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 […]
Economic Inequality and Political Power (Part 2 of 3)
In my previous post I discussed the lack of government responsiveness to the middle-class and the poor, when their policy preferences diverge […]
People are not Only Biological Machines
You can hardly open a newspaper or listen to a factual broadcast without some reference to neuroscience or evolutionary explanations of things that people do, feel or think.
Getting the Help They Need
For many, jails may be the only place providing regular access to essential health treatment. Upon release, both health services and medication regimens often abruptly stop with little or no follow up care
Objective truth, social ‘science’ and tennis balls
The entire purpose of social science is to apply disciplined, logical, and serious analysis to of all aspects of contemporary social life. Whether ‘scientific’ or not, this process of exploration is intrinsically valuable.
The Importance of Studying the Obvious
Everyone has experience being human, and so findings in social science coincide with something that we have either experienced or can imagine experiencing. The result is that social science all too often seems like common sense.
Digital Social Science Vs Digital Humanities: Who does what & does it matter?
In an era where Social Science is being asked to prove its relevance the development of a broad Digital research agenda could, in my opinion, should be the way forward.
Textbook World
Textbooks now play a crucial role in teaching in the social sciences. Their importance is mirrored by their abundance; there is an enormous variety of textbooks on the most commonly taught subjects. The rise of the ‘textbook industry’ is not necessarily a good thing, though.
Why the Stevens Op-Ed is Wrong
The claim that real politics is messier than the statistics are capable of capturing is obviously correct. But the implied corollary – that the government shouldn’t go out of its way to support it – doesn’t follow.
