junipergreen

The blogs of the scientists who lived on fake Mars for a year in Hawaii make it clear how important food is for astronaut's mental health as well as physical nutritional needs: https://walking-on-red-dust.com/2016/06/18/domemade-food/

I'm personally glad the kitchen gets cleaned daily, having worked places where employees were responsible for keeping it clean. That was a disaster.

I feel like wiping the desks down weekly would be enough. Maybe there's a reason behind it. Keeping cold from spreading around? Who knows.

The results of that study do not surprise me at all. At my company, there are no rules about clutter, but the cleaners wipe down everyone's desk every day as best they can. I'm a clutter-free type of person: my desk has nothing but my monitor/keyboard, phone, lamp, a notepad, and a small potted plant. When I come in and everything's been moved a few inches (like the plant all the way to the edge of the desk or phone right up against the monitor) it drives me insane. And then I feel bad, because someone cleans my fucking desk everyday and I just get annoyed about it.

Studies have shown a major factor in young people's likeliness of going into science is whether their families think highly of science and science careers (regardless of parents' education levels). I'd imagine the ivory-tower nature of science can contribute a class divides in this respect as well.

At least that kind of thing doesn't happen today. Take this study that says eating lots of pasta doesn't make you fat. Oh wait. (Note the two funding sources in the right-hand column)

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/inmn-pin06301...

I'm curious. Does this apply to just French journals? Or just French scientists? How would that work with journals based in other countries? Or multi-national research collaborations?

The word "accident" is really indicative of the culture. Words shape how we think about things. As someone who's lived and cycled in both the US and Western Europe, I can say that the level of personal responsibility W. European drivers seemed to feel for not killing me was much higher. US drivers will zip past me at high speeds with a foot of clearance. It makes you feel like they think hitting you would be similar running over a squirrel. Of course most drivers who hit cyclists feel absolutely distraught after it happens--they're not monsters. But it baffles me how many Americans seemed surprised that could happen until it does.

Daunting as this list seems, of these points and fixes are of course interrelated. Even small tweaking can bring big improvements. Take open science. Improvements to funding are needed to promote long-term projects, but in absence of those kinds of grants, open science is all the more important. Sharing partial results and details of studies that might not make it into publications leaves a baton for others to pick up and make the most of their limited funding time.

And speaking of open science, making research public as it's happening (not even results, just what you're studying) can help prevent redundant concurrent studies in multiple labs and facilitate collaboration, also making the most of the limited funding scientists have.

Yes, I think the general public sees science as an unstoppable, infallible force. Most scientists I know already know and talk about these problems (though I agree this is the most comprehensive, coherent presentation of them I've seen). I hope articles like this help non-scientists realize the that the institution of science is fragile, and must be fostered through innovation, funded, and actively protected.

Yeah, meant the bit about poor teenagers being reliable, because they need the jobs. Didn't mean to agree with the sentiment that middle-class kids are unreliable. Most probably aren't. Though I myself once flaked on a job in college to spend the summer in the city my boyfriend lived in. So guess I'm anecdotal evidence they can be. I found another job in the other city, but likely wouldn't have given up a sure-thing to take that risk if I hadn't had a safety net.

This is absolutely true. People, especially people in the position to be hiring others have some truly classist concepts of "values." Many think poor people are dishonest, likely to steal, lazy. Total rubbish.

In the academic, Marxist sense, yes. But I was using the term "working class" rather as a synonym for minimum wage, blue collar workers, or in this case teenagers whose parents have those jobs. The point really is that middle class kids (like you were) can get jobs (like you did), whereas poor kids often can't.

"And they may face discrimination based on race, class or other factors."

In urban areas, where access to transportation and availability of jobs is better, this is really the crux of the issue. Employers (often unfairly) view middle class kids as more reliable. So even if they think working class kids will work harder (another common view in my experience), they see the middle class teenagers as less of a risk.

For regular, consistent productivity (not just the occasional project over a day or two) I have to change my physical environment. This means having an office I go to (or library when I was a student) that--and this is key--is far away enough from my home that it's not convenient to just leave and go home when I'm sick of working. It has to be more of a hassle to go home than to just do another half hour of work (and then another, and another, and so on).

Exposure to news from outlets I don't regularly read.