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 […]
President Signs Bill Setting Policy for NSF, NIST
Legislation that sets policy for the National Science Foundation has been signed by President Obama. The bill no longer includes funding restrictions on social science but does include language that has been used in the past to attack the disciplines.
Is the Concept of Race Science’s Biggest Mistake?
There is a clear consensus among anthropologists that races aren’t real, that they don’t reflect biological reality, and that most anthropologists don’t believe there is a place for race categories in science.
Sociology’s (Selective) Diversity
Our Robert Dingwall reflects on Tinder’s in-house sociologist and on the just-announced New Year’s Honours list to question just how diverse are current understandings of diversity.
Rapeglish: A Program that Spits Out Hate — For the Greater Good
A new computer program from the author of ‘Misogyny Online’ slices up and shuffles around an archive of sexualized vitriol, rape threats, and aggressive sleaze received by real-life women and presents its own version of what is called Rapeglish.
Do We Really Want Historians as Policy Advisers?
The claim that Thucydides’ account of the past is useful is often extended to historiography in general, rather than just to his specific – and idiosyncratic – approach. And that, suggests Neville Morley, may be the real trap of Thucydides.
Will November Prove to be the Cruelest Month for Science?
T.S. Eliot said “April is the cruelest month.” This November has been pretty harsh, too, says blogger Howard J. Silver, who wonders what the new U.S. president will mean for a number of issues, including research funding.
An Engineer at the NSF: Erich Bloch, 1925-2016
Erich Bloch was the first non-academic to serve as director of the NSF. Although a computer engineer by background, he recognized the value of the social and behavioral sciences.
Jennifer Hochschild on Race in America
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Harvard’s Jennifer Hochschild explains to interviewer David Edmonds some of the pertinent data points from her years of using quantitative and qualitative analysis to map the racial, ethnic and class cleavages in America’s demography.
