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 […]
Science vs. 2017: Five Essential Reads
2017 may well be remembered as the year of alternative facts and fake news. Truth took a hit, and experts seemed to lose the public’s trust and scientists felt under siege as the Trump administration took office. Five stories, from The Conversation, showcase where scholars and scientists stand in this new climate and various ways to consider the value research holds for society.
How Do We Head Off the Collateral Damage of Big Data?
Hamish Robertson and Joanne Travaglia argue that big data quantification is now not only a mechanism for extracting information but has become an idea with social and political power in its own right. The lack of critique of quantitative methods and their application contributes to the existing and potentially coercive power of digital information systems and their attendant methods, and enhances the potential for collateral damage.
Report Offers Guidelines for Ethics of Technology Design
The big questions posed by our digital future sit at the intersection of technology and ethics. This is complex territory that requires input from experts in many different fields, including the social sciences, if we are to navigate it successfully. A new report makes an effort to give a first draft of that necessary input.
Diversity: Good Intentions Aren’t Same as Evidence
You’d be forgiven for assuming a quick and sure way to multiply profits and amplify organizational success is to increase the gender and racial diversity of any group. According to mainstream media, the effects of gender and racial diversity are universally favorable. However, professor Alice Eagly states, “the truth is there’s no adequate scientific basis for these newsworthy assertions.”
Louise Richardson: Educational Divide Fuels Corrosive Populism
Speaking before a sell-out audience of policymakers, journalists and academics in Whitehall, Louise Richardson FAcSS, vice chancellor of the University of Oxford, said we must bridge the educational divide to prevent populism for threatening democracy
Washington and Social Science: Bills on Evidence-Based Policy, Peer-Review
While most eyes in Washington are focused on tax reform, two new bills that affect social science have been introduced: one that re configures how peer-review would be used for determining research grants, and another that would make use of recommendations from a bipartisan study on evidence-based policy.
Canadian Policymakers, Please Follow Naylor Recommendations You Asked For
It is time, argues Andrew Craig, for the Canadian government to demonstrate they are moving ahead with all recommendations from the Naylor report — Canada’s Fundamental science review — to return balance and support Canadian science in all its wonderful diversity.
Sabina Alkire on Measuring Poverty
Economist Sabina Alkire has spent her career looking at all the things beyond just a lack of money that make us poor. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative explains the need for a consistent and reputable means of measuring poverty over time.
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