Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
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.
The Stern Review of the REF – An Economist Against Markets!
In an effort to prevent ‘gaming’ the REF, new recommendation from Lord Stern cuts down on the freedom of academics to move from institution as they see fit. Is the cure worse than the disease?
Brexit: Well-Behaved Liberals Seldom Change History
As Ian McBride has commented in The Guardian, one of the strange features of Britain’s EU referendum is the resignation with which […]
Six Reasons Why Academics Won’t Change Policy
As social scientists are pressured to be part of the policy-making process, that’s easier said than done, explains James Lloyd. He gives six reasons why sometimes research won’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) impact change.
Zika – What Are the Real Lessons from Ebola?
Another disease in the tropics has the World Health Organisation in a lather, and again biomedicine’s response will not be all that useful in the short term. Social science can help now to address the underlying problems that help the Zika virus to spread — if policymakers will listen.
Common Rule Revision – The Ethics Police Fight Back
Revisions to the U.S. government’s regulations on ethical treatment of human research subjects that would exempt some experiments from direct oversight by institutional review boards are facing pushback from paternalistic guardians, says our Robert Dingwall, who don’t seem to believe subjects are competent to make decisions on their own.
Deregulating Social Science Research Ethics – Clipping the Wings of IRBs?
The Federal Register is surely not everybody’s bedtime reading. It is where the US Government formally publishes certain official documents, including advance […]
Antibiotic Resistance – Missing the Point?
There is no point in improving the innovation pipeline for antibiotics, argues Robert Dingwall, if the drugs that come out at the end all fall into the same chaotic patterns of use as today.
