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Singapore kids top ME, sure or not

eremarf

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I started reading scientific journals ever since i started working in this field since about 7 years ago. i do not know of any racial discrimination in writing any papers. i do not know about the culture or what you hear before, whoever did the most work, leading the the completion of the project will write the paper. Irregardless of his language skill, and thus will be given the right to be called the first author. there is no such rubbish as just because you are better in english you write the paper and got the right to be the first author from others work.

on the publisher side, they too know scientist english in general sucks, they have professional editor to solve that issue. but mainly to just correct the grammar, never changing much of the words or introducing more bombastic words. by the way, these are from my experience with people publishing at really top tier journals of impact factors above 10.

if what you said is really true, i do not think any of my chinese and indian friends can publish in journals like Angewandte chemie (which one did) and JACS (i lost count how many did). go check their impact factors if you think i am kidding. and search 2011 to 2012 how many Angewandte and JACS published by indians and Chinese from NUS chemistry.

This is speaking from personal experience and interaction with others who walk in and out everyday with people with publications.

No doubt you're right. But in my field (language) it's not like that. There're many publications from outside of US/Europe - but the top papers that get cited frequently, are still often from the "West". Maybe only the western countries "waste" money on social sciences?

(BTW. re: language biased - well, many papers in my field aren't co-authored, so I'm not referring to the best writer gets to be the first author - I was talking about how social science seems to be built on strong language ability (maybe purposely) just like many fields are built on strong mathematical ability. And this naturally excludes people who don't speak English as their first language.)

Maybe I am a bit bitter because NUS doesn't like to fund social science departments. They'd rather fund departments like Chemistry which can publish more in high-impact journals. Which I criticised earlier on - about publication quotas for research staff. What are your views about research in Singapore - since you're in the field? (In other words, I'm asking a "social science"-ey question on the role of state-funded science in society - particularly a society like Singapore.)

Cheers and it's great to see researchers around. It's cool to be a scientist! :smile:
 

eremarf

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What is it that you don't like MOE style of Education, such as?

Apparently they top world standards beating angmoh countries.

Other people say already... Singaporeans good only at exams, but when they compete on other things, such as ability to get into certain industries, Singaporeans aren't that good. Singaporeans are good when industries want hardworking workers (e.g. accountants). Singaporeans aren't so good when industries want creative, innovative people (very few firms do R&D here - most prefer to base elsewhere). Singaporeans workers high exam scores also don't translate to high-tech firms locating their manufacturing here. In spite of our high exam scores - somehow high-tech firms prefer to locate in US, Japan, and Europe. Why do you think so?

As an ex-teacher, I didn't like how we prepared students for exams but not for life. Not all schools do this of course - but my school was like that. Preparing for life is so different from preparing for exams. MOE isn't good at preparing students for life because they tie teachers' and principals' work evaluation to poor metrics like exam results, and winning awards. It's as bad as asking half the cohort of Sec 4 students to drop from two pure sciences to combined science just so we can get more A1s (instead of risking an A2 or B3), to drop from A math + E math to just E math - teachers (with the approval and encouragement of principals) are treating the exams like a game. It's more important to score well in the game than to let students learn. And more than just knowledge - it teaches students life values - that scoring is more important than knowledge, etc. BTW my school is very good at this game - under my principal we went from Band 9 to being Band 1.

And maybe because of civil service yes-man or so-called "wayang" culture - where people don't dare to criticize, and if you criticize you don't get promoted, and if you play ball and do what your boss wants, you do. In the long run, MOE promotes people who work hard and are competent, but are also willing to "wayang", and are not willing to criticize the way the organization does things, and they end up with a yes-man "wayang" culture from top to bottom.

Maybe it's easier if you think about our army. Are we a good army? Do our soldiers pass IPPT, get Marksman, score well on ATEC, win awards, do well on measurable tests, etc? But the real question of whether we have a good army is answered only when we fight a war. But in education you can't avoid the "wars" - every generation grows up to become workers. (Ok lah - not really - when your army is scary enough, nobody want to start a war with you - so maybe our army is very good. :p)

Malay language is known as one of the most beautiful languages in the world. Many words use 2 syllabus and easy to remember. Pity they don't have their own style of writtings, borrowed Latin for their writings.

Jap language more precise to the term they use unlike English to many similar sounds but do not mean the same, and no tone.

Chinese language produces happy sounds and tones and often look like the speaker is smiling or relax talking.

I agree, all languages are very interesting. :smile: But my first love is Singlish - it sounds like home. I like Mandarin too - feels much more intimate than English. English is for work and talking about complex things.

This proves to me that you are very well read, and intelligent.

Thanks! :smile: But no lah, this is my day job. You ask baker how to bake cake or barber how to cut hair, they will also sound intelligent.
 

vamjok

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No doubt you're right. But in my field (language) it's not like that. There're many publications from outside of US/Europe - but the top papers that get cited frequently, are still often from the "West". Maybe only the western countries "waste" money on social sciences?

(BTW. re: language biased - well, many papers in my field aren't co-authored, so I'm not referring to the best writer gets to be the first author - I was talking about how social science seems to be built on strong language ability (maybe purposely) just like many fields are built on strong mathematical ability. And this naturally excludes people who don't speak English as their first language.)

Maybe I am a bit bitter because NUS doesn't like to fund social science departments. They'd rather fund departments like Chemistry which can publish more in high-impact journals. Which I criticised earlier on - about publication quotas for research staff. What are your views about research in Singapore - since you're in the field? (In other words, I'm asking a "social science"-ey question on the role of state-funded science in society - particularly a society like Singapore.)

Cheers and it's great to see researchers around. It's cool to be a scientist! :smile:

i think you got the wrong idea here that NUS fund my lab a lot. I am from one of the largest academic lab in singapore (total member 41), so far in my career i had changed 2 labs and the situation are about the same. i believe its more or less the same across the board.

in fact most of the money actually came from grants that has to be openly fought among other researches from Astar etc. For example MOE research grants (although in general they fav sch), EDB, PUB etc. if the PI do not actively write research proposal and fight for the grants, you practically have no money to do anything. PI cannot do real research based on money from NUS.

If you were to ask me what are my thoughts on research in singapore, well at least in my field, Europe is dead (except germany), America is dried. Asia is up and coming very strongly esp - South Korea, China (china, the number of quality papers they are pushing out is really climbing in numbers), Singapore. Many Europeans fleshly graduate phd students are coming in over here to get a job, lots of flesh blood injected into the scene and thus many new and flesh ideas being bring in. In the next 20 years if the govt can maintain this, this indeed is good for local research scene.

however, the issue here is this, you take the money you better produces results. unlike in europe or america, where the culture of research is fully matured, those that are giving you grants here will expect you to produce results within the grants period. However most of the time results might come or discovered after the grants period (after 5 years when pass on to another phd student).

There are huge pressure in taking the money, things aren't that simple. if you take the money and cannot deliver, you will be blacklisted.
 

Agoraphobic

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actually you guess quite correctly. only synthetic chemist spent that much time in lab. i am an organic synthetic chemist and i am indeed making dye compounds. but mine belongs to fluorescence compounds mainly for bioimaging.

its more of passions, interests and supports from your peers that keeps you going in research. its very hard to explain to others why i am doing this.

Cool. Nice to see people doing thing out of passion and love for the field rather than money alone (although money helps). Wish I had the guts to pursue pure science and work in a field of interest rather than go on the bandwagon with the herd and finally end up dependant on economic trends. While in school, I found chemistry simple and then went on that - into polymer at univeristy level, only to get hammered by organic chemistry (can't fucking memorise all them functional groups!) Sometimes I think education could have riuined me - I would've been happy being a baker. Fuck, now I am supplying raw materials to industry - and manufacturing has hit a dead end in Singapore.

Cheers!
 

vamjok

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u dealing with raw materials?

what sort?

now i am interested LOL. i often need cheap chemicals at multigram scales
 

vamjok

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actually till now i still do not appreciate memorising those silly reactions. even till now i do not blindly memorise those reactions. those that are in my head are those that i had carried out before tons of time physically. to me as long as the student is able to identify where is the nucleophilic/electrophilic site and which site is the nucleophile and electrophile. then have an open book based exam on analysis on the mechanism. to me that is more challenging and meaningful rather than dead memorising which at the end of the exam everyone throw them away.

these days everyone uses scifinder and reaxy. who will go memorise
 
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