Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
140 Thoughtless Characters Cost Dear in Academia
The censuring of an academic in the US for sending out an offensive tweet has led many university tweeters to pause for thought.
Oh the humanities: Oxford graduates do well, but what about the rest?
A study of 11,000 alumni from the University of Oxford has shown that humanities graduates went on to work in the UK’s major growth sectors. The Oxford study can’t tell us much about the fate of graduates at other universities around the UK. But it does prompt a closer look at the stigma surrounding humanities subjects in the UK.
The Psychology of the “Psychology Isn’t a Science” Argument
Every so often the internet is set ablaze with opinion pieces on a familiar question: Are “soft” sciences, like psychology, actually science?
Risk Management Approach Could Motivate Climate Change Action
Is it possible that modern society’s bitter political divisions over belief in anthropogenic climate change is distracting decision-makers from the far more practical matter of confronting the risk that it presents, directly or indirectly, to businesses and the economy?
In praise of Sociology! Speech by Pierre Bourdieu
In the February edition of Sociology, a previously unpublished translation of a speech given by Pierre Bourdieu. Here is an excerpt and introduction.
Mid Staffordshire: A true test for accountability
Guest post from Roger Kline, Visiting Fellow at Middlesex University and co-director of Patients First, a whistleblowers network. The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust public inquiry report could be a watershed moment for the NHS.
ESRC Festival of Social Science, and the ‘Big Data’ Debate
This week is the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science, an event that takes place all over the UK where social scientists get […]
Open Access publishing: A Personal View
We are personally skeptical about many of the major premises of Open Access Publishing, and we are certain that many of the potential implications have not been thought through. The Finch Report pays remarkably little heed to the detailed arrangements that may need to be put in place.
