Re: Interdisciplinary Knowledge (Part I)

Lots of good points being made which I won't
reiterate, but in no particular order:

* Let's be
grateful that people are writing actual science questions,
not the formerly ubiquitous "name the scientist from
his parent's occupations and godchildren"
schlock.

* Much of the demarcation of a "biochemistry"
question into either bio or chem depends on how the
question is written. 

* For example, I would
classify a a tossup on the alpha helix as chemistry if it
referred to the relative energy stabilities of different
amino acids in the helix. I would classify it as
biology if it focused on how it is used in transmembrane
proteins.

* Why do people tend to write a lot of organic
chemistry questions? Some possible answers:
- Most
recent chemistry course the writer has taken ...
-
Lots of named, askable topics (reactions, reagents,
etc.)
- Very few things in general chemistry that one can
write a GOOD question on ...

* Jason mentioned
the predominance of physics -- I don't particularly
see it, but I do hear a lot of poor physics
questions. It's not a factor of bad writing, I think it's
because there's not a whole lot of good physics stuff to
write about without degenerating into "name that
particle" or "electricity bowl."

(More to come
...)

-- eps, continuing the crusade for quality science.

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