A space to explore, share and shape the issues facing social and behavioral scientists
Starting in 2018, Australian universities will be required to prove their research provides concrete benefits for taxpayers and the government, who fund it.
Evidence shows that the Australian government’s ‘nudge unit’ may be the wrong way to address major problems like inequality, argue Andrew Frain and Randal Tame.
Why does it matter if research is ethical or not? And what steps could or should have been taken to ensure that issues such as those the Australian Human Rights Commission now faces — in a case related to well-intentioned research into sexual assault — are avoided?
An Australian directive to measure the engagement with and impact of academic research can itself by improved by applying new research.
Academics need to retain their freedom to speak on matters of interest, which intersect with their specialized knowledge, even where that intersection is tangential or not visible to others.
Perhaps the solution to conflicting spending priorities, write Rod Lamberts and Will J. Grant, is simply to acknowledge that people will always have conflicting priorities, and think about how best to live alongside each other: mythical, homogeneous pub-goer and irrelevant, out-of-touch academic alike.
Shonkily researched assertions are okay if you enjoy the safe patronage of a major news organisation, argues Rob Brooks. But know, he adds, you would never get away with such abject laziness, or such contempt for professional disinterest in a grant proposal to a federal funding body.
Academia has long recognized that wicked problems require cross-disciplinary research approaches, yet Australia’s Science and Research Priorities enthrall mainly STEM researchers. This divide puts academia back into silos: those on the sunny side of funding decisions and those under a constant rain cloud.
Imagine an ethics review system where the researcher’s proposal is read by an ‘ethics jury’ of four to six researchers drawn, as in legal juries, from the academic population at large, suggests Australia’s Gigi Foster.
Looking specifically at Australia, the author of the book on research integrity wonders how rampant plagiarizing and fabricating may be among researchers.
Australia allocates around A$9 billion a year of taxpayers’ money for research, but how do we know if that money is being spent wisely?
Some Australians have looked to the United States as a model for revamping Oz’s higher education system. U.S.-based sociologist Steven Ward suggests they ought to take another look.
