Infomatters

I just finished reading an account of the long battle faced by Abraham Morganteler, a clinical professor at Harvard, to convince others in the medical community that testosterone treatment did not increase risk of prostrate cancer. Turns out that despite decades of teaching otherwise, the ‘basis’ for this claim was a pair of old studies, one flawed, another poorly reported, that most doctors had never read. When conference audiences and publishers gave Morgantaler’s initial contrary results a dismissive but not unscientific response, arguing that his sample was small (true), he gathered more data until this objection could no longer be levied. But the real breakthrough came when he visited the HMS library and in it’s darker recesses pulled out the original papers which had established the original recommendations of the medical profession. Surprise, surprise, the original 1941 piece was built on a sample of three, and two of these were confounded, leaving it to provide but a single data point. The second, a 1980s study, presented what appeared to be solid evidence in the summary which actually was not supported by a closer reading of the full text. And you thought medicine was a science, right? Of course, in many fields there exist ‘classic’ findings which become standard fodder for text books and which students and subsequently professionals never read in the original – such is the price of the explosion in publications. So while it would pay us all to check our sources, what we really need is a tool to help us mine the scientific record intelligently. In the absence of this, we might want to remind people of the importance of records, archives and the academic library.

And in this continuing series, the latest CRA Taulbee Survey on enrollments in CS depts shows a 6.2% rise over the last year. This is the first increase in computer science programs in six years. Before you get too carried away though, the data reveal a couple of related glitches. Batchelor’s degree production is down 10%, while PhD production is up 5.7%. Of course, the gender issues will not change quickly, less than 12% of batchelor’s degrees were awarded to women. The picture is a little more optimistic at the doctoral level where 20% of new PhD’s are female, In sum, current enrollment is comparable to the numbers seen in 1999, after the large spike in the early years of this century. The report suggests we may be at the peak of PhD production this year and should anticipate a decline in the years ahead.

A new feature of this year’s report is the inclusion of data from some of the iSchools. There are some interesting differences between CS and I schools in the data set, eg, iSchools with undergrad programs seem to have twice as many black or African-American students as CS programs. At the masters level, iSchools seem fairly evenly balanced between males and females, while CS and CE programs are typically only 21% female. Given the numbers involved and the differing emphases between CS and iSchools at the Masters level, firm conclusions are difficult to draw. The report itself ends confidently, reporting that CS is now in a position of strength, as long as you don’t consider diversity. Oh well then…..

I confess to feeling a little sorry for the much maligned CiscoFatty who seemingly (does anyone have the facts?) lost her job op at Cisco by issuing the following Tweet:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Not only did a senior Cisco person receive the tweet and respond, asking her ‘who is the hiring manager?’ but the whole story has hit the blogosphere and mainstream media with such force one wonders just what the real problem is here. First, one might read CiscoFatty’s comment in several ways, not just as a dismissive note about Cisco and the dangers of selling one’s soul for corporate reward. It might be a statement about the conflicting nature of the decision to be made, as in, “I have to determine the importance of money over possible job dissatisfaction”, but who wants to give the benefit of the doubt anymore? Second, just what was that Cisco employee doing replying to a tweet when he might have been doing something more productive with his time? I don’t see Cisco as holding any moral high ground here.

The nature of Twitter throws into relief a distinction I sometimes make between communication and information. We all communicate, and most of our communications are meant to be transient and targeted, gone as soon as the recipient’s memory fades. This is the interaction signal of life. Communications become information when they are recorded in a form that makes them reproducible. Twitter sits at that interface, taking the intentionally temporary and rendering it artificially permanent. Soon, there will be need for new apps or new information professionals, the Tweet-curator. I may have to decide if I want to do that for a fatty fee…….not.

Well not quite, but yesterday in the English Carling Cup Final (yes, they really did name the cup after the current sponsor, a maker of dubious lager beer), the match went to penalties and during the few minutes it took both teams to prepare for sudden-death, the Manchester United goalkeeper watched video highlights on a iPod of his opponents’ penalty taking habits. Think this might overload a man at such a time of stress? Seems not. One of the highlights showed a specific player’s preference for shooting to the right and when the same player stepped up to take his kick, that’s where the goalie anticipated and dived, making a crucial save. Who knew Steve Jobs was a Red?

The Daily Texan asked me yesterday to respond to ‘reports’ that heavy usage of social networking sites could prove extremely hazardous to health. The full story is more prosaic but I have to say, I did wonder just how such stories get started. I noted that computers have always been the source of health risks, it’s just the form of computer application that changes. In the 1980s pregnant women were advised not to sit in front of terminals for fear of danger to their unborn children; in the 1990s cell phones were supposed to give you brain tumors and so on. By the time the data catches up, the myth has morphed into something else. Still, the number of ‘friends’ who apparently want me to befriend them on FB is startling, so maybe there is a health problem lurking somewhere. Meanwhile, I suppose if you want to get famous, create a bogus theory about the dangers of iPhones, iTunes or eye-glasses. The downside of this, apart from the complications of establishing causality between online behavior and life outside, is that the fear of hazards can be enough to induce some of the very problems we don’t think exist. Still, if you think the 100 friends you have online are really there when you want to go out for a drink or need a hand painting your basement, you probably have bigger problems. Myth 1-0 Reality.

Rutgers University SCILS is the latest information and library school to announce a name change, on top of McGill’s recent re-titling. The rather ungainly School of Communication, Information & Library Studies will become the (slightly) less ungainly School of Communication and Information. This change has caused more of a tempest in the teapot than usual as evinced by the recent entry in Library Journal which talked of typos, lack of communication and jettisoning. I am rather intrigued by the existence now of several colleges or schools of communication and information as it suggests these fields are converging, though I’d like to hear some explanation from others on how they see this relationship. Communication programs have their own history of mergers, departmental divisions and label confusion, and programs in journalism have been experiencing many problems in recent years so we may be in the midst of larger shifts than are witnessed by the iSchool movement alone. I believe these name-changes are indicative of positive and profound consideration of our disciplines’ coverage and concerns but it’s easy to lose sight of this in the passionate defense of labels that often surround these discussions.

The blog has been compromised recently -I’ll spare you the details but if you were getting the spam, you probably know. The price of blogging is (apparently) eternal vigilance, so no wonder Wired recently declared the medium dead. But it’s been quiet in Info world too, unless you figure that US News and World Reports is conducting another ranking exercise. Despite the apparent anonymity of the process, the organizers wrote to me twice telling me the they had not received my rankings and would I please do it! I hope this means that when they get reviews, they can factor out the self-rankings since each program can rank itself. And you wonder why people take these ranks so seriously?

Speaking of rankings, here’s a new one for the most literate cities in the US. You can break the data down by category to explore the various facets of literacy, and you may be surprised to learn that Plano TX has the most educated adult population in the country, apparently, while libraries seem to thrive in Ohio.

Library Journal released it’s annual salary survey for graduates from ALA-accredited programs and there was the usual mixture of trumpeting and excuses. Regional differences explain most of the variance but of course JESSE was used, as always, as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement from some quarters. San Jose claimed great success but in so doing annoyed Michigan by claiming the wrong tuition rates, resulting in a public airing of indignation and so it goes. The data come from recent grads of all the programs, most of whom (in my experience) just don’t complete the survey. For grads who don’t end up working in libraries, the motivation to complete the LJ survey is hard to assess but I know from our program that returns are low. Since it is often the folks going into these other careers who earn the largest salaries, the resulting data set is limited in value.

The bigger problem here is the continual ranking push that has LIS programs shouting from the rooftops about their ‘rank’ (no matter the scale, the method, or the lack of established correlation between any measure of rank and real program quality). And on top of this, US NEWS has just circulated a survey ranking all LIS programs in which people get to rank their own program! JESSE has become a vehicle for telling everyone else in the tiny community just how important you are, how connected you are or how some minor award given by your friends is really an index of your excellence- all submitted under the pretense that you are just sharing info. The rest of the time it’s an excuse for the true believers, the self-selected protection squad to find some trumped up reason to berate the infliltrators (info-traitors?) from the dark side. Real, substantive discussion among educators has taken a back seat to the shrill shouting. Where are you, Jesse Shera, when we need you most?