A space to explore, share and shape the issues facing social scientists
No one expected Tamiflu to be a wonder drug, but indications are that it’s moderately useful in fighting a serious public health threat. But that message was lost last week in an ill-starred rush to beat up on ‘wicked’ Big Pharma, argues Robert Dingwall.
In synthesizing the results of many of Stanley Milgram’s obedience trial experiments, modern-day researchers find the scary takeaways that have long accompanied the work don’t really hold up as strongly as once assumed..
As an echo of the latest just-released IPCC report on climate change, Elaine McKewon details how one journal blinked when climate change skeptics turned up the heat on an article exploring conspiracy ideation and the rejection of science.
Applying ethics to social science research can raise as many issues as it answers. A new set of guidelines on which Robert DIngwall consulted gives clarity in some cases like manipulation of images and duplicate publication but leaves some other controversies unsettled.
Here’s an ethical question or two — is it OK to re-use your own words in a new written piece, or is there an expectation of “exclusivity of the written word for each publication”? Drexel’s Jamie L. Callahan examines the moral panic surrounding self-plagiarism.
Back in the summer, John Holmwood, the current BSA President, sent me an email about impact and research ethics. Various […]
The controversy over BBC journalists’ use of a student tour group linked to the London School of Economics should not be allowed to go away quietly.
In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast sociologist Ann Oakley discusses her research into a range of questions about women’s experience of childbirth.
Apparently Luka Rocco Magnotta made videos of himself killing cats and eating parts of his murdered victim, making the videos […]
How an unholy alliance of arrogant scientists and self-interested federal bureaucrats came to widen the net of ethical regulation intended to deal with abuses in medical research to empirical investigation in the humanities and social sciences.
UK newspapers have belatedly picked up on a troubling precedent that is crystallizing in the US courts. Boston College has been ordered to disclose recordings from an archive of interviews with former IRA members to the Police Service of Northern Ireland…
There was a stir in some sections of the UK media just before Christmas when it was revealed that a […]
