listen to presentations by the authors of this work, Tom Beauchamp and Jim Childress (during which, I should make clear, they emphasised that they had never intended that autonomy be privileged above the other principles!). I attended seminars, lectures and workshops with other eminent ethicists, familiar to me from my reading including Ed Pellegrino, Bob Veatch, Madison Powers, Maggie Little, Ruth Faden and John Keown and would love to return to further immerse myself in this fascinating topic.

Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University

Academic pedigree aside, aesthetically also, both Georgetown and Washington itself, are fantastic locations with splendid attractions. More practically, the grid system (consisting of letters and numbers and thus even simpler than other states), means that even the most geographically challenged individual (i.e. me!) can run, walk and generally mobilise without the need of a Hansel and Gretel style trail of breadcrumbs – quite important for someone who can (and indeed has) get lost in the next street!

Now all I need is my Fairy Godmother, with her “I’ll give you three wishes” routine….

Three questions

Posted by Jean Adams

Editor's note: Earlier this year, Heather Yoeli suggested a little quiz of three questions. This post is another entry for the quiz. If you want to play, just get in touch.

1. In an entirely hypothetical scenario in which time, money and skill were no object and you could research absolutely anything at all, what would you choose?

I am pretty sure that I am very glad that my research interests are inequalities in health and health behaviours, and food policy and marketing. I really don’t think that I would rather be doing anything else. But maybe that’s some sort of avoidance/denial problem. Together the general topics of my research encompass ensuring that people can be as healthy as they want to be, that society is fair, and that multinational capitalism is not allowed to ride roughshod over the health of the population. Obviously I am biased, but these seem important to me.

What sometimes dissatisfies me is not the topic of my research, but the day-to-day work that I do and the impact it has. When I am embroiled in public health research with very clear policy implications, I am jealous of the people who get to do data analysis all day. When I spend my days immersed in Stata, I get frustrated that I am playing intellectual games with data rather than changing the world. Whenever I try and change the world, I get frustrated by how hard it is and think that perhaps being an academic is not the right way to go about it. Perhaps I should be a politician? Or a teacher? Or maybe an outdoor ed instructor?

Maybe I should be an outdoor ed instructor?

2. If you could poach a piece of research from one of your colleagues, which and whose would you pick and why?

On the days that I am jealous of the data-fiends, I want a birth cohort of my very own to play with – and probably one bigger that the one I do have access to. But mostly I love the simple studies that tell a good story well. George Davey-Smith’s analysis of historical social inequalities in life expectancy – demonstrated by correlating length of life recorded on gravestones with height of memorial obelisk in Glasgow graveyards. Steve Cummins’ exploration of social differences in exposure to obesogenic environments – a study of the density of McDonald’s restaurants. Mark Petticrew’s analysis of tobacco industry documents exposing the manipulation of scientific agendas by the tobacco industry to deflect attention away from the harms of smoking. There are flaws in all of these pieces of work, and in all cases the true situation is much more complicated than depicted in the study, but I enjoy the simple exemplar that makes a valuable point well.

There is also a special place in my heart for the prospective cohort study of teaspoon disappearance.

3. If you could study and/or work at any university in the world, where would you go?
The answer to this question seems to depend on a combination of where I would most like to live, who  I would most like to work with, and which universities have I heard the least horrendous rumours about on working conditions and treatment of staff .

So working backwards, let’s start by just not talking about the rumours of universities who seem to have markedly different criteria for promotion to professor for men and women, who never issue contracts beyond three years, and who are so focused on REF returns they ditch anyone without four 4* papers.

Let’s move quickly on to who I want to work with. I only ever want to work with people who are fun, bright and enthusiastic. People who wont let me cut corners when I'm bored of a piece of work and want to move on. People who challenge me to think in new ways. People who keep me grounded in what really matters. I have lots of these colleagues at Newcastle and across Fuse. I suspect that universities attract them.

And finally, where do I want to live. I have always wanted to live nearer to the mountains. But I can only speak English and don’t feel this is likely to change soon. So the Rockies, the Appalachians, maybe the White Mountains, New Zealand, that sort of thing. I miss Scotland in a non-specific, it’s just the place that feels most like home, sort of way. So Edinburgh or Glasgow would also be fine – and even they are nearer my mountains than Newcastle. I guess in an ideal world, Boston or Vancouver – good universities, good mountains, haven’t heard any bad rumours, but haven’t gone searching for them either.

This blog needs a meme

Posted by Heather Yoeli

We’ve been discussing on here for a while how we’d like to make this blog a more interactive. So… does anyone fancy a little quiz? Ten years or so ago, endless mini self-created interview questionnaires were bouncing around Blogspot and MySpace and LiveJournal as a sort of forerunner to LOLcats, bronies, Ridiculously Photogenic Guy and other such memes. But I always quite liked the quizzy type format as a fun way to get to know people.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's quiz time

The premise of this quizlet is that, whereas we all love public health research (well, I do anyway) we tend to spend a lot of our time focusing on single aspects of specific research projects, and public health is a broad and exciting field and we (or is it just me?) sometimes wonder what colour the grass is on the other side. So, here are three questions. You can answer them as a comment to this blogpost, or you can submit your own blogpost based on them. You can add questions too, and nominate people you’d like to answer them.

OK: the questions…

1. In an entirely hypothetical scenario in which time, money and skill were no object and you could research absolutely anything at all, what would you choose?

2. If you could poach a piece of research from one of your colleagues, which and whose would you pick and why?

3. If you could study and/or work at any university in the world, where would you go?

Right. Shall I go first?

1. In an entirely hypothetical scenario in which time, money and skill were no object and you could research absolutely anything at all, what would you choose?

I would seek to render the anopheles mosquito completely extinct, thereby eradicating malaria. Malaria is one of the most under-resourced and under-researched challenges to global public health, affecting as many as quarter of a billion people across the world each year and killing up to a million, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa. I have no idea how one would even begin to approach such a task, and am aware that there are cleverer people than I already out there working on it. But thinking entirely hypothetically, that’s what I’d do.

2. If you could poach a piece of research from one of your colleagues, which and whose would you pick and why?I’d pinch Monique Lhussier’s PhD. Monique starts out looking like a rather mainstream qualitative interviewer thinking about quality of life in multiple sclerosis, and then she starts watches Pinocchio. She makes intriguing observations about the whole concept of quality of life within a postmodern framework, considering one of the many paradigms or constructs which public health tends never to question. Monique clearly has significantly more brain cells than I do, but I’m nevertheless wondering if I could slip a few quotes from Bart Simpson into my thesis.

3. If you could study and/or work at any university in the world, where would you go? Somewhere hot and sunny and dry. Many many things attracted me to Northumbria, but the weather was not one of them…


Now, over to you. Please join in.