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 […]
More Than A March: Evidence Supporters Gather in Chicago
March for Science wants to continue the momentum from their global marches with the first ever March for Science three-day summit aimed at teaching community organizing and communication skills, and advocacy. The event, called the S|IGNS SUMMIT, will be held starting on July 6 in Chicago.
SSRC Adds Richeson, Nobles to Board
The Social Science Research Council has added Melissa Nobles and Jennifer Richeson to its board of directors. Nobles is the Kenan Sahin Dean […]
Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad
In this Social Science Bites podcast, social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson lays out the case that inequality should be fought specifically because it fosters a litany of ill effects.
The Promises and Limitations of Measuring Research Impact
How can the impact of an academic article be measured? It seems that everyone wants to find an answer to this question – from the researcher and author teams that create research articles, to the editors and peer reviewers who curate them, to the societies and publishers who ensure that the articles are released to the world.
Arbitrary Choices and the Politics of Sociological Enquiry
Arbitrary choices –all those political considerations that twist and constrain scholarship without adding to it in intellectually meaningful ways — are rife in contemporary academic sociology, says our Daniel Nehring. Tired of trying to pointlessly argue against them in hopes they disappear, he asks that we make these choices explicit and visible.
SciFoo18: The Joys of the Unstructured
SAGE’s Ziyad Marar describes his recent time at the 2018 SciFoo and some of his impressions mingling with its 330 assembled scientists, technologists, writers and more (the largest ever SciFoo) and compares it to the first SciFoo he attended five years ago.
Who Might Address Research Candidates’ Off-the-Charts Stress?
Graduate research candidates are the powerhouse of research in universities, yet many have reported feelings of isolation, burnout, and career uncertainty. Karen Barry reports on a study of Australian research candidates which found that increasing numbers are suffering from heightened levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, often citing reasons related to academia’s general work processes, such as writing or publishing research or maintaining motivation while working alone on a single topic.
Literature Reviews Are Already Broken, So Let’s Kill Them
The literature review is a staple of the scholarly article. But when reviews misrepresent previous studies or suggest there’s a paucity of information when there isn’t, doesn’t,this degrade the knowledge base? Richard P. Phelps argues that, given the difficulty of verifying an author’s claims during peer review, it is best that journals drop the requirement for a literature review in scholarly articles.
