Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
University Decolonization: More Than Mere Iconoclasm
The decolonization debate in African universities raises critical issues about the relationship between power, knowledge and learning, argues Ahmed Essop. It also provides an opportunity to rethink the role of universities in social and economic development and in fashioning a common nation.
Tapping the Value of Positive Psychology
We can all aspire to aim higher, not merely to be free of problems, but to try and truly flourish as human beings and make the most of our all too brief lives. And psychology should have a role in that, says Tim Lomas.
Is Peer Review an Achilles Heel for Interdisciplinary Work?
Recent findings suggest interdisciplinary research is less likely to be funded than discipline-based research proposals, reports Gabriele Bammer, who argues different review processes may well be required to do justice to these different kinds of interdisciplinarity.
Book Review: Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, The Pentagon and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology
“Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, The Pentagon and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology” offers a historical account of how the US military industrial complex has had a profound influence on the development of US anthropology during the Cold War and into the present day. Reviewer Joseph Anderson sees the book as a dense but readable outline that confronts how ethnographic research in the field has been shaped by wider political-economic force.
Viewing the Evolution of Social Impact Through US Political Science
What role should social scientists play in society? Louisa Hotson here explores the evolution of the social sciences through four periods in the history of political science in the United States, each with different implications for how social science makes a difference.
Seeking a Better Way to Evaluate Teachers
Teacher observations are both costly and time intensive, but perhaps it’s time to invest in better teacher evaluation to get better student results. So argues Robert Pianta, who has personally helped develop some measures that might achieve such high hopes, in a an article in the journal PIBBS..
Evolving Door: Moving from Researcher to Research Manager
In this archived hour-long seminar, Social Science Space blogger Robert Dingwall discusses the organizational requirements and the useful skills that can be built to support the individual who wants to be a reasearch manager and the ecosystem — in both social science and STEM settings — that can support such striving.
Does Competition Make Peer Review More Unfair?
Researchers decided to conduct behavioral testing on competition and the process of peer review. What they learned offers some prescriptions for improving peer review going forward.
