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 […]
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, Consider Research Ethics
Imagine an ethics review system where the researcher’s proposal is read by an ‘ethics jury’ of four to six researchers drawn, as in legal juries, from the academic population at large, suggests Australia’s Gigi Foster.
Picking a Descriptor Also Picks a Gender
A recent data-mapping project reveals that women professors are consistently more likely to be described as feisty, bossy, aggressive, shrill, condescending, rude — and nice.
Social Science in the News
Social science is vital too The Guardian Social Science has to be embedded in any strategy for science and innovation worth […]
The New Realism in Academic Life
As some of the ferment that marked university life for an earlier generation seems to dissipate, has a new realism crept in among subsequent generations of academics to accept what they feel they cannot change?
Shine a Light on Academic Journals’ Dark Arts
When McDonald’s came under sustained criticism from campaigners in the 1980s, the company responded by constructing a carefully crafted image of corporate […]
Ebola – WHO (Still) Don’t Get It: Social Science Saves Lives
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa reminds us of a key lesson in public health, notes Robert Dingwall: Biomedical solutions will always come late, while social science-based interventions can break the cycle much sooner.
What Role Should Overseas Students Play in British Society?
The rich and diverse ways in which students and scholars of diverse national and cultural origins collaborate at British universities, argues Daniel Nehring, belie the economic reductionism currently fashionable in public debates about higher education.
The Social Scientist Who Knew Torture Wasn’t Worth the Game
Game theory neatly — and sadly — predicted the futility of using torture to extract meaning information from terror suspects, neatly predicting the results of the recent U.S. Senate report years before its release.
