Recently I have got the privilege to share my research work with secondary school students. During the talk, it was obvious to me that the younger the students were, the more imaginative the questions that they could come up with and the more fearless they were in asking questions. One reason is that the eduction has often encouraged students to give the “right answer”; otherwise, they will not get good grades. So, when the students are growing up, they quickly learn how to shut up and only seek ways to give the “right answer”. That reminds me of several great talks by Sir Ken Robinson on education, including a TED talk on how schools kill creativity that I shared here before, and an RSA talk on Changing Education Paradigms. The latter is a very thought-provoking talk, and the RSA has made a nicely animated version of the key part:
Just come across these two great TED talks by Ben Goldacre that talks about how the information in scientific literature can be distorted and why not all information that is essential for medical advance can be found in the literature. It is really a flaw in the research system and human nature that positive and new findings will (preferentially) be rewarded. This has suppressed the appearance of negative findings and solid repeats that would validate ideas that would benefit human kinds. The reason behind this is partially because the scientists who conducted these kinds of studies will often be labeled non-productive (productive = getting positive findings) and non-innovative. Is there a solution to that?
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Fai giving a plenary lecture on using zebrafish to find new drugs to treat eye diseases
This was a meeting right after the The 8th International Symposium of Ophthalmology, in which I shared with a group of international delegates about our vision on screening drugs to treat eye diseases with the zebrafish model. Many delegates stayed behind to attend this CUHK and HKEH forum, in which we shared new insights into eye research and clinical practice.
Some of the participants to the forum, including Profs. Chris Leung (CUHK), Calvin Pang (CUHK), Clement Tam (CUHK), Stanley Chi (HKEH), Zibing Jin (Wenzhou eye hospital), Wei Li (NEI), Yuk Fai Leung (Purdue), Neeru Gupta (University of Toronto), and Tien Yin Wong (Singapore National Eye Centre). The full schedule of the meeting is available here.
Saying good bye to Prof. Neeru Gupta
Giving presentation award to graduate students
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Forbes has just published an article about professor’s career as the No. 1 of the least stressful jobs of 2013, and that has caused a huge uproar by many colleagues in the comments. Apparently, the article was written with misconceptions of what a professor’s life is like, based on innuendos and information from CareerCast. While the author has made an addendum after hearing a lot of angry comments in two days, the tone is disappointingly impersonal. Basically she only said I hear you, I am only relaying the message from CareerCast, thank you for your comments and I understand your life MAY be more stressful than portrayed. You can actually see how people are critical about that too, and I am not repeating that here.
For students who are fascinated about “doing research” as a career/becoming a professor, I encourage you to read through these discussions, as well as a followup article “Top 10 Reasons Being a University Professor is a Stressful Job” in Forbes by another contributor who has a science background to see the actual dedication that one has to put in to be in this profession.
