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 […]
Shaken and Stirred: Christakis on Re-ordering Social Science
With one foot firmly planted in natural science and one in social science, Yale’s Nicholas A. Christakis looks at the landscape of the latter and wonders why it’s changed so little in the past century. Is it time for a common-sense, and yet radical, reshuffling of the institutional frameworks that we tend to accept as permanent?
A Primer for the Public: 10 Tips for Interpreting Research
We want decisions to be based on data and evidence and not ideology or gut feelings. But being presented with research results only starts the process of understanding what to draw from it.
Locating International Relations on the Social Science Map
A just-published lecture on international relations as a social science suggests that no discipline is an island.
World University Rankings: The Haves Have It
There’s a rankings mania affecting institutions of higher education. But just because it’s a mania, does that make bad?
The Scottish Referendum: Social Science and National Identity
As the independence vote moves from all-consuming question to historical incident, what are the lessons that Scottish universities and in particular Scottish social scientists should take away?
Can Greater Transparency Lead to Better Social Science?
The political science journal Comparative Political Studies is experimenting for one special issue in which articles will be judged based on reviewers’ evaluations of what authors intend to do rather than what they report as their findings.
It Matters When Science is Misunderstood
A much-shared screed against various types of science –including, predictably, most social science–has James Dyke scratching his head and quoting Wolfgang Pauli: ‘This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.’
Social Science in the News
Making Social Science Relevant Again: Engaging Students Through Wicked Problems From Big Think The most frequently voiced criticisms of higher education is that […]
