Früher war alles besser

This is the kind of experience that is so cliched that people usually dismiss it as fiction. 

My wife, child and I were standing at the Bochum train station yesterday morning, on our way to Berlin, and we got talking to an old couple. About five minutes into the conversation, the woman started telling us about how bad times had gotten to be: she had her money stolen by three black women. The husband (he had served in the German army during WW2) piped in with a wistful smile: "you know, that was the great thing about Adolf's time; such a thing would have never happened." Burn those mean green mothers from outer space.

Releasing published data

In my so-far short career in science, I have asked a grand total of four people to release their published data or a model that they had written. Of these four, only one gave me the data. Of the others, the one whom I asked for a model refused, saying that model was over 10 years old and he could not easily find the code. Another said the same for their data (which was published in 2002): lost, or hard to recover. A third did not answer the email (although they did answer another one, so my email probably did reach them), which I take to be a refusal.

I wonder if this is normal? Why do people not release their data? Why/how do they lose old data? It's a mystery that something so important as data, or a painstakingly built model, can get lost so easily.

How to run universities (German Uni Presidents, please read)

How to run universities:

http://www.dcscience.net/?p=182

Germany for Germans

Here is a great website with some interesting statistics, unfortunately old and outdated:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/Germany.htm

If someone knows any more recent reports I would be interested to know about them.

My experiences in setting up and managing a psycholinguistic lab

I have found some good advice here.

One important issue that I found nothing on is authorship and author-order criteria in psycholinguistics and linguistics. A useful discussion appears here and here. Some of my lab members have been assigned the task of preparing official guidelines for my group, which I will publish on this blog once they are available.

A further interesting issue is research-project management, but I haven't found any interesting discussions yet.

Should I be a fox or a hedgehog?

Should one be a fox or a hedgehog?

I keep getting berated by senior scientists more experienced than me to become a hedgehog (in fact, I was recently summoned by the Ministry of Education in Brandenburg--my immediate employers--and sternly told to pursue depth rather than breadth). Here are my views on this:

1. Of the total number of hedgehogs out there, how many are at the same status as Einstein The Ur-Hedgehog? I would say, very close to zero.
2. Of the total number of foxes out there, how many have led others to make hedgehog-level advances? I would guess, not close to zero.

But I'm a fox because it's fun, it's what I am, and because I think I make more important discoveries that way than by being a hedgehog. Let others be hedgehogs and let others get the girl and the money. I'm here to enjoy what I do. I hope the Ministry reads my blog.

Scientists admit mistakes?

Scientists admit mistakes--no other profession or calling does that anymore, it seems. Scientists can not only be wrong but can be shown to be wrong very publicly. You examine evidence, you put together a hypothesis that seems the most likely, or least wrong. Then the tests come back and say, "Sorry guys."
New Yorker, July 9 and 16, 2007, p. 79

I had to laugh out loud at this. Or maybe I am just not in science and I just think I am.