A space to explore, share and shape the issues facing social and behavioral scientists
Blog posts and resources relating to public policy. To start a new discussion on public policy, visit the forum via the above link.
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.
A quick overview of the Finch Report on Open Access, and useful links.
Why do we punish and to what ends?
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.
Racially integrated schools offer a number of benefits for students: they are able to expand their cultural outlooks, gain new friends, learn about those who are different, and get better educations at schools with better resources than they would otherwise attend. However, students may struggle with making friends, interacting across racial lines, developing an ethnic identity and with academic achievement
Last week we heard the sad news that Professor Elinor Ostrom has died. Her profound contributions to scholarship have been told often since she became the first woman and the first political scientist ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Recently, The Independent published a brief piece on the ‘slave-like’ working conditions of PhD students at UK universities. This sounds dramatic, but it’s hardly news – the problem has been around for years. The question arises why dissent did not emerge earlier and more forcefully.
On May 9, the House of Representatives adopted a provision that would preclude the National Science Foundation (NSF) from supporting research in the field of political science.
Apparently Luka Rocco Magnotta made videos of himself killing cats and eating parts of his murdered victim, making the videos […]
Recently, the US House of Representatives passed off an amendment offered by Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) that would prohibit funding for the Political Science Program with the National Science Foundation. If enacted into law, this amendment would set an extraordinary and disturbing precedent in which Congress chooses which scientific disciplines should be funded and not funded within the NSF’s research portfolio.
We have just witnessed a long weekend full of remarkable imagery celebrating longevity. However, media images of later life normally take two extremes […]
While parts of Aditya Chakrabortty’s recent piece in the Guardian were sensible and informed, its central claim was unfair – that social science disciplines have been unable or unwilling to explore, explain, and confront the ‘Great Financial Crash’ of 2007-9
