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 […]
Deaton’s Victory for Applied Economics, Statisticians
Angus Deaton’s work is a model of what applied economics ought to be, says Ian Preston. No award the Nobel committee has made has pleased the author as much, for the recognition it gives both Deaton and the type of work he does.
Evidence-Based Policy: The Challenges
David Canter reviews new research studying the challenges of social science contributing to policy making.
Development Experts Seek Help from Social Scientists
Social scientists must team up to help achieve the global development agenda and help measure progress towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, attendees of the World Social Science Forum were told.
Free Research-Based Film Impacts 10,000 Viewers So Far
The medium of film itself opens doors to audiences that otherwise would never come across academic research, as the forces behind the online project RUFUS STONE’ will attest.
Malaria Vaccine – Great Science But What’s the Point?
Bully for the researchers who have developed a vaccine can build resistance against some instances of malaria, says Robert Dingwall. But before the WHO recommends for its adoption, he suggests a harder look at user-centered design and cost-benefit analysis may be in order.
Behavior Routinely on Biomedicine’s Back Burner
The challenge of infusing the social sciences into what are generally viewed as biomedical issues has been a long and difficult one, as the recent WHO report on Ebola demonstrates. Oddly, this lesson has been learned many times before, but keeps getting forgotten.
Matt Owens on Obscure Research That Makes a Big Impact
‘Don’t judge a book by its cover – federal funding for odd or frivolous sounding research pays enormous societal, health, security, and economic dividends to the American taxpayer,’ argues a member of the steering committee for the Golden Goose Award.
Report: Metrics Not Mature Enough to Replace Peer Review
A new report looking at the role of metrics in analyzing British academe finds, ‘A lot of the things we value most in academic culture resist simple quantification, and individual indicators can struggle to do justice to the richness and diversity of our research.’
