Janet D. Stemwedel
Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry.
jstemwedel
Posts by this author
May 6, 2009
I've been poky about getting my eyes checked regularly.
I got my first pair of reading glasses in the last year or so of my time as a chemistry graduate student. About nine years later, shortly before the eldest Free-Ride offspring was born and in the midst of an intensive stretch of writing, I…
May 6, 2009
In the wake of some recent deaths in Edmonton of teenagers who took Ecstasy, DrugMonkey gets irritated with a doctor who made some proclamation to the press:
I'm particularly exercised over an article which quotes Charles Grob, M.D. (UCLA page):
Charles Grob believes there is a strong chance that…
May 5, 2009
By email, following on the heels of my post about the Merck-commissioned, Elsevier-published fake journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a reader asked whether the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS) also counts as a fake journal.
I have the distinct impression…
May 5, 2009
You know and I know that science is cool, but for some reason kids can be suspicious of our declarations to this effect. (Maybe it has to do with our enthusiasm for vegetables that they don't like, not to mention naps.)
However, Susan the Scientist is on a mission to let kids know that science…
May 4, 2009
One of the interesting developments within the tribe of science is the way that blogs, email lists, and things of that ilk have made public (or at least, more public) conversations within a field that used to happen only in private.
The discussions of Aetogate on the VRTPALEO list are just one…
May 3, 2009
John Lynch and Dr. Isis have already posted on the revelation that Elsevier published something, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, that looked and sounded like it was a medical journal but that turned out to have been fancy advertising for pharmaceuticals company Merck.
The Scientist…
May 3, 2009
A few weeks ago, the Free-Ride family welcomed some new members.
About 14 new members (although it can be hard to get an accurate count when they're squirming around).
Right now their main interests are eating, growing, and climbing on their siblings to find more to eat. Their growth is pretty…
May 2, 2009
It seems that some people respond to public concern about swine flu and its spread by trying to sell you stuff. This stuff is not limited to face masks and duct tape, but includes products advertised to prevent, diagnose, or treat swine flu, but whose claims of safety and efficacy do not have a…
May 1, 2009
In a chat with a colleague today, I learned the following:
1. My colleague thinks the media coverage of swine flu is very overblown.
2. My colleague has already stocked up on face-masks.
Hmmmmm.
May 1, 2009
It occurs to me that there might be an interesting parallel to the conundrum we discussed about whether it's better to engage with a scientist giving off a shady vibe or to back away with all due haste. It's not a perfect parallel, but there are some similar issues at work.
Should scientists and…
May 1, 2009
It being spring and all, the Free-Ride offspring sometimes get that wistful why-aren't-we-4H-kids? look in their eyes.
Not that there aren't critters aplenty in the back yard. The younger Free-Ride offspring sizes up the ladybugs and looks for a jar with holes in the lid that would be appropriate…
April 30, 2009
Yesterday, I shared a conundrum with you and asked you what you would do as a member of the tribe of science if you got a gut feeling that another member of the tribe with whom you had limited engagement was shady, either disengage ASAP or engage more closely.
Today, as promised, I share my…
April 30, 2009
In an earlier post, I pointed you toward the preliminary report (PDF here) issued by the Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project this January. This report sets out a plan for the state of Minnesota to ration vital resources in the event of a severe influenza pandemic.
Now, a rationing plan devised by an…
April 29, 2009
The other night as I was falling asleep, a situation occurred to me that struck me as something of a conundrum. (Remarkably, I still remembered the situation when I woke up.) I've been working out my own take on this situation -- what's at stake in responding to it one way or another -- but I…
April 29, 2009
Dr. Isis has some rollicking good discussions going on at her pad about who might care about blogs, and what role they might play in scientific education, training, and interactions. (Part one, part two.)
On the second of these posts, a comment from Pascale lodged itself in my brain:
I think a…
April 28, 2009
In my last post, I looked at some of the ethical considerations an individual might make during a flu epidemic. My focus was squarely on the individual's decisions: whether to stay in bed or seek medical care, whether to seek aid from others, etc. This is the kind of everyday ethics that crops up…
April 27, 2009
Like a lot of other people, I'm watching the swine flu outbreaks unfold with some interest. As they do, I can't help but think about the ethical dimensions of our interactions with other humans, since it's looking like any of us could become a vector of disease.
There are some fairly easy ethical…
April 26, 2009
Ah, Spring! The time of year when children wear sandals and then admonish their siblings not to pick their toes on the way to pot-luck dinners.
Yesterday's toe picking prompted me to tweet a question that was mostly facetious:
If a child sequentially picks toes and nose, is there a risk of…
April 26, 2009
Probably you've been reading about the new swine flu outbreak on Effect Measure and Aetiology. At this stage, public health officials are keeping careful watch on this epidemic to try to keep it from becoming a pandemic.
And this is the news in the back of my mind as I need to arrange air travel…
April 25, 2009
Yesterday I worked my way through the hundred's of comments on PZ's I am Pro-Test post. One theme that kept cropping up was that a great deal of animal testing is unnecessary, and that informed and attentive consumers should be able to kill the demand for it.
I thought, therefore, that it would be…
April 24, 2009
After considering the many different roadblocks that seems to appear when people try to discuss research with animals (as we did in parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this series), it might be tempting to throw up your hands and say, "Well, I guess there's no point in doing that, then!"
Resist this…
April 24, 2009
As captured in SprogCast #7, the Free-Ride offspring consider Mike Dunford's Earth Day resolutions meme. We discover that a kid's sense of scale is kind of different from a grown-up's.
You can grab the mp3 here. The approximate transcript of the conversation follows.
Dr. Free-Ride: I think I told…
April 23, 2009
Remember earlier this week when we were discussing some of the positions people might hold with respect to the use of animals in research?
These included animal rights positions, which held that animals have inherent rights not to have their bodies transgressed (or that, by virtue of their capacity…
April 23, 2009
In this post, it's time to pull back from the specific kinds of dialogue blockers we've been examining (here, here, here, here, here, and here) to start to consider other ways we might get around them. Here, I want to start with some insightful remarks from a friend of mine, philosopher Vance…
April 22, 2009
The Urban Homestead: Your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city.
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
Port Townsend, WA: Process Media
2008
In honor of Earth Day, here's a brief review of a fascinating book about making your lifestyle more sustainable. While some friends of the blog…
April 22, 2009
So far in this series, we've talked about ways that attempts to have a dialogue about animal research can be frustrated by inability to agree on a shared set of facts as a staring point or by unclarity about the positions people are trying to put forward. Today's featured impediment to dialogue…
April 22, 2009
Mike Dunford initiates a meme for Earth Day 2009:
I'd like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that's small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you'll try to do, but…
April 21, 2009
Noted ScienceBlogs commenter DuWayne Brayton has started a new blog to aid in kicking an old habit. In his welcome post, he writes:
I'm a soon to be ex-smoker. My name is DuWayne Brayton and I have been smoking for about sixteen years now. I've had enough - though embarrassingly, it has taken the…
April 21, 2009
I've mentioned before that I grew up in a family that was fairly captivated by the U.S. space program, especially the Apollo program that brought humans to the Moon. But as impressive as those manned missions to the Moon were, what did the Apollo program accomplish? Where are our moon-bases?…
April 21, 2009
Today we discuss an impediment to dialogue about animals in research that seems to have a special power to get people talking past each other rather than actually engaging with each other:
Imprecision about the positions being staked out.
Specifically, here, the issue is whether the people trying…