Public schools are agents of the government, and as such, must abide by the Bill of Rights, although the standard is less. I had it wrong. They need "reasonable suspicion," not "probable cause" (which is stronger). They need to have some articulatible facts to support the search. The Supreme Court ruled on this matter in New Jersey v. T.L.O..
Basically, the standard is that there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the locker could be holding some sort of contraband. Examples:
Reasonable: You possess the kind of paper used to roll joints OR there's a plainly visible beer bottle in your backpack.
Reasonable: You smell of marijuana or alcohol.
Reasonable: A parent expresses concern that you might be selling drugs out of your locker.
Unreasonable: You listen to Tenacious D, who have spoken about legalizing marijuana. Since you approve of their music, you must also smoke marijuana, and might have some in your locker.
Unreasonable: You smoke cigarettes and are young, so thus you must also smoke marijuana.
Unreasonable: The Principal gets a note saying that you sell drugs from your locker, but the note is completely anonymous. (The source has no credibility, esp. since it likely came from a student, inherently unreliable to begin with.)
There's another California case on the matter as well, Gordon v. Santa Ana Unified School District. The Principal ordered Gordon to turn out his pockets, based on previous misbehavior, some old info, and the fact that the student talked on his phone a whole lot more than average. They found marijuana in his pocket. Gordon was expelled and was going to face criminal proceedings; however, the search lacked reasonable suspicion, and thus was inadmissible in a court of law. (NB: To be admissible, the search has to be legal for whoever conducted it; if there had been reasonable suspicion but no probable cause, the contraband would still come in because the search was made by an unsolicited school official, and not the police.) The irony is that the Supreme Court couldn't overturn the expulsion, since they have no jurisdiction over decisions made by the school board; what the school board considers legal evidence collection is up to them. I do have to wonder what would happen in a civil court on that matter.
The lock would be an example of reasonable suspicion. Refusing to give the combination to school officials makes it seem like there's something to hide in there. Note that this standard fails probable cause (if it didn't, police could enter any locked house on that basis), but it's not entirely unreasonable.
I think creating the curriculum is part of being a good teacher. Even if it is regulated the teacher can get creative. Often this takes several years of trial and error before it is a good curriculum.
Sometimes, there's only so much that can be done, and most of the time, you don't get "several years of trial and error." You teach the course once or twice, and then teach something else later.
Most of what I said applies for low level courses. Those are the ones that tend to be regulated the most, since they're the ones that are part of core requirements.
I have to say that I am surprised with the university wide attitude of students you experienced. I have never experienced that at any institution with the exception of community college.
I figured you would say something like that. You don't notice it until you get to the other side of the classroom. I used to think that most students are eager to learn like I am, burning with curiosity for just about any subject, but it's hardly the norm. Most students will try hard enough to get the grade they want, but that doesn't mean that they actually care about the material. And just because they're inspired enough to get an A doesn't always mean that they were inspired to learn the material--and you can't force them to care that much if their main focus is on getting the grade. (In fact, students focused entirely on grades are almost impossible to inspire like that, since they don't see mistakes as learning opportunities, just that they lost points.)
Also, I'm not at community college. I won't say which one, but I'm at a nationally ranked Big Ten university. My experiences at the two other schools (one undergrad, one graduate) I've studied at have been about the same as well.
As a high school student (in America, at any rate) you have no rights.
Not entirely true. While they can search your stuff, they can't just confiscate anything they feel like. They can certainly confiscate things that are against school rules (e.g., cell phones maybe), but they can't, for instance, confiscate your car keys because you have a blue car and the principle hates the color blue.
A binder of notes for a class would probable be considered allowable under school rules.
Furthermore, they still need probable cause to search. If they continually look through your locker because they feel like, and just mess up your stuff for no real good reason, it can be considered harassment, and that's not ok.
I'd actually wager that high schools are a lot more reluctant to pull stunts like this than colleges. High school involves parents, and they'll raise a huge stink even if their kid was in the wrong, because tons of parents think their children are perfect angels. School administrators don't want or need to deal with that. Colleges have young and naive students away from their parents, and the parents can't intervene on students' behalf with the same ease. In other words, they can exploit the fact that most students just won't react, and are a lot less likely to know what their rights are.
Not at all. It completely depends on the class. If it's a required class, and it's material that students don't deem essential to their major, many won't care in the slightest, and even the greatest teacher in the world wouldn't be able to motivate them to care. Furthermore, a poorly designed course can turn off even highly motivated students. Some courses have their content highly regulated by departments, since they're core courses that need to be the same from term-to-term or year-to-year.
I am a graduate student at a major university in the midwest, and currently teach a basic algebra course--it's the 2nd lowest course we offer. Everyone is required to complete a math course as part of university core requirements, regardless of their major. Unilaterally across the 30-40 sections of this course every term, here's what happens:
(i) Students cheat savagely on the graded homework.
(ii) Friday lectures usually feature only about 60% attendance (at the max)
(iii) Evaluations at the end of the term are usually pretty good, with students mostly satisfied with their teachers, yet still writing that they hate math
These things happen in every section, so you can't put it on a single teacher. Are you going to say that all 30 of us are terrible and can't inspire students at all? EVERYONE gives lectures that are so bad people don't come to 1/3 of them? You can't inspire people who don't want to be inspired. It's just impossible.
(i) is why professors try to take a highly proactive stance in order to prevent cheating. Even if it's pretty obvious, it's difficult to prove, and not fun for anyone involved in the procedure. It involves university procedure, rules representatives and lawyers, etc. Even when you catch them with a sheet of notes, there's little you can do about it immediately. People get REALLY defensive when you catch them cheating, and raise a huge fuss. Even if they know they've been caught, they NEVER accept the consequences (if they were honest even slightly, they wouldn't be cheating in the first place), meaning they appeal to the university, and the whole thing becomes a massive ordeal as more and more people get dragged into it.
Remember, education is the only thing people never want to get their money's worth in. Look how many students get excited about courses with no homework, easy tests, lectures canceled, etc. Certain professors are well-liked because they hand out high grades with little work required.
College became the fashionable thing to do, and (dare I say) most students treat it as trade school. There are a number there who want to learn, but a whole lot more who just want to get through it and get a job. They're there to get a job, not to be educated. The two are very different things.
You can spot the "trade schoolers" by the "I'm never going to use this, so why should I learn it?" attitude people display toward their non-major courses.
I first got my DLP in 2004. It was $3000 for a 50". The bulb cost $400 at that time. I haven't had to replace mine yet, but picked up a replacement bulb in 2006 (yes, 2006) to have on hand when the bulb does finally die. I paid about $180 for it then. The bulb can be had even cheaper now, around $120.
A new DLP TV of that size (although a 1080p one, an upgrade) would cost about $1000. That's still a tremendous amount more than the bulb, no matter when it was purchased.
Again, it comes down to what is natural and what is created artificially, and also what is a reasonable expectation when you enter a field. Working hard and sacrificing a social life are hardly unique to science--some people do that just to make ends meet. It's naive to say, "Oh, it's not fair that that person works harder/more hours than I do." That's part of any job, and it's something you've known about for your entire life. At some point, you've probably been that person, working hard while someone screwed off. I don't think anyone has ever entered a job saying, "Ok, my natural ability is good now, but in 2 years, I'll have to start doping to compete."
Is it reasonable to expect someone to work hard? Sure, that's true of any job that pays well. It turns out that there aren't many jobs that will pay you $100k+ to stand around and work 20 hours a week.
I see a huge difference in someone making decisions to sacrifice a social life, or whatever, to get more done vs. someone taking drugs. How about this: you make the choice to sacrifice your social life to do work, but someone else just takes drugs, increases productivity, so he can have the same output as you AND the social life too. At some point, it becomes a contest of who can take the best chemicals instead of who can actually do the best work.
In one example, you're raising someone up to a level that most people can achieve, while in the other, you're elevating someone who's already at or beyond the capabilities of an average person to a "superhuman" level. In one case, you are removing a natural disadvantage--one that hampers someone from achieving the average--and in the other, you are adding to a natural advantage. If you can't see the difference, I hope that you never have to help someone who is mentally or physically handicapped, for their sake.
The way you say it, we shouldn't give people who have cerebral palsy extra time on an exam. People with that condition have trouble writing, and while they may know the answers to the questions, they cannot physically write as quickly, and will struggle to write down all their answers, and do poorly on the exam for failing to finish it. Now, everyone else in the room is capable of writing fast enough to make a reasonable attempt to finish, so why should we take away their advantage over that kid with cerebral palsy? If we give him more time, maybe he thinks of better answers for some questions, and no one else got that extra time. If he can't finish, tough. Everyone else should get the advantage of being born proper, right?
The distinction is that the kid with cerebral palsy can't perform up to the physical standards of the other children, because of his physical handicap. By giving him extra time, we're merely accounting for the fact that he isn't capable of doing what an average person can do physically, and making sure that his birth condition doesn't mean that we're discarding him.
Define "drug induced." Does coffee count? If you refuse to drink coffee, does that mean that scientists who do are gaining an unfair advantage? Should we ban coffee? The difference between caffeine and Ritalin is semantic.
I think I mean to specify illegal drugs or drugs used illicitly. What we have here is scientists breaking the law or otherwise gaining access to things that they're not meant to have access to or not everyone can get. Anyone can buy coffee. Not everyone can get Ritalin if they're not prescribed for it.
An example. I have this great idea, but my resume isn't as good as this other person who took drugs all the time, while I didn't take drugs. When we both apply for the same $100k grant to do our project, he gets the money because his resume is better--they feel that the $100k is better spent with that person because of his past work. Now my idea won't get developed because I don't have the money I need to implement it. I fail on both my goals: advance the subject, and be employed.
Okay, let's switch things around a little. Suppose the other guy got the grant because he never sleeps, and therefore can produce a larger volume of research. Now, in order to compete with this guy, you basically have to stay awake all the time. So now do you want to enforce a rule that a scientist must sleep a certain number of hours every day, in order to stay fair to other scientists who actually like sleeping?
Is the staying awake natural or drug-induced? Is that person capable of doing something I'm not, or is he taking something that gives him that talent that he didn't have originally?
There's imbalances in talent levels too. Einstein came up with things of a high level I'll never get to. I don't say, "Oh, well, you can't come up with relativity because I couldn't get that."
I can't write a Nobel-prize winning novel (at least, I don't think I ever could), I can't dunk a basketball. That doesn't mean that other people who actually can do those things naturally shouldn't be prohibited from doing so. Now, if someone else used a trampoline in a basketball game whenever he wanted to dunk...
No, and I'm not sure how you got that from what I've said. Certainly, those who require a prosthetic should have one.
What you said was that all the children taking these drugs are gaining an advantage. It's not so much gaining an advantage as bringing them back up to a level where a reasonable human being should be--just like most people have two arms. Gaining an advantage and eliminating a disadvantage are not the same thing.
No, it's not my only purpose to compete, but how can I advance knowledge as I desire if I can't get a job, or can't get the funding I need to do it?
An example. I have this great idea, but my resume isn't as good as this other person who took drugs all the time, while I didn't take drugs. When we both apply for the same $100k grant to do our project, he gets the money because his resume is better--they feel that the $100k is better spent with that person because of his past work. Now my idea won't get developed because I don't have the money I need to implement it. I fail on both my goals: advance the subject, and be employed.
A baseball player's goal is to win the World Series--for the love of the game and winning, but if he is outclassed by people taking steroids and can no longer get a contract to play, how can he accomplish his goal?
Are these children you speak of disadvantaged to begin with? It's not unfair if they need them to get to the same level as everyone else. Would you suggest that someone who was born without an arm should never get a prosthetic, and be doomed to work in jobs that only require one arm for his entire life?
So it's ok because you can convince someone to give you something when you really don't need it for medical reasons, thus making it "legal"? Deceiving a medical professional is now an ok practice to get an edge?
Those of us who are trying to compete with these people are being harmed. Now you put us in a bad position--take them too, or fall behind. Is that fair to us? We don't get a choice in whether we actually want to take these--take them, or don't have a career. Why should I have to risk my body because someone else is? Maybe my body can't handle these drugs and they'll kill me at 40, and not that other person.
It'd be like if you HAD to drive 130 mph on the freeway to keep up with traffic. Sure, you could not drive that fast, but that's dangerous--you're like the guy driving 40 in a 70 mph zone. You might not be comfortable at that speed (or even capable of handling the car at that speed), and by driving that fast, you're putting yourself at a high risk. In that way, the decisions of the other people force you to make a choice between two bad things: drive too fast and risk your safety, or drive "too slow" and risk your safety.
The blurb makes it sound as if all this use is illegal. I would imagine most isn't: most of these people will have prescriptions but are using them for off-label purposes. Do you really believe that 62% of these top-academic people have a disorder that legitimately warrants the prescription of Ritalin? Even if they do have a perscription, is it needed, or did they just get an MD they know to write it for them, with everyone figuring that no one is going to suspect a top researcher of drug abuse? And even if they did, how could someone prove that the perscription was written for enhancement purposes?
The big difference is that caffeine is legally available. If there's benefits to be had from caffeine, anyone can go out and get it legally. Here, we have researchers using drugs without a prescription, which is illegal. Anyone who wants to get this advantage has to break the law to do so.
A more akin example is if cocaine were a miracle-mind drug. If researchers were consuming that instead, would that be ok?
It is "drug abuse" when drugs are used without the informed consent of an individual
This doesn't make any sense. Even if someone is woefully addicted, it's not like they take drugs by accident--"Oh, wow, how did I somehow shoot heroin everyday for years and get so addicted? Guess someone musta played a prank on me!" Furthermore, the addiction is not an excuse to avoid calling it "abuse," because no one can really claim to know that addiction wasn't a strong possibility, unless they slept through every drug education program in their teenage years--and whose fault is that?
Would you suggest that we call what child molesters, who might not be able to help themselves, do as "illegal children touching" instead of "child abuse"?
The point is that if someone has a completely unique idea on, say, why the American Revolution occurred--some new understanding of the events that led to it--he wouldn't keep it to himself and put it only in his own lecture. He'd certainly try to publish it somehow--unless he thought it weren't good enough to get out there, but then why would he teach that idea? If he couldn't find anyone willing to publish it, meaning no one in the academic community supports it (thinks its interesting, or has merit), then how good can it really be?
I didn't mean to say that a book can replace a discussion. Rather, every piece of information or understanding can be found somewhere, or will be found somewhere soon (pending publications). Finding it is a different matter (this is why we have lectures and discussions in the first place).
Of course, the real problem is that our discussion here started from my misunderstanding of the article (thanks, abstract!).
Being a biochem major, the vast majority of the lectures I go to on a daily basis are little more than a list of facts. Are there not textbooks on biochemistry? Usually, those are nothing more than collections of facts, so they can't be copyrighted?
A lecture is usually a collection of facts, but (if it's not a "read from text" lecture) it is from a variety of sources and assembled in a slightly different manner from the originals. That makes it similar to a research paper, like the ones you had to write in high school. I'm sure you wouldn't claim that the papers you've written didn't require some creativity and wouldn't be worthy of consideration for copyright because you just collected facts, right?
I misunderstood the article. I thought that he was selling his notes through this company, and making sure that no one else could take notes. That's not what's happening. I read the abstract, kinda skimmed over the article, and got tangled up in the part about how a completely different not-related-to-absolutely-anything-in-the-article company sells the professor's e-books.
1.) Professors do research, and submit that research to journals for publication. Those journals often require the professor to sign over the copyright of the paper before publication. It's easier for professors to do that if they have the copyright in the first place.
An important part of the professor owning the copyright is the ability to publish. If the university owned the copyright, they could deny permission to publish a particular result. That power would grant universities the right to quash anything they don't like and keep potentially unpopular opinions or research inside--thus doing the exact opposite of advancing knowledge, the goal of the university!
Another thing to add is that if the professor leaves the university for whatever reason, he doesn't have to turn over all his notes that he used to teach classes there. Or if the professor wrote up notes and had them printed for purchase as a self-made textbook for students (like a coursepack--you know what I mean), then leaves, the university doesn't retain the rights to use those notes afterwards unless that professor gives permission, or there was a previous agreement that the professor was writing the notes FOR the university, as far as I know.
I forgot to add that your resume in an academic setting and your resume in a business setting are very different. In business, when you go from one job to the next, they will not ask you to provide samples of everything you worked on at the former job. A general list of duties and responsibilities comprises your resume from a job, not an exact list of everything you made/worked on while you were there.
In an academic setting, what you did (and often who you did it with) is far more important than where you did it, and it's not impressive to say, "I worked at MIT for 5 years" if you didn't do a single thing worthy of publication while you were there (probably why you're applying for another position;)). A list of places and general list of what you did doesn't cut it in academic positions--they want to see WHAT you did, how good your work was, directly. Your papers and writings are your resume, not the list of universities you worked at.
I'm not sure what you're going for. If you mean to say, "People who just read the book are bad lectures," yes that's the case, but "textbook somewhere" doesn't necessarily mean that there's one book that contains EVERYTHING the professor says. However, if the professor is presenting good information, then someone else somewhere will have written it as well (or maybe the professor himself in his own book or published paper). Maybe it would take 17 books to contain everything that the professors says, but all the facts are out there somewhere.
I'm a 3rd year graduate student, and I most certainly have attended great lectures. The material is found somewhere--sometimes in a research paper or other publication if it's cutting edge. I've certainly never heard of a professor hording knowledge and keeping something ONLY in their own lecture, which is what you seem to suggest. If a professor presents something, it'll be published somewhere (or about to be published). If it's completely their own, then it'll be their own publication.
No, work at a university is very different from the usual work-product for companies. Tenure and professors owning their own material is designed to prevent abuse from universities. Because the purpose of universities is the advancement of knowledge and not commercial gain (like your code example), there needs to be some protection afforded to those doing the actual advancement.
An example. A professor does great research at a particular university. Not being tenured yet, the university doesn't have to pay that person much. Now, say the university feels that this person is unlikely to repeat his results and denies him tenure. If the university were to own the work, they could just cut everyone loose, stifling the incentive for professors to work toward great results. Furthermore, the university could prevent that professor from presenting the work to others or otherwise publishing, thus making the professor equivalent to a post-doc to other universities--meaning the time spent at that university went to waste completely. Having professors own their own work affords protection for the untenured, as well as the tenured--a university could put a gag on things they don't like if they owned the work, or otherwise prevent its publication.
That's not wholly true. A professor can write a textbook based on his own lecture notes and the school he teaches at will have no claim to that material. Patents for research done at a particular university will be owned by the researcher, not the professor, etc. Basically, the work professors do remains their property because if it didn't, universities wouldn't ever be able to get anyone to work for them because professors are fairly attached to things they spend years developing.
Anyway, I screwed up and didn't understand the article. I thought the professor was selling the notes through this company, not some renegade company selling a new version of Cliffs Notes.
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Basically, the standard is that there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the locker could be holding some sort of contraband. Examples:
Reasonable: You possess the kind of paper used to roll joints OR there's a plainly visible beer bottle in your backpack.
Reasonable: You smell of marijuana or alcohol.
Reasonable: A parent expresses concern that you might be selling drugs out of your locker.
Unreasonable: You listen to Tenacious D, who have spoken about legalizing marijuana. Since you approve of their music, you must also smoke marijuana, and might have some in your locker.
Unreasonable: You smoke cigarettes and are young, so thus you must also smoke marijuana.
Unreasonable: The Principal gets a note saying that you sell drugs from your locker, but the note is completely anonymous. (The source has no credibility, esp. since it likely came from a student, inherently unreliable to begin with.)
There's another California case on the matter as well, Gordon v. Santa Ana Unified School District. The Principal ordered Gordon to turn out his pockets, based on previous misbehavior, some old info, and the fact that the student talked on his phone a whole lot more than average. They found marijuana in his pocket. Gordon was expelled and was going to face criminal proceedings; however, the search lacked reasonable suspicion, and thus was inadmissible in a court of law. (NB: To be admissible, the search has to be legal for whoever conducted it; if there had been reasonable suspicion but no probable cause, the contraband would still come in because the search was made by an unsolicited school official, and not the police.) The irony is that the Supreme Court couldn't overturn the expulsion, since they have no jurisdiction over decisions made by the school board; what the school board considers legal evidence collection is up to them. I do have to wonder what would happen in a civil court on that matter.
The lock would be an example of reasonable suspicion. Refusing to give the combination to school officials makes it seem like there's something to hide in there. Note that this standard fails probable cause (if it didn't, police could enter any locked house on that basis), but it's not entirely unreasonable.
I think creating the curriculum is part of being a good teacher. Even if it is regulated the teacher can get creative. Often this takes several years of trial and error before it is a good curriculum.
Sometimes, there's only so much that can be done, and most of the time, you don't get "several years of trial and error." You teach the course once or twice, and then teach something else later.
Most of what I said applies for low level courses. Those are the ones that tend to be regulated the most, since they're the ones that are part of core requirements.
I have to say that I am surprised with the university wide attitude of students you experienced. I have never experienced that at any institution with the exception of community college.
I figured you would say something like that. You don't notice it until you get to the other side of the classroom. I used to think that most students are eager to learn like I am, burning with curiosity for just about any subject, but it's hardly the norm. Most students will try hard enough to get the grade they want, but that doesn't mean that they actually care about the material. And just because they're inspired enough to get an A doesn't always mean that they were inspired to learn the material--and you can't force them to care that much if their main focus is on getting the grade. (In fact, students focused entirely on grades are almost impossible to inspire like that, since they don't see mistakes as learning opportunities, just that they lost points.)
Also, I'm not at community college. I won't say which one, but I'm at a nationally ranked Big Ten university. My experiences at the two other schools (one undergrad, one graduate) I've studied at have been about the same as well.
As a high school student (in America, at any rate) you have no rights.
Not entirely true. While they can search your stuff, they can't just confiscate anything they feel like. They can certainly confiscate things that are against school rules (e.g., cell phones maybe), but they can't, for instance, confiscate your car keys because you have a blue car and the principle hates the color blue. A binder of notes for a class would probable be considered allowable under school rules.
Furthermore, they still need probable cause to search. If they continually look through your locker because they feel like, and just mess up your stuff for no real good reason, it can be considered harassment, and that's not ok.
I'd actually wager that high schools are a lot more reluctant to pull stunts like this than colleges. High school involves parents, and they'll raise a huge stink even if their kid was in the wrong, because tons of parents think their children are perfect angels. School administrators don't want or need to deal with that. Colleges have young and naive students away from their parents, and the parents can't intervene on students' behalf with the same ease. In other words, they can exploit the fact that most students just won't react, and are a lot less likely to know what their rights are.
I am a graduate student at a major university in the midwest, and currently teach a basic algebra course--it's the 2nd lowest course we offer. Everyone is required to complete a math course as part of university core requirements, regardless of their major. Unilaterally across the 30-40 sections of this course every term, here's what happens:
(i) Students cheat savagely on the graded homework.
(ii) Friday lectures usually feature only about 60% attendance (at the max)
(iii) Evaluations at the end of the term are usually pretty good, with students mostly satisfied with their teachers, yet still writing that they hate math
These things happen in every section, so you can't put it on a single teacher. Are you going to say that all 30 of us are terrible and can't inspire students at all? EVERYONE gives lectures that are so bad people don't come to 1/3 of them? You can't inspire people who don't want to be inspired. It's just impossible.
(i) is why professors try to take a highly proactive stance in order to prevent cheating. Even if it's pretty obvious, it's difficult to prove, and not fun for anyone involved in the procedure. It involves university procedure, rules representatives and lawyers, etc. Even when you catch them with a sheet of notes, there's little you can do about it immediately. People get REALLY defensive when you catch them cheating, and raise a huge fuss. Even if they know they've been caught, they NEVER accept the consequences (if they were honest even slightly, they wouldn't be cheating in the first place), meaning they appeal to the university, and the whole thing becomes a massive ordeal as more and more people get dragged into it.
Remember, education is the only thing people never want to get their money's worth in. Look how many students get excited about courses with no homework, easy tests, lectures canceled, etc. Certain professors are well-liked because they hand out high grades with little work required.
College became the fashionable thing to do, and (dare I say) most students treat it as trade school. There are a number there who want to learn, but a whole lot more who just want to get through it and get a job. They're there to get a job, not to be educated. The two are very different things.
You can spot the "trade schoolers" by the "I'm never going to use this, so why should I learn it?" attitude people display toward their non-major courses.
I first got my DLP in 2004. It was $3000 for a 50". The bulb cost $400 at that time. I haven't had to replace mine yet, but picked up a replacement bulb in 2006 (yes, 2006) to have on hand when the bulb does finally die. I paid about $180 for it then. The bulb can be had even cheaper now, around $120. A new DLP TV of that size (although a 1080p one, an upgrade) would cost about $1000. That's still a tremendous amount more than the bulb, no matter when it was purchased.
Is it reasonable to expect someone to work hard? Sure, that's true of any job that pays well. It turns out that there aren't many jobs that will pay you $100k+ to stand around and work 20 hours a week.
I see a huge difference in someone making decisions to sacrifice a social life, or whatever, to get more done vs. someone taking drugs. How about this: you make the choice to sacrifice your social life to do work, but someone else just takes drugs, increases productivity, so he can have the same output as you AND the social life too. At some point, it becomes a contest of who can take the best chemicals instead of who can actually do the best work.
The way you say it, we shouldn't give people who have cerebral palsy extra time on an exam. People with that condition have trouble writing, and while they may know the answers to the questions, they cannot physically write as quickly, and will struggle to write down all their answers, and do poorly on the exam for failing to finish it. Now, everyone else in the room is capable of writing fast enough to make a reasonable attempt to finish, so why should we take away their advantage over that kid with cerebral palsy? If we give him more time, maybe he thinks of better answers for some questions, and no one else got that extra time. If he can't finish, tough. Everyone else should get the advantage of being born proper, right?
The distinction is that the kid with cerebral palsy can't perform up to the physical standards of the other children, because of his physical handicap. By giving him extra time, we're merely accounting for the fact that he isn't capable of doing what an average person can do physically, and making sure that his birth condition doesn't mean that we're discarding him.
Define "drug induced." Does coffee count? If you refuse to drink coffee, does that mean that scientists who do are gaining an unfair advantage? Should we ban coffee? The difference between caffeine and Ritalin is semantic.
I think I mean to specify illegal drugs or drugs used illicitly. What we have here is scientists breaking the law or otherwise gaining access to things that they're not meant to have access to or not everyone can get. Anyone can buy coffee. Not everyone can get Ritalin if they're not prescribed for it.An example. I have this great idea, but my resume isn't as good as this other person who took drugs all the time, while I didn't take drugs. When we both apply for the same $100k grant to do our project, he gets the money because his resume is better--they feel that the $100k is better spent with that person because of his past work. Now my idea won't get developed because I don't have the money I need to implement it. I fail on both my goals: advance the subject, and be employed.
Okay, let's switch things around a little. Suppose the other guy got the grant because he never sleeps, and therefore can produce a larger volume of research. Now, in order to compete with this guy, you basically have to stay awake all the time. So now do you want to enforce a rule that a scientist must sleep a certain number of hours every day, in order to stay fair to other scientists who actually like sleeping?
Is the staying awake natural or drug-induced? Is that person capable of doing something I'm not, or is he taking something that gives him that talent that he didn't have originally?There's imbalances in talent levels too. Einstein came up with things of a high level I'll never get to. I don't say, "Oh, well, you can't come up with relativity because I couldn't get that."
I can't write a Nobel-prize winning novel (at least, I don't think I ever could), I can't dunk a basketball. That doesn't mean that other people who actually can do those things naturally shouldn't be prohibited from doing so. Now, if someone else used a trampoline in a basketball game whenever he wanted to dunk...
No, and I'm not sure how you got that from what I've said. Certainly, those who require a prosthetic should have one.
What you said was that all the children taking these drugs are gaining an advantage. It's not so much gaining an advantage as bringing them back up to a level where a reasonable human being should be--just like most people have two arms. Gaining an advantage and eliminating a disadvantage are not the same thing.An example. I have this great idea, but my resume isn't as good as this other person who took drugs all the time, while I didn't take drugs. When we both apply for the same $100k grant to do our project, he gets the money because his resume is better--they feel that the $100k is better spent with that person because of his past work. Now my idea won't get developed because I don't have the money I need to implement it. I fail on both my goals: advance the subject, and be employed.
A baseball player's goal is to win the World Series--for the love of the game and winning, but if he is outclassed by people taking steroids and can no longer get a contract to play, how can he accomplish his goal?
Are these children you speak of disadvantaged to begin with? It's not unfair if they need them to get to the same level as everyone else. Would you suggest that someone who was born without an arm should never get a prosthetic, and be doomed to work in jobs that only require one arm for his entire life?
So it's ok because you can convince someone to give you something when you really don't need it for medical reasons, thus making it "legal"? Deceiving a medical professional is now an ok practice to get an edge?
It'd be like if you HAD to drive 130 mph on the freeway to keep up with traffic. Sure, you could not drive that fast, but that's dangerous--you're like the guy driving 40 in a 70 mph zone. You might not be comfortable at that speed (or even capable of handling the car at that speed), and by driving that fast, you're putting yourself at a high risk. In that way, the decisions of the other people force you to make a choice between two bad things: drive too fast and risk your safety, or drive "too slow" and risk your safety.
A more akin example is if cocaine were a miracle-mind drug. If researchers were consuming that instead, would that be ok?
Would you suggest that we call what child molesters, who might not be able to help themselves, do as "illegal children touching" instead of "child abuse"?
Result = paper. You can't just put out a random result without some sort of formal writeup, which would be subjected to the copyright. :)
I didn't mean to say that a book can replace a discussion. Rather, every piece of information or understanding can be found somewhere, or will be found somewhere soon (pending publications). Finding it is a different matter (this is why we have lectures and discussions in the first place).
Of course, the real problem is that our discussion here started from my misunderstanding of the article (thanks, abstract!).
A lecture is usually a collection of facts, but (if it's not a "read from text" lecture) it is from a variety of sources and assembled in a slightly different manner from the originals. That makes it similar to a research paper, like the ones you had to write in high school. I'm sure you wouldn't claim that the papers you've written didn't require some creativity and wouldn't be worthy of consideration for copyright because you just collected facts, right?
I misunderstood the article. I thought that he was selling his notes through this company, and making sure that no one else could take notes. That's not what's happening. I read the abstract, kinda skimmed over the article, and got tangled up in the part about how a completely different not-related-to-absolutely-anything-in-the-article company sells the professor's e-books.
Another thing to add is that if the professor leaves the university for whatever reason, he doesn't have to turn over all his notes that he used to teach classes there. Or if the professor wrote up notes and had them printed for purchase as a self-made textbook for students (like a coursepack--you know what I mean), then leaves, the university doesn't retain the rights to use those notes afterwards unless that professor gives permission, or there was a previous agreement that the professor was writing the notes FOR the university, as far as I know.
In an academic setting, what you did (and often who you did it with) is far more important than where you did it, and it's not impressive to say, "I worked at MIT for 5 years" if you didn't do a single thing worthy of publication while you were there (probably why you're applying for another position ;)). A list of places and general list of what you did doesn't cut it in academic positions--they want to see WHAT you did, how good your work was, directly. Your papers and writings are your resume, not the list of universities you worked at.
I'm not sure what you're going for. If you mean to say, "People who just read the book are bad lectures," yes that's the case, but "textbook somewhere" doesn't necessarily mean that there's one book that contains EVERYTHING the professor says. However, if the professor is presenting good information, then someone else somewhere will have written it as well (or maybe the professor himself in his own book or published paper). Maybe it would take 17 books to contain everything that the professors says, but all the facts are out there somewhere.
I'm a 3rd year graduate student, and I most certainly have attended great lectures. The material is found somewhere--sometimes in a research paper or other publication if it's cutting edge. I've certainly never heard of a professor hording knowledge and keeping something ONLY in their own lecture, which is what you seem to suggest. If a professor presents something, it'll be published somewhere (or about to be published). If it's completely their own, then it'll be their own publication.
An example. A professor does great research at a particular university. Not being tenured yet, the university doesn't have to pay that person much. Now, say the university feels that this person is unlikely to repeat his results and denies him tenure. If the university were to own the work, they could just cut everyone loose, stifling the incentive for professors to work toward great results. Furthermore, the university could prevent that professor from presenting the work to others or otherwise publishing, thus making the professor equivalent to a post-doc to other universities--meaning the time spent at that university went to waste completely. Having professors own their own work affords protection for the untenured, as well as the tenured--a university could put a gag on things they don't like if they owned the work, or otherwise prevent its publication.
That's not wholly true. A professor can write a textbook based on his own lecture notes and the school he teaches at will have no claim to that material. Patents for research done at a particular university will be owned by the researcher, not the professor, etc. Basically, the work professors do remains their property because if it didn't, universities wouldn't ever be able to get anyone to work for them because professors are fairly attached to things they spend years developing. Anyway, I screwed up and didn't understand the article. I thought the professor was selling the notes through this company, not some renegade company selling a new version of Cliffs Notes.