On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 7:06 PM, malcolm McCallum <[email protected]> wrote: > This entire commentary is actually a criticism of our lack of > replication by multiple researchers. When a study comes out, it needs > to be reinvestigated by others, not just accepted. Take a landmark > paper, hand it to an MS student and have them redo the study and then > add a follow up twist. This is simply not done enough today.
I wonder if this is related to the apparent decline in the numbers of MS students, as opposed to PhD students, from whom more originality is expected. I was discouraged from pursuing an MS and ended up straight out of undergrad, like many grad students in my program. (We had more PhD students than MS students.) This worked out well for me, but I wonder about the larger consequences. -- ------------- Jane Shevtsov, Ph.D. Mathematical Biology Curriculum Writer, UCLA co-founder, www.worldbeyondborders.org "In the long run, education intended to produce a molecular geneticist, a systems ecologist, or an immunologist is inferior, both for the individual and for society, than that intended to produce a broadly educated person who has also written a dissertation." --John Janovy, Jr., "On Becoming a Biologist"
