The Emerging Scholars Blog

In addition to the presentation on "Seeking Other Earths: Exoplanets and the Significance of Life," conference participants had the opportunity to visit the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center. The above photo is of "a small portion of one of the largest-seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula." It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (developed and serviced by NASA-Goddard), http://hubble.nasa.gov/.

The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) has just begun to post audio podcasts of the talks from their 65th Annual Meeting:  Science, Faith, and Public Policy (Catholic University in America, Washington, D.C.).  I’d encourage you to check out their library.

Three presentations which I found of particular value and commend to you are …

• Experiences of a Scientist-Christian in the Washington Fishbowl
• An Introduction to a Systematic Theology of Medicine
• Seeking Other Earths: Exoplanets and the Significance of Life

If you have comments on any of these presentations, please post them here.  If you’d prefer a private on-line discussion group on one of these presentations, let me know.

Note 1: Files of many of the presentation slides will also be posted on the ASA site. We’ll keep you up-to-date.  In addition, interviews of several ASA presenters are in process for posting on the ESN blog.  As you may remember, we already have posted

• Interview: Ted Davis, the Story of a Historian of Science (21.208) and History of Science Recommendations from Ted Davis
• Interview: Jimmy Lin, Medical and Scientific Doxologist

Note 2:  If you’re a student in the sciences (or interested in the sciences), don’t miss the ASA’s special student rate of $20 a year. To learn more about the benefits of membership click here.  Might make a good item to request as a birthday or Christmas gift. Just an idea ;-)

Note 3:  ESN’s looking forward to more conversations on the relationship of science-faith on the blog AND at next year’s ASA mtgs, which will be hosted by North Central College, in the Chicago area, July 29 – Aug 1, 2011. Mark your calendars!

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. Who pays for higher education, in the U.S. and around the world? Scott Jaschik interviews (by email) the authors of Financing Higher Education Worldwide (D. Bruce Johnstone & Pamela N. Marcucci. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) in Financing Higher Education Worldwide (Inside Higher Ed. 6/24/2010).

2. Who pays for continuing education in the medical community? The question being explored in this article extends beyond the medical community and various related research fields. What does it mean to be truly free from [industry] bias? How does someone in a field which involves the application of research in real world contexts avoid flirting with becoming a mouthpiece of industry? Do you agree with Dr. Francis S. Collins, N.I.H director,” who criticized the move as a “breathtaking sweep to squash something that is really important to us, which is the science that’s going on in the private sector.”

Dr. James O. Woolliscroft, dean of Michigan’s medical school, said leading faculty members “wanted education to be free from bias, to be based on the best evidence and a balanced view of the topic under discussion.”

While the financing in question amounts to as much as $1 million a year at Michigan, commercial payments for industry speakers and courses nationwide come to about $1 billion, nearly half the total expenditure for such courses.

The debate over whether the medical profession should develop an industry-free model of postgraduate education is a delicate one. A conference at Georgetown University on Friday, called “Prescription for Conflict,” will highlight the arguments on both sides through presentations by federal health officials, professors from leading medical schools, hospital executives and a Senate investigator. — Natasha Singer & Duff Wilson. Debate Over Industry Role in Educating Doctors. NY Times. 6/23/2010.

3. What is the cost of For-Profit Education? New Grilling of For-Profits Could Turn Up the Heat for All of Higher Education (Paul Basken. Chronicle of Higher Education. 6/22/2010). Interesting case. Worth following the discussion Washington, D.C. How do Emerging Scholars intersect with the changing field of higher education?

Click “Read more” to read about Wendell Berry, social media, and UK basketball.  Read the rest of this entry »

After a bit of a delay, we are continuing our series of interviews from Jubilee with a conversation with Jimmy Lin, an MD/PhD student at Johns Hopkins. Jimmy describes himself as “medical and scientific doxologist” — in fact, even his Twitter handle is @doxologist. At Jubilee, Jimmy presented several seminars about being a Christian in the sciences and medicine. I had met Jimmy online through ESN, so I was very happy to have the chance to meet him and his wife in person. Be sure to check out our previous interviews with Derek Melleby and David Naugle.

Jimmy Lin, medical and scientific doxologist

Micheal Hickerson: You are doing a lot of different degrees. You are in an MD program, a PhD program, and you mentioned you are in seminary…

Jimmy Lin: I am doing four degrees concurrently, the MD/PhD [at Johns Hopkins], the masters in arts religion at Reformed Theological Seminary, and a masters in health sciences at the School of Public Health.

MH:Why did you decide to do so many different degrees at the same time, and how are you doing so many different degrees at the same time?

JL: It all started because I am very interested in bringing the discoveries of science and seeing it applied to the cure of human diseases or the welfare of humans in general. The MD/PhD is a very established program that I applied to and was accepted. It’s a great program. That’s where I started.

My research interest is computational biology specifically using the computer to do genomics work in cancer. That requires a lot of specific information which is in the field called bioinformatics. It’s not offered as part of the PhD program. My PhD is in pure biology, so that’s why I did the additional masters, to acquire those skills in bioinformatics.

In addition, the theology degree — I felt that I was very lacking in the field. I was reading so much about it anyway, but I was lacking formalized, systematic learning about these topics. That’s why I started in a seminary classes — and then got addicted. It was so much fun to have these top scholars come tell you what to read, teach you what they have learned. That’s why I pursued it, and my church was very supportive of it, so that’s why I do all that.

I think I do it out of love. I love learning and I love all the aspects of it.

How do I do it? That’s a good question. The medical degree is a very time intensive degree. Usually medical students spend 60 to 100 hours a week of studying and learning, whereas in graduate school [for the PhD], you are a lot more flexible. In terms of time, it’s less. The minimum is 40 hours, though people do spend a little bit more.

For example, during my PhD years, I could take [the theology courses]. Most of my weekends are free and I have a lab on weekends, and that’s when I take my seminary classes. During the PhD years, it was easier to take the additional classes then. Now I am going back to medical school, and I won’t be able to do that because the time commitments are so large for medical school.

MH: One of the things I was also very interested in, is you call yourself a doxologist. What’s the full term you used in your Jubilee bio?

JL: Medical and scientific doxologist.

MH: How did you decide on that term and what does it mean to you? Read the rest of this entry »

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. New online journal for student research: The Chronicle reports on Student Pulse, a new online journal for student research. Some good points from the Chronicle’s commenters about copyright and usage issues, but still an interesting and inspiring idea for sharing early academic work.

2.  Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally (Natalie Angier, NY Times, February 1, 2010).  Leaning forward with anticipation regarding what we might learn from the immensely popular field called embodied cognition or reclining (even if only a little bit) and giving it a quizzical look?

3.   Educators Mull How to Motivate Professors to Improve Teaching (David Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2010). Any suggestions or encouraging case studies to share?

4.  Teaching Matters: Rethinking the Hybrid Course (Steve Fox, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 31, 2010).  What do you think of Fox’s suggestions regarding Hybrid courses?  Have you taken or taught any Hybrid courses?  What recommendations would you add, in particular with regard to the management of a classroom blog?  Any encouraging case studies to share?

Books

5. “The most important person in the world”: I (Mike) was not familiar with the HeLa cell line until I read Dwight Garner’s NYTimes review of the new book by Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Ms. Lacks, an uneducated, African American Virginia tobacco farmer who died of cervical cancer at the age of 31, contributed the famously immortal cells that have

helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Skloot writes. HeLa cells were used to learn how nuclear bombs affect humans, and to study herpes, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS. They were sent up in the first space missions, to see what becomes of human cells in zero gravity.

The problem? Ms. Lacks never gave permission for her cells to be used for scientific experiments, and researchers continued to draw samples from her descendants without explaining why, one part of the tragic legacy of American medical treatment of African Americans. From Garner’s review:

As one of Mrs. Lacks’s sons says: “She’s the most important person in the world, and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”

This looks like an important – and discussion-provoking – book.