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 […]
Big Data: No Free Lunch for Protecting Privacy
In the first of a series of excerpts from a just released report summarizing 2013’s International Year of Statistics’ London conference, we look at one of the down sides of Big Data.
The ‘Big Tent’ of Population Studies
The Population Association of America has joined the family of Social Science Space partners this summer, and to mark that we spoke with the president of the PAA, Johns Hopkins economist Robert Moffitt.
Hoopla Aside, Turing’s Test Remains Unbeaten
The latest attempt to show a machine can pass itself off as human relied a little too heavily on letter of Turing’s test and not its spirit.
Social and Natural Science: Has the Square Been Circled?
A natural scientist reflects on a conference that focused on bringing natural and social scientists into a a shared, and continuing, conversation.
Humanities and the Liberal University: Calls to Action
Beyond the funding fears experienced by the social science, the humanities have those kinds of worries and their cyclic existential crisis.
Our Ailing Cities Need Social Science to Cross-Fertilize
There is a great need to understand the role of urbanisation in society and respond effectively, particularly given global economic and social insecurity, argues Mike Goldsmith. But the increasing specialization within disciplines means that such vital dialogues on cities are becoming difficult. An interdisciplinary effort is needed to bring the study of cities, their politics, policies and problems back into the mainstream of social science and to do it on a genuinely comparative basis.
In Our Age of Social Protests, What Promotes Protest?
With one eye on Ukraine, David Canter comments on the social psychology of protest in an Age of Social Protest.
Citizen Scientists Should Have a Home in the Social Sciences, Too
Citizen social science calls on experts and the public to re-evaluate their roles in addressing social problems. Erinma Ochu, a social neuroscientist, elucidates the opportunities on offer when experts let the public in on the business of addressing these pervasive challenges. Real learning comes in the social life of the method – in the practice of listening, trying and often failing to collaborate – trying again and getting into the rhythm of the issue, together.
