#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/22/24

It was a late end to the week, but I enjoyed the marathon discussions with colleagues all over the world! In between I was able to catch some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Michael Stryker on why brain plasticity changes over time at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. I loved this quote from the Q&A session: "I tell the people in my lab if they do an experiment and the result is contrary to what they expected: "It's not your fault. We didn't make it, we just work here." Our job is to find out how the world is, not what we want it to be. It makes me worry about a lot of the current scientific literature where a lot of it seems to be a sort of high pressure sales job." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJv9zVCh5YY

Next was an engaging panel on the Ugandan digital economy at TechCabal with Flavia Eleanor, Michael Niyitegeka, Collins Babirukamu, Brenda Amony, and Mobolaji Adebayo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpQ7l-z94wE

Next was a fascinating talk by Robert Katzschmann on building robots with musculoskeletal designs and even biohybrids (!) at the GRASP Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSDzkXHUANo

Last was "Poor Economics" by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. This book gets at some of the contextual reasons about how challenging it is to be a poor person in the Global South and various randomized controlled trials that have been deployed to identify approaches that can help these people achieve better outcomes. With sections on health, education, and other fundamentals, Duflo and Banerjee provide compelling insight into some of the underlying local causes of poverty. Many of the studies presented here are impressive, showing real benefits along with the importance of testing solutions when applying them to different contexts - the effects might be different.

I was a bit frustrated with the lack of engagement of some of the global forces playing on these issues, however. There are brief discussions of institutions, but even less on the role of colonization and extraction, despite those being issues that those in the Global North have more direct control and responsibility over.

Still, overall this is an essential book for understanding global poverty and why donors should attempt to fund what actually works rather than what feels good. Highly recommend https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/abhijit-v-banerjee/poor-economics/9781610391603/?lens=publicaffairs