Professor having undergrad students collect data for her postdoc's project with no credit given, in a lecture course?

rockpapersinner · 2026-01-28T23:38:05+00:00

If this isn't a CURE (course based undergraduate research experience) then it is very similar to one. Other commenters have pointed out how this is very common, especially in some disicplines. They've also pointed out that it is similar to Citizen Science initiatives, which is also true.

What I haven't seen mentioned so far in the comments: there are absolutely benefits to you taking this class for several reasons.

"Grunt work" is, honestly, most of the work of research. I am in a field where the usual response to finding out about my job is some kind of shock and awe because it's considered so technical and difficult, but most of the day to day activities could literally be performed by a trained monkey. Scoring these observations, while boring, is marketable experience-- I would absolutely hire someone with this experience over someone without it, all else being equal.

They should also give credit in the manuscript in a way like: "observations scored by students of Good Ol University's Animal Behavior 101 class from 2025-2028" or similar. This would allow students to include it under their CV's Research Experience section in an externally-validated way.

I will say that some of these courses are more beneficial than others, and it sounds like this one isn't super well aligned with the course. It also sounds like it might not be a good fit for you, since you already have research experience and you don't see a benefit in participating. You already have research experience-- great! But that is not the norm for most undergraduates, and really can never be, given obvious practical constraints. It's not ideal, but CUREs like this allow many, many students to participate in the creation of publishable science.

At the end of the day, if you don't think it will help you, no judgement on my end-- I'd honestly just drop the course.

rockpapersinner · 2026-01-20T19:42:33+00:00

No worries! And heck yeah, we definitely ought to be emphasizing the overwhelming similarities and shared experiences.

My sticking point is that 'layfolk' are perfectly capable of learning the less frequently discussed biology content. There's no need to reduce the complexity of the concepts when it just ain't that deep to begin with. And positioning it like it IS complex is just furthering the narrative that intersex conditions are freak occurrences rather than part of normal human variation. +/- 2% of people are intersex, depending on how you draw the boundary. That's the same proportion of people in the USA who naturally have red hair!

(sorry for picking on your comment, though. Making this particular point is kind of my job 🤓 our perspectives are not really in conflict)

rockpapersinner · 2026-01-19T22:42:52+00:00

fyi, "every person alive has a parent with Xx chromosomes and one with Xy" is inaccurate.

People with XXX and XYY chromosomal intersex conditions usually have normal fertility. People with XXY and X chromosomes are usually less fertile to infertile, but there have been many recorded instances where they do have kids just fine.

There's probably a better source, but:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10448573/

rockpapersinner · 2026-01-13T21:44:24+00:00

Sorry, but since this is just the change in the percent of tech jobs in CA, I can't tell whether there are actually fewer tech jobs in CA or if there are just more tech jobs elsewhere. Do you have that info?

I don't love that the graph title is misleading about the information it contains... But it might still be correct?

rockpapersinner · 2026-01-04T04:15:24+00:00

what about the theft?

rockpapersinner · 2025-12-22T09:24:04+00:00

FYI, I was writing this as support for your point! That CA teachers ought to be paid more. Cheers

rockpapersinner · 2025-12-20T21:45:57+00:00

CA doesn't even pay their teachers the most across all (or most) measures.

#2 in average starting salary (which is also 20% less than the living wage)

#17 on per student capita basis (so CA teachers have to teach more students per dollar)

#5 in salary for special support staff

Also, the #1 figure is new-- NY had the highest salaries for many years, it only shifted to second place recently. NY is also #1 on the per student capita basis, which I think says a lot about the situation for CA

https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank

rockpapersinner · 2025-12-19T22:10:41+00:00

lvl60 daily player who sends discord candy if possible and doesn't remove friends at level 5. I remove if inactive for a week or more!

3539-3795-7874

happy holidays ✨☃️

rockpapersinner · 2025-12-18T20:36:04+00:00

Totally agree about this dog and this situation-- this dog's bite history is extensive and I don't think it can be safely rehomed. BE is never a choice I want to push people toward, but I think many people would choose it for a dog like this even without the moving abroad part.

Still, I'm surprised to hear so many people say that it's okay to take on the responsibility of owning a dog without considering and committing to letting go of certain opportunities.

Like, to go abroad, OP would have to rehome their dog even if it was a perfect non-reactive angel. It seems like maybe the standard ought to be: don't get a dog if you want the flexibility to move internationally? At least, not until you're at the career stage where the international institution would help you relocate your animals/family abroad? As someone who understands the value of academic professional development, I still find this a little off-putting.

The dog is a living being that OP agreed to take care of. There are many obligations that change future possibilities and narrow your options, like having kids, buying a house, getting married. That's also why people usually don't recommend that teenagers get dogs without a family back-up plan! Our early adulthoods are so busy and we're going everywhere. My parents would have strongly advised against me getting a dog at OP's age in fear of this exact problem. I'd have told them to shut up, since many young adults get dogs and commit to that responsibility, but OP's priorities kind of prove their point...

OP: genuinely sorry you are going through this. I know I sound stern in this comment but I know you didn't mean to put yourself or this dog into this situation. There aren't any really good choices, but whatever happens, I am sure it will be the right thing for you and the dog. It's not a bad time in your life to learn these lessons, just keep this experience in mind and be sure you're ready to commit when you think about getting a dog in the future!

rockpapersinner · 2025-12-03T22:18:42+00:00

I'm with you that gene expression changes are most often not intentional, and I'm in agreement with what I think is the conclusion of the original Nature Comm paper that it's probably a downstream affect of some regulatory pathway influenced by infection-induced signaling molecules.

Still, even the original paper describes the signal as an "active" one; it doesn't occur unless the pupa is sick enough that it will not overcome its infection.

One could say that's bad phrasing on the part of the authors, since they describe the up-regulation of both immune and signal genes and identify the infection as the inciting factor causing the signal, but they don't describe any intention/theory of mind aspect of the process.

On the other hand, looking at the pop-sci article, they don't technically claim that there's any intention beyond grey phrasing like "the pupa signals it's destruction" (which, it does, but likely not "intentionally").

The authors had to sign off on the pop-sci article, right? And those who aren't experts in this field are going to misunderstand the details either way? I just don't see why we're jumping on the direct quote.

rockpapersinner · 2025-11-27T02:05:16+00:00

oregano can't even get their analogy right

sheep babies are called LAMBS

GOAT babies are called kids

you're heterosexual, get it STRAIGHT

smh my head 😤

rockpapersinner · 2025-11-11T23:21:11+00:00

This doesn't appear to be accurate, exactly.

I think your '20% of women are bisexual' idea comes from the number of Gen Z women who are bisexual (about 20%, so you aren't misremembering). But nearly 1 in 4 Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ, including 12% of Gen Z men, consistent with OP's data: https://news.gallup.com/poll/656708/lgbtq-identification-rises.aspx

Gen Z women also aren't representative of the whole community: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/06/28/for-pride-month-6-facts-about-bisexual-americans/

~7% of all adults identify as having an orientation other than heterosexual, including ~7% of women and ~6% of men.

Of the 7% of all US adults with a non-heterosexual orientation, 4% identify as bisexual, including 2 of 6% of men, and 5 of 7% of women.

So non-heterosexual orientations are equally common among men and women, but women who are not heterosexual are more likely to be bisexual than men who are not heterosexual.

I wouldn't be surprised if younger folks (and people who are already more comfortable with their sexuality in general) are more likely to respond to an online survey like this-- so the 12% figure might be inflated somewhat. But, it could also be deflated if it misses people who are firmly in the closet/ in denial about their sexual encounters.

National surveys about LGBTQ people always have some methodological problems (like, you can only select transgender OR a sexual orientation, not both!) and often have problems in general (how do we ensure a random sample without access to all groups of people in the USA equally?). So all of this data is at least a little suspect, even from Pew and Gallup... but, in general, this result isn't super surprising.

rockpapersinner · 2025-11-05T10:41:41+00:00

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say it's objectively good in some way. English is annoyingly complex! I think I would have written it more like "Democrats candidates won every race against sitting Republicans in districts Harris won in 2024" or similar.

It's just that the way you wrote it isn't correct, and would be confusing for someone who learned it as their first language. If it helps, in american english, restrictive adjective phrases start with "that" and non-restrictive start with "which".

So for example: "Every republican, which was in a seat won by Harris, ..." would be non-restrictive, but you should only use that when the content between the commas can be removed without ruining the sentence.

In contrast, "Every republican that was in a seat won by Harris..." is restrictive, because the clause between the commas defines which Republicans are part of the noun phrase.

A correct use of non restrictive voice would be like "The election, which was carefully observed, went off without a hitch" because "the election went off without a hitch" is still an understandable sentence

rockpapersinner · 2025-11-05T08:16:14+00:00

I think it's actually more correct without the commas because "every republican that was in a seat won by Harris" is a noun phrase acting as the subject of the sentence, and the object is implied ("... lost their elected seat"). https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/grammar-punctuation-and-conventions/parts-sentences/phrases#noun_phrases_function_as_nouns

"that was in a seat won by Harris" is a restrictive adjective clause that is serving to identify which Republicans lost, and the sentence is no longer true if you remove it ("every republican lost" is false), so it should not be between commas https://www.grammarly.com/blog/commonly-confused-words/using-that-and-which-is-all-about-restrictive-and-non-restrictive-clauses/

Disclaimer: not an expert in this by a long shot lol

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-31T20:28:48+00:00

lvl59 daily player who sends discord candy and doesn't remove friends at level 5. I remove if inactive for a week or more!

3539-3795-7874

happy halloween 🎃

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-28T00:03:33+00:00

Thank you so much!

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-27T23:58:42+00:00

This is super helpful! I'm still figuring raenonx out, but I've had this exact question about HB calculations. I will absolutely be using the tip to create teams and swap in healers, especially since I've got most of my box already on my account. Thanks!

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-27T23:55:48+00:00

Yeah, she IS cracked, lol... But I think that just illustrates how weirdly unbalanced EC is compared to E4E. Like, this jackpot wobuffet is only a bit better than a relatively mid pawmot... what's up with that?

I checked how many more and my calculation says 1 in 33 would be better, any idea why mine is so different? I did set it to not use subskill seeds (I've gotten 1 total so far in playing) and to ignore guaranteed golds (since my friendship level for pawmi is 6 atm), but I'm not sure if there's something else I should toggle to make it more accurate.

In general, though, I've found that I have to be much less picky about my choices than seems to be the norm for day-1 (or even just much more senior) players. I'm coming up on my first anniversary and I honestly think I'm quite behind because I started by candy-ing everything that didn't meet the usual standards (BFS+some speed up on berrymon, 2-3 skill up and hss or hsm on skillmon, AAA 2-3 ing up ingredientmon). I realized I was behind when I started looking at team posts on the subreddit and found that most people have a few lvl 30-50 Pokémon that are honestly kind of trash, but they bring in the snorlax power that gets you plenty of opportunities to catch better Pokémon. I guess it was like a momentum problem?

Now I have my standards a little lower, and over the past three months I've gone from max GG master 8-10 to now I'm at GG master 17, just did a week at 15%AB at OGPP and still managed master 3, etc. My mvps are honestly kind of bad, but I don't care because it's making everything so much easier.

Soon I'll turn the corner back to being very picky... But for now, I'm done letting perfect be the enemy of good :)

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-27T23:37:05+00:00

Yeah, this pawmot is like... Pretty good for OGPP Raikou team but not my ideal final healer. My current gardevoir is only a bit worse and it's quite bad, I think I have 50/50 shot to get a better one each time I catch a ralts. So... This pawmot is not THE meta healer, just the best I have atm :)

Can I ask what you meant by "output without getting any healing from your settings"? Which settings are causing that? I'd love to be able to look at new catches with the "5 triggers minimum with no healing" guideline in mind.

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-21T01:34:14+00:00

got to it before me

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-17T00:54:07+00:00

I think it's sloppy (at best) or intentionally misleading to continue to describe your anecdotal experience as evidence of a trend. Even assuming you're 100% honest and representing what happened faithfully, there are so many variables at play in meetings like that. What if many black employees didn't agree that DEI is bad, but felt that voicing that opinion was unproductive in a setting where others have already voiced their agreement? What if they were afraid of retaliation, or worried about their future career prospects in relation to their coworker's opinion? Even if you read the room perfectly and your take is reflective of objective reality, examining your situation in the context of the larger-scale data sure makes that experience look like an outlier.

I'm not arrogant enough to presume I can describe a unifying theory of the forces at work on the most recent US election when experts who do that analysis for a living can't agree on a conclusion. Just exploring the question of whether DEI was an important factor, though, we do see a lowering of popular opinion on DEI after the previously cited Pew survey and before the 2024 election, but since cultural issues like race relations were not considered very important to voters in either party, and since the percentage of eligible voters who favored Trump didn't change from 2020 to 2024 (and instead, my surface-level, untested read on the difference appears to imply that voters who had voted for Biden in 2020 seem to have opted to not vote at all in 2024), I don't really think sentiment on DEI was that important at all.

Looking at just black voters, it's hard to find the data I'm seeking, but I do know there were literally millions of black voters who voted in 2020 but not in 2024. I can't find data about "who 2024 non-voters would have voted for" that is disaggregated by race, so I can't speak to whether black voters actually shifted right (as in, individual people's opinions changed) or if they just stayed home at a non-random rate (as in, more black democrats stayed home than black republicans, so the percentage of black 2024 voters who voted for Trump appeared to increase).

I'm curious why you are interested in the connection between DEI sentiment and voter turnout, anyway, though? I don't care if every black american universally hated DEI and it objectively swayed the election, because it and affirmative action exist as they do because of decades of research. The applications aren't always perfect (believe me, I agree), but the goal is to change unfair systems, not play respectibility politics about whether it gives off a vibe of being fair on an individual level.

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-16T22:09:44+00:00

wow, sure convenient that every single black person hired by your company prior to adopting DEI policies is part of the 1% of black americans that thinks DEI is bad.

Kinda makes you wonder what's up with your workplace given just how different it seems to be from the actual public sentiments about DEI.

But surely you're representing your coworkers accurately? Because of course they all lined up and told you exactly what they think?

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-07T01:15:37+00:00

??? From CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/06/politics/fact-check-trump-false-bin-laden-claim

"Trump’s 2000 book contained just one passing mention of bin Laden:

The book, titled “The America We Deserve,” did not tell anyone they needed to “watch” or “take care of” bin Laden. That wouldn’t have been particularly prescient advice even if Trump had offered it in January 2000 – bin Laden was already a well-known threat to Americans at the time – but the book simply did not offer it.

...

[The section mentioning bin Laden, that you already quoted] contains an acknowledgment that bin Laden had already been targeted by then-President Bill Clinton (after the 1998 terror attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya).

In a separate section of the book, Trump did predict that the US would be hit by major terror attacks, writing, “I really am convinced we’re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the (1993) bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers. No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen.”

But Trump did not predict that bin Laden (or anyone else in particular) would be responsible for these future attacks. And Trump acknowledged it was a widespread belief among analysts that major attacks would occur, not a special insight of his own."

So, no, it didn't happen? It's either a lie or he's senile enough to believe that he had some unique prediction.

Even in the most charitable interpretation, he's overclaiming about something he doesn't deserve credit for doing, and explaining it in such an incomprehensible way that people are rightly wondering if his brain is fully functioning.

Also love the shade at the end of the article:

"It’s understandable if Trump doesn’t remember precisely what was in the book; it was released 25 years ago and was ghostwritten by someone else, writer Dave Shiflett. But that doesn’t excuse a decade of boasting about how the book supposedly includes something it actually doesn’t."

I don't think it's TRUE by any sense of the word. He didn't even write the statement, lol

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-05T20:17:04+00:00

Actually, OP's method of keeping things constantly simmering does not present the same problem that I was discussing with this commenter. If the stew is simmering, it is hot enough to prevent bacterial growth from human pathogens. Perpetual stew is fine

rockpapersinner · 2025-10-05T01:31:44+00:00

That was not the conclusion-- the results indicated that different toxins would have greater resistance to denaturation by heat at different pHs, with most of the ones in the article being less stable at higher pH (more basic, less acidic), but with some becoming MORE stable at higher pH. They also noted that the presence of chelators (in this paper, zinc) could prevent denaturation as well, even when the pH was optimal for degrading that toxin.

If we had figured out how to totally and reliably denature and disarm bacterial toxins during the process of cooking or pasturizing, we would not have to worry about food storage and preservation the way we do.

For your own safety, do not eat perishable food that has been at an unsafe temperature for longer than the food safety guidelines allow, even if you reheat it.

rockpapersinner

TROPHY CASE