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 […]
Japan’s Education Ministry Says to Axe Social Science and Humanities
Citing an aging population and concerns about economic competitiveness, Japan’s education ministry offers a drastic solution for the national universities: Get rid of social science and humanities departments, and do it now.
Malaria Vaccine – Great Science But What’s the Point?
Bully for the researchers who have developed a vaccine can build resistance against some instances of malaria, says Robert Dingwall. But before the WHO recommends for its adoption, he suggests a harder look at user-centered design and cost-benefit analysis may be in order.
Making Sense of Screening: Public Expectations About Screening Still Don’t Match What Screening Programmes Can Deliver
Misconceptions about how screening works, its limitations and possible harms are still being perpetuated by media stories and high profile cases, such […]
Did My Field Make Me a Liberal?
The idealized folk psychology that underpinned his original libertarian politics, says social psychologist Elliot Berkman, collapsed in the face of social psychological evidence.
Ebola: WHO and the Consequences of Ignoring Social Science
A new report from the World Health Organization on the response to the African Ebola outbreak backs up what our Robert Dingwall has been writing all along — by downplaying social science lives have been lost. The question now is whether a new WHO can improve.
Q&A: Publons Aims to Enhance Peer Review
If the mental picture of peer review turned from it being a chore to it being a career-builder, it’s reasonable to think that all of academe might prosper. An interview with a co-founder of Publons, a company which aims to do just that.
Stories of Research to Reality: Kerric Harvey
Media anthropologist Kerric Harvey was present when the world started to wake to the idea that the Internet was changing society dramatically, and realized that good social science was needed to figure out what to expect.
Social Science in the News
Cutting social science funding stalls future innovation The Hill (blog) Gutting funding for social and behavioral science research in favor of other […]
