Students and alcohol are never far apart, but most manage to hold off the booze when they’ve got an important test the next morning. Now it seems they needn’t worry, as researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health have found that combining last-minute revision with a couple of beers isn’t a problem. Heavy drinking the night before an exam had little effect on a student’s academic performance, but they did have worse moods and slower reflexes.

The researchers recruited 196 student for the study, and randomly assigned them to either a strong beer or a non-alcoholic placebo beer. The students spent the evening drinking in a controlled environment before retiring for the night, and then in the morning were subjected to both academic and mental performance tests. One week later they did it all over again, but with the opposite beverage.

Drinking sessions lasted just over an hour, during which male students had to drink an average of around 3 pints of beer, while females were served closer to 2 pints. The particular amounts were tailored to each individuals body weight, with the aim of achieving a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.12%. The US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines “binge drinking” as a BAC of 0.08%.

Unsurprisingly, 70% of students assigned to the alcoholic beer complained of a hangover the next morning. This didn’t seem to affect their exam performance however, as regardless of beverage all students scored relatively high on a mock exam and a quiz on a lecture from the previous day. Despite this, students rated their own test performance as worse if they were hungover.

These findings contradict previous research showing links between alcohol consumption and academic problems. The researchers suggest that a third factor such as personality could be the cause of both – perhaps some failing students are driven to drink. They also warn the research shouldn’t be used as an excuse for excessive drinking:

“We do not conclude…that excessive drinking is not a risk factor for academic problems. It is possible that a higher alcohol dose would have affected next-day academic test scores. Moreover, test-taking is only one factor in academic success. Study habits, motivation and class attendance also contribute to academic performance; each of these could be affected by intoxication.”

I’d be inclined to agree with them. Taking exams isn’t fun and neither is being hungover, so why risk the combination? Instead, wait until the test is over, then head to the nearest pub. Just don’t spend the entire evening dissecting the exam questions!

Howland, J., Rohsenow, D., Greece, J., Littlefield, C., Almeida, A., Heeren, T., Winter, M., Bliss, C., Hunt, S., & Hermos, J. (2010). The effects of binge drinking on college students’ next-day academic test-taking performance and mood state Addiction, 105 (4), 655-665 DOI: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02880.x

Last month it was widely reported that a study had found Facebook users have lower grades. At the time I had my doubts about some of the conclusions newspapers were drawing. Now a new study criticises the original, and finds no link between Facebook and grades.

The authors were unhappy that although the previous study, which they refer to as “FG”, only looked at simple correlation, ‘Facebook harms grades’ became an established fact as it disseminated through the media. They found 500 references to this in three day span, despite the “unpublished and inadequately reviewed” FG study being merely reported in a press release.

It’s not just the media at fault though. They say the FG study used a sample of convenience which did not adequately reflect the population it sought to examine. It was heavily weighted to graduate students with only six first- and second-years, making it “unrepresentative of any university population at all”. Other aspects of the FG study, such as a lack of control for demographic variables, also come under fire.

Not content with mere criticism, the paper also describes a new study lead by Josh Pasek, a Ph.D. candidate in political communication at Stanford University. The researchers looked at three groups of students. One consisted of 1,060 first-years at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), whilst two others were drawn from a larger study, the annual National Annenberg Survey of Youth (NASY), for another 1,250 participants.

In all three groups there was no negative link found between grade point averages (the typical US measure of academic performance) and Facebook use. Results were mixed, either showing no correlation or a small positive one – Facebook users were more likely to have slightly higher grades. This increase was not statistically significant however when limiting the sample to just university students, as the previous FG study did.

The researchers are quick to point out that their results should not be used as a definitive answer to the question of Facebook’s effect on grades. They warn that since Facebook only emerged in 2004 it could be too early to tell, and predictions are difficult because of our “constantly evolving media environment”. They also point out that excessive participation in any activity, be it browsing Facebook or otherwise, will have an “extreme time replacement effect”. As I said in my post on the FG study, procrastinators procrastinate in any way they can.

Interestingly, published alongside the paper in online journal First Monday is a response from the author of the FG study, Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University. She defends her study as “merely planned…for a conference”, and makes the fair point that she was a victim of media sensationalism.

Karpinski in turn criticises the new study’s methods, particularly their choice of samples. She argues that the UIC sample of first-years is not representative of the country as a whole, and the NASY survey is invalid as it only had a 45% response rate. It could be that those who didn’t respond are negatively impacted by Facebook use. The statistical methods used in the study are also attacked.

It doesn’t end there. In the same issue of First Monday Pasek et al respond to Karpinski’s response to their study, which was in turn a response to her original study. Perhaps it would have been easier simply to have the discussion on their Facebook wall-to-wall. They defend themselves of course, and ultimately “look forward to a continued rigorous academic dialogue on these issues”. Quite.

Josh Pasek, Eian More, & Eszter Hargittai (2009). Facebook and academic performance: Reconciling a media sensation with data First Monday, 14 (5)

I was lucky enough to attend in person, quite a thrill for a science communication geek; Melvin Bragg was chairing, and Marcus du Sautoy, John Denham, Sian Ede and Stefan Collini sat on the stage with him. The directors of The Science Museum, Natural History Museum and South Bank Centre spoke from the floor.

But, from the opening speeches, it was clear that each of them had interpreted the theme of the evening quite differently. This does not have to be a problem in a debate, but it was in this one. We spent an hour arguing about culture, but the notion of what a culture is seemed to be different for almost everyone. And so, or as well, why science might be distinguished from the arts also seemed to be different for everyone. Why this is might have made for an interesting discussion. Instead, we ended up with some cross-purpose interchanges, which achieved very little. Stefan Collini summed this up well, saying that the topic of two cultures is just a vehicle for whatever particular grievance people have about science.

What Snow meant by two cultures was very specific. He argued that the academics in science and literature occupy separate spheres with very little interaction. Moreover, in England, the scientific sphere was seen as inferior to the literary sphere. This was, according to Snow, due to the stubborn remnants of the prevailing attitude of a previous age; a clever boy would go to Oxford to study Classics. A slightly less clever boy would move into the sciences.

Snow saw science as providing his country with a secure and prosperous future. But if science continued to be stigmatised with intellectual inferiority, this future would not be possible. New science and technology would be developed elsewhere. Leaving England with Shakespeare scholars, but little else. The Times reviewed his lecture the day after its first presentation. Their argument backs up this interpretation of Snow’s position. At that moment, Britain’s fall from empire to island was of huge public concern. Any way to aid a graceful fall was of interest. The Times article points to science and technology as just such aids. It argues that Britain should bolster funding in science education and research. The country should fight to retain its position as world leaders in this field, fending off the threat from the new planned economies in Russia and China.

In ‘The Two Cultures’, Snow demarcated science from literature as a device for promoting science: for promoting a certain kind of academic pursuit that he felt was dangerously overlooked. The cultural division, even the very mention of culture is slightly beside the point. It is a vehicle for Snow’s complaints about science’s funding, science education and society’s appreciation of science.

In this way, the discussion yesterday at the Royal Society echoes Snow’s original point. Admittedly, it explored how science and literature are professional cultures, how they are perhaps one joint culture of human curiosity and why science is not part of our current definition of ‘culture’. But these uses ideas about culture were mainly frames for complaints about the status of science funding, science education and society’s appreciation of science.

Although these complaints followed similar themes to Snow’s, their content had moved on. Today, some scientists are accorded higher social status than classicists. But state-funding of science is more widely questioned. School education now addresses scientific controversy and concentrates on creating citizens who are aware of the processes and practices of science. And there is wider access to university science courses. Yet, science numbers at A-level are still dropping. Questions at the debate did not centre on whether everyone can recite the second law of thermodynamics – Snow’s example of the lack of scientific literacy he found amongst his peers. They were instead concerned with our current buzz phrases: dialogue between scientists and the public and deliberative models of science policy making.

These are the same complaints we hear at philosophical, political and media-related discussions of science. They were just framed around a notion of culture. And this framing confused the conversation. The mutual rhetoric tangled together distinct issues so that questions and answers missed each other’s points. And Denham, as the politician in the corner, was even able to squeeze in a speech from his swine flu-related soap box.

It was a shame that the hype surrounding the anniversary of Snow’s lecture did not lead to anything new. But then his lecture was not, at its time, about anything new. It was a vehicle for his insightful analysis of problems faced by British science. Last night, unfortunately, the idea of culture was again just such a vehicle.

Everyone’s favourite doctor/columnist has put an extra chapter of his book Bad Science online for free. I’m actually a bit behind the times on this one, it was meant to go in last week’s Roundup but I forgot, so you might have already read it. If not, you can grab the PDF here.

The chapter deals with vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath, who was suing Goldacre and The Guardian when the book was first published. Now that they have won the court case the book is being republished with the extra chapter, but Goldacre was kind enough to provide it for everyone else as well. Isn’t he nice? For the next few days you can also see him on the latest episode of Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. His section starts around 11 minutes in, with a tirade against “the media’s greatest ever science hoax”, the MMR vaccine.

New science journalism course at City University

The Association of British Science Writers has highlighted a new science journalism course starting this September at City University. With tuition fees of £7,495 it’s a lot more expensive than the Imperial course (which covers more than just journalism), and the general feeling on the ABSW members mailing list is it’s perhaps just a re-branding of City’s existing journalism courses with a bit more science thrown in.

The Exquisite Corpse of Science

Speaking of Imperial, fellow sci-commer Tim Jones has put his group project online for all to see, and it’s a far cry from my group’s altar piece. Along with Arko Olesk and Graham Paterson, Tim drew inspiration from the exquisite corpse of the surrealist movement to create a picture of science as perceived by the public, the media, and scientists. Go have a look.

Time to feel small

As both Douglas Adams and I have said before, space is big. Really big. So big that I’m only able to include a small part of this excellent illustration in the post:

You ain't seen nothing yet.

Go here if you want to see the rest, and appreciate just how vast the universe is. Unless that’s just too much for a Sunday afternoon!

Three paragraphs in to the press release, co-author of the study Aryn Karpinski makes it clear that she has only shown a correlation between Facebook use and bad marks: “We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there.”

I did a quick (and non-exhaustive) Google News search to see who was reporting the study, and how they were presenting its findings. The results are pretty much what you would expect.

“Pupils who spend time on Facebook do worse in exams, study shows” – Daily Mail
“Facebook students underachieve in exams” -The Telegraph
“Facebook fans do worse in exams” – The Times
“Facebook users do less work” – The Sun

The extent to which each news outlet pushes the idea that Facebook has caused these poor results varies. The worst offender is The Times, who’s strapline “Research finds the website is damaging students’ academic performance” is simply inaccurate. The others merely state the existence of a link, that students who use Facebook are also students with bad grades, but heavily imply that one has caused the other.

As one commenter on the Mail story points out, the whole idea is nonsense. Imran from Bristol says:

How silly, you could write an article called “Students who spend time down the pub” “Students who spend time watching the telly” or “Students who spend time doing do worse in exams, study shows”

Procrastinators procrastinate in any way they can. Be it Facebook, watching TV, or going to the gym, if you put off studying then you are going to be outperformed by those who apply themselves and get good grades. The media love a Facebook story though, especially when it’s contributing to the downfall of modern society as we know it, so that’s the angle we get. Now, I should probably stop blogging and get back to revising…

The standard way of teaching maths starts out with a few examples before moving on to generalisations. In other words, you learn that 2 x 3 = 6 before moving on to a x b = ab. A study by psychologists Bethany Rittle-Johnson and Percival Mathews of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee has that this may not be the best way for children to learn.

“Teaching children the basic concept behind math problems was more useful than teaching children a procedure for solving the problems – these children gave better explanations and learned more,” Rittle-Johnson said.

“This adds to a growing body of research illustrating the importance of teaching children concepts as well as having them practice solving problems.”

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (which may or may not be this one as it seems to be six months old…) showed that children who were just taught how to solve problems without the concepts behind them found it difficult to adapt to new problems. Those who understood the concepts however were able to figure out the problems for themselves.

Will this research lead to a change in maths education? I hope so. Mathematician and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus Du Sautoy has likened current methods to teaching kids scales and arpeggios without actually letting them play music. A more conceptual view of mathematics would be a welcome move away from this.

Satre Stuelke is an artist and medical student who uses a CT scanner to examine every-day objects in a new way. CT scanners are normally intended for medical imaging, but by using them to create art and inviting others to join him, Stuelke hopes to “plant a seed of scientific creativity in the minds of all those inclined to participate.” I quite like this image of a set of Russian nested dolls:

The CT scanners reveals what's inside these Russian dolls.

Science exams are slipping

Ofqual, the government body that regulates examinations, has said that an investigation in to the standard of teaching in GCSE science has “raised significant causes for concern.” It said that the exams are not up to standards, and do not offer enough of a challenge to the most able students. The following recommendations were made:

• Improved quality of questions, to stretch and challenge all students
• Work, including further training for senior examiners,  to improve the quality of objective tests
• Tighter marking criteria to ensure that only the answers deserving of the marks are credited
• Some internal assessment tasks have been revised to ensure better challenge to students and a closer link to the practical work. These changes took effect from last September.
• Where possible within the existing specifications, the number of options available to candidates has been reduced. 

It’s vital that we keep exam standards high. Ofqual said that mathematics and English literature exams are maintaining their quality, so why has science been allowed to slip?

The rules will apply only to papers published since Wednesday, which was when the vote took place. This decision makes MIT, which is one of the top ten universities in the world, the first institution to promise full access to all of its research papers. All such articles will be held in MIT’s own online repository.

Individual researchers will however be allowed to opt-out of the open access scheme. This is in order to allow publication in journals that wont allow work to be distributed elsewhere. Harold Abelson, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and part of the committee that made the decision, thinks that the opt-out will be used “a fair amount” initially.

He hopes though that the new policy will allow MIT to use its prestigious standing in the academic community to negotiate new terms with publishing companies. MIT is also hoping to avoid paying journal subscription fees, often necessary for simply accessing their own papers. In 2007 the university spent three-and-a-half times more on subscriptions than in 1986; the new measures will attempt to combating this price increase.

MIT will now look to other universities to follow in their footsteps. Although some departments at Stanford and Harvard already have similar policies in place, Abelson sees this as just the beginning:

“It’s going to take a while to work things out. Even though MIT, Harvard, and Stanford are big places in terms of the amount of published papers, in the world of research, they represent a small fraction of published papers.”

I’ve had a watch, and I’m really impressed. When Alom first told me about the project, I wasn’t quite sure how the website was going to link in to the film – would it just provide more information for interested viewers? It turns out that the website is really the star of the film, with Alom using it to work out just why science is important.

Many of the website contributors, such as Susan Blackmore and Adam Hart-Davis, pop up in the film to reiterate their message. Others make their way into the film with choice quotes from the website, including yours truly.

I can tell Alom had a lot of fun making this film. He gets to run on hot coals, take a spin in a giant centrifuge, and travel the country in search of an answer. It’s been produced for Teacher’s TV, so is understandably a little classroom focused at times, but I enjoyed the chance to have another think about this thing we call science.

My original answer for Alom took me a number of drafts, and I still wasn’t quite satisfied with it. Alom’s effort lets the viewer hear from a range of people and figure it out for themselves – it’s definitely helped me refine my thoughts.

As a follower of everything Web2.0, I’m also intrigued by the idea of linking a website to a film. Don’t look out for Just A Theory: The Movie at your local cinema any time soon, but I’ve definitely got a few ideas brewing…

National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW) is a ten day celebration of science, engineering and technology which will run from the 6 – 15 March 2009.

Emphasis mine, of course. Joking aside, there’s all sorts of sci-comm events to be had. You can join the Save our Bees campaign, discuss your thoughts with scientists and engineers at the Change Exchange, or check out one of the many other events in this comprehensive database. There are also science festivals in Cambridge, York, Newcastle and Oxfordshire.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. Smack bang in the middle of essaymania, it looks like I’ll be missing out. Well, time to get back to it…