Social Science Space

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why does it matter if research is ethical or not? And what steps could or should have been taken to ensure that issues such as those the Australian Human Rights Commission now faces — in a case related to well-intentioned research into sexual assault — are avoided?

When researchers from countries where regulation is well developed choose to conduct ethically dubious research in countries where regulation is not as strict, it is known as “ethics dumping.” When it happened to Africa’s San people, they responded.

The rush to publish a revised Common Rule for federally funded human research in the United States has created a flawed regulatory regime, says Robert Dingwall., Time to tear the whole edifice down and start over, he suggests.

How can we create reliable and replicable political science data? A recent article in the ‘American Political Science Review’ focuses on text analysis and suggests ways to make these data sound and reproducible.