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 […]
Humans Broke the Internet. Understanding Them Better Might Help Fix It
This stark contrast between the internet’s light and dark sides has become a defining characteristic of the digital age, writes Timo Hannay founder SchoolDash, but is not an inevitable consequence of the mostly innocuous technologies on which it’s built. Rather, it is the product of their bewilderingly diverse and eccentric user base – otherwise known as humanity.
Facebook, SSRC Bravely Reinvigorate Research Collaboration
We spoke with social-science ethicists about how well Facebook’s initiative appears to protect users’ privacy. They’re skeptical, but still eager to see Facebook data studied.
Speakezee Platform Matches Experts With the Curious Public
Speakezee, a labor of love by experimental psychologist Bruce Hood, connects willing experts and curious audiences. Now in it’s third year, the platform has a roster of more than 2,000 scientists in 32 countries ready discuss their research with schoolchildren, big companies, support groups, service clubs and anyone else now comfortable enough to ask for a presentation.
Survey Asks Questions About Scholarly Journal Use
In the latest iteration of a survey series she’s been running for four decades, Carol Tenopir aims to assess the value of access to scholarly journals by examining patterns of use and reading. Your input is sought.
Are Ethnographers Ever Wrong?
Steven Lubet, the author of ‘Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters,’ explains the importance of his approach to investigating the discipline — to ‘put it on trial’ — and to reiterate the idea that accuracy matters in social science. Spurring on his restatement is a recent review on Social Science Space that Lubet argues missed his point entirely.
Patricia Goodson on the POWER of Better Academic Writing
A combination of influences — practice, classroom and POWER — has made Patricia Goodson’s book ‘Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing’ a winner for many academics around the world, and now the Textbook & Academic Authors Association has awarded Goodson’s book with one of its 2018 Textbook Excellence Awards. We talk to the author about writing, both her own and perhaps yours!
Keeping an Eagle-Eye on the U.S. Supreme Court
Kenneth Jost has been watching the U.S. Supreme Court for decades, and producing annual yearbook looking at the term just passed. We asked him to reflect on his career and his subject. In this interview, originally posted in February, he predicted that “the fight over any Trump nominee would be a no-holds-barred battle.”
Nick Seaver on Dissecting the Algorithmic Organism
When discussing the nexus of computer science and social science, the transaction is usually in one direction – what can computer scientists do for social scientists. But a recent paper from Tufts University anthropologist Nick Seaver reverses that flow, using the tool of ethnography to interrogate the tools of engineering.
