David Van Valen
@davidvanvalen
Assistant Professor at Caltech
Agree with this. But also, giving good grades for bad work is becoming standard in the STEM degrees at the most selective US undergraduate programs as well.
Humanities aren't inherently easier than STEM. America just uses humanities as a dumping ground for our lower-skilled students, because the subjective nature of the grading makes it easier for teachers to get away with giving students good grades for shitty work.
It's official. I'm happy to announce that I have been promoted to Associate Member @MSKCancerCenter. It is sincere when I say that this would not have been possible w/o the incredible work of the members of my lab. In fact, exciting news about them coming soon. Stay tuned.
“I have four brothers and I’ve jumped into all sorts of things during my life. Learning new things has always been fun for me.” 2018 chemistry laureate @francesarnold received the #NobelPrize for her work using evolution to make better enzymes. Today she celebrates her birthday!
#OnThisDay in 1890, a half-dozen white men assassinated F.M.B. “Marsh” Cook after he criticized the pending Constitutional Convention for its plot to “restore” white supremacy and strip Black Mississippians of the right to vote. He had announced that he would run as a white…
Albert Einstein defying the prevailing racial climate at the time by visiting Lincoln University, Pennsylvania — the first degree-granting black college in the US — to teach a class. He was an outspoken civil rights advocate for black Americans, 1946.
1/ Better late than never, here’s a long thread of threads summarizing our MOSAIC preprint. If you’re curious about the process by which a new microscope is conceived and brought into the world, this is the thread for you. If you’ve come for eye candy, there’s plenty of that too…
Data leakage is a common problem in AI. It is analogous to ‘teaching to the test’ and leads to overestimation of model capabilities. This article reports that leakage affected 294 papers across 17 scientific fields.
On this day in 1944, 27-year-old Irene Morgan was traveling by bus from Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland, when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. calendar.eji.org/racial-injusti…
We have developed DELIVR, a user-friendly deep-learning pipeline for automatically detecting and analyzing cells from whole-brain images to map neuronal activity via cFOS. DELIVR uses virtual reality to substantially accelerate the generation of training data and is accessible to…
Columbia canceled my class on Race and Media. But I decided to teach it anyway. So I built a school, instead. 500+ students online and in person. My first independently operated course and lecture begins TONIGHT! WE MOVE!! resistancesummerschool.com
During my seminars for young scientists on how to advance their careers, I talk about grants, papers, and hiring. But my most important piece of advice is often the most surprising: take care of yourselves. We are always focused on the next experiment or publication that we…
Did you know the desire to escape slavery, was once classified as a mental illness called Drapetomania in 1851. Black people were considered mentally ill for refusing to live in bondage.
BioEmu now published in @ScienceMagazine !! What is BioEmu? Check out this video: youtu.be/LStKhWcL0VE?si…
Today in the journal Science: BioEmu from Microsoft Research AI for Science. This generative deep learning method emulates protein equilibrium ensembles – key for understanding protein function at scale. msft.it/6010S7T8n
Very important piece and missing voice! ISRAELI TARGETING of SCIENTISTS AND UNIVERSITIES IN IRAN AND GAZA MUST ALSO BE CONDEMNED! nature.com/articles/d4158…
On this day in 1954, weeks after Brown v. Board of Education, at Governor Gordon Persons's urging, the Alabama Education Board voted unanimously to continue enforcing segregation. calendar.eji.org/racial-injusti…
Thomas Jefferson was responsible for the largest expansion of slavery in history. After the collapse of the Virginia tobacco industry, Virginia slaveholders turned to slave trading as their primary source of revenue. But Virginia slave prices were being undercut by Carolina rice…
Thomas Jefferson is legit top 10 worst people in recorded history. Says a lot about Western culture that he's celebrated as a luminary.
My lab’s 5-year NIH R01 grant, awarded to study gene therapy for hearing loss, was abruptly terminated. I want to share how this action has been incredibly harmful and disruptive, not just to my lab, but to the scientific process itself. 1/15