Tag: research

What Colleges Do NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Winners Come From, and Where Do They Go?

The National Science Foundation has just announced the winners of the 2015 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

The Fellowship provides three years of support for graduate study in science and engineering (this includes social sciences, such as economics and geography, as well as anthropology) at a university in the United States.

2,000 awards are offered, each of which includes tuition and a stipend of $32,000 per year (expected to be raised to $34,000 this year).

Of the 2,000 fellowships awarded, how many went to aspiring anthropologists? Just under 3%, or 57 fellowships. Among anthropology awardees, archaeologists won 11, or 19%, of the fellowships.  2,004 people achieved Honorable Mention (you don’t get a stipend or tuition remission with this honor, but hey, you can get access to supercomputers), and the stats are similar: 58 anthropology candidates, of which 17, or 29%, are archaeologists.

The list of graduate schools archaeology awardees and honorable mentions will be attending is diverse. Two awardees will be attending Syracuse University, but no other institution will have more than one awardee.

See the summary tables after the break for the breakdown by anthropology subdiscipline, graduate institution awardees will be attending, and the undergraduate school they are coming from.

Continue reading What Colleges Do NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Winners Come From, and Where Do They Go?

“because it looks like it, goddamit it!” On Identifying Bones and Fossils

One more quote from paleontologist Clayton E. Ray, this time on the epistemology of identifying animal bones:

“… the techniques [of comparative methodology, i.e., comparing unknowns to knowns] were not codified and universally applied until the nineteenth century under the influence of Cuvier, Owen, and Agassiz. This could not have occurred prior to the Age of Enlightenment/Reason, with the spread of the notion that all problems could be successfully solved through intensive inspection and that ordinary humans could rely on their own careful observations irrespective of authority.[emphasis added] … Until recently, this reliance was taken for granted, so much so that the sublime notion could be expressed profanely, if I may be permitted one homely example: Remington Kellogg, once asked by a colleague what criteria allowed him to conclude that a certain fragmentary whale vertebra was in fact identifiable to a particular species, immediately replied resoundingly, “because it looks like it, goddamit it!” He did not live to experience the postmodern entry of doubt introduced by phylogenetic systematics and social constructivism, in which we question the meaning of all our observations.” (p.7)

Clayton E. Ray on Forgotten Knowledge and Objective Mistakes

More from Clayton E. Ray:

discoveries do not stay discovered; they must be tended like a garden. (p. 15)

 

approach to truth is a fragile dynamic that requires continual vigilance. There may be some validity to Gould’s (1996:110) claim that “persistent minor errors of pure ignorance are galling to perfectionistic professionals,” but this has no bearing on the overriding requirement that each professional strive assiduously to get things right and never knowingly let even “minor errors” persist.(p. 16)

Reference:

Clayton E. Ray 2001.  Prodromus. In Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina, III.  Edited by C.E. Ray and D.J. Bohaska. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, number 90:1-20.

Whether in the Library or in the Field, Always Dig Deeper

I don’t think I have ever read an introduction to a collection of paleontology papers that had more gems than Clayton E. Ray’s “Prodomus” to a volume on Miocene/Pliocene Lee Creek Mine locality. Like this:

Having flattered myself that I had unearthed essentially everything, it is salutary to be reminded through several oversights that in antiquarian, as in paleontological, research one can never do too much digging. Returns in each are apt to be unpredictable and to be meager in relation to time invested (hardly “cost effective”), but there will always be something new, and, to comprehend it when found, one must be steeped in the subject.  (p. 1)

Clayton E. Ray and a walrus skull at the Smithsonian. Source: Unidentified photographer, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. No. 11-008, Image Number: OPA-974R1-B.

Reference:

Clayton E. Ray 2001.  Prodromus. In Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina, III.  Edited by C.E. Ray and D.J. Bohaska. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, number 90:1-20.