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 […]
There is still a gender pay gap at nearly all Canadian universities, with especially big gaps at Canada’s 15 research-intensive universities, Megan Frederickson shows. It’s not accounted for by greater talent or solely the ghost of sexism past.
Cambridge Analytica’s approach to crunching social media data represents a step change in how analytics can today be used as a tool to generate insights – and to exert influence.
It is right to believe that researchers and their employers value research integrity, says Annabel Latham. But instances where trust has been betrayed by an academic – even if it’s the case that data used for university research purposes wasn’t caught in the crossfire – will have a negative impact on whether participants will continue to trust researchers.
How can universities train our scientists, technologists and engineers to engage with society rather than perform as cogs in the engine of economic development? Author Richard Lachman asks for educational system to require STEM students to take art and humanities courses, not as an attempt to “broaden minds” but as a necessary discussion of morals, ethics and responsibility.
The big questions posed by our digital future sit at the intersection of technology and ethics. This is complex territory that requires input from experts in many different fields, including the social sciences, if we are to navigate it successfully. A new report makes an effort to give a first draft of that necessary input.
Starting in 2018, Australian universities will be required to prove their research provides concrete benefits for taxpayers and the government, who fund it.
It is time, argues Andrew Craig, for the Canadian government to demonstrate they are moving ahead with all recommendations from the Naylor report — Canada’s Fundamental science review — to return balance and support Canadian science in all its wonderful diversity.
STEM programs are critical components of universities’ curricular and research missions, but so, too, notes Paul Axelrod, are the liberal arts. And these programs should not be marginalized in market-driven, academic prioritization schemes.