RPM has a long post about the importance of lab courses (in response to a philosopher with some background in physics who suggests doing away with undergraduate lab courses) and Aziz points out that the father of magnetic resonance imaging has died.
Update: From the author of the original post (in the comments):
Actually, I don’t advocate doing away with undergraduate labs. Undergraduate labs, done well, can be valuable and are essential in training undergraduate majors in the sciences. What I argue is that the attitude prevailing at many institutions that every or most theory classes needs a corresponding lab keeps science departments from being able to teach classes that would be of great value to students, especially non-majors.
Update II: Also, I’d be remiss in not pointing to RPM’s excellent intro post to Neutral Theory (check out the graphs!).
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