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 […]
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.
Cry from Publons: Let’s End Reviewer Fraud
Peer review has become a major editorial challenge for publishers worldwide, but options do exist to help tackle fraudulent peer reviewers. In this post from the Publons blog, some options for what publishers can do are examined.
Is There a Need for Novelty in Science?
In a recent survey of over 1,500 scientists, more than 70 percent of them reported having been unable to reproduce other scientists’ findings at least once. Reproducibility of findings is a core foundation of science and realizing how difficult it is to assess novelty should give funding agencies and scientists pause. Progress in science depends on new discoveries and following unexplored paths – but solid, reproducible research requires an equal emphasis on the robustness of the work.
Sexual Harassment and Universities
Developing an effective response to sexual harassment in the academic industry — by no means a new phenomenon, notes Robert Dingwall — requires us to consider questions about institutional memory, occupational cultures, and organizational silos, rather than badly behaved individuals.
Science’s Uphill Journey Out of Its Credibility Crisis
The credibility of science is under siege, says Andrea Saltelli. On the one hand doubt is shed on the quality of entire scientific fields or sub-fields. On the other this doubt is played out in the open, in the media and blogosphere.
Ann Sloan Devlin on Timeless and Dynamic Research Design
New technology has, and is, changing a lot of the mechanics of social and behavioral science research, but how much is the underlying enterprise itself changing as a result? This is a key question Ann Sloan Devlin, author of the newly released ‘The Research Experience: Planning, Conducting, and Reporting Research,’ addresses in this interview.
Greece’s Honest Statistician Pays Price for Ethics
In a case that outrages statisticians and partisans of good government, a Greek appeals court has convicted the former president of the Hellenic Statistical Authority of violation of duty for his actions in recalculating national statistics and showing that Greece’s financial situation was much more dire than had been advertised.
Why We’re Encouraging Authors to Share Their Data with Reviewers
The editor–in-chief of the ‘Psychological Science’ explains why the journal is now encouraging authors to share the data and materials behind their research with their reviewers.
