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 […]
Reversing Africa’s Academic Brain Drain
It won’t come easy, but an Nigerian academic working in Arkansas urges administrators of African universities to limit the obstacles keeping Africans from choosing to work in the home continent.
Lessons from the LaCour Retraction
We need honest researchers who monitor their own behavior; we need to have scrutiny by other researchers in the field; and we need an engaged public. But what do we have, asks Judith Stark.
The Tragedy of the (Over-Surveyed) Commons
If Garrett Hardin were with us today, argues Rob Brooks, he would have saved a special place on the degraded commons to relegate those who inflict upon us all the burden of collecting meaningless data and unheeded opinion.
Is ‘Credentialism’ a Genuine Danger?
The values of a university education are many and generally agreed upon. But is holding a degree the same thing?
The Game Theorist: John Nash, 1928-2015
The impact of John Nash’s initial work has been immense over the past 65 years. It seems certain that in his absence, the frameworks and mathematical language he refined and developed will continue to provide new insights into a diverse range of problems.
What the H? Explaining That Citation Metric
The appointment of climate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg has focused attention on a newish metric for assessing academic importance, the H-Index.
It’s Time to Kill PowerPoint (in the Classroom)
Take away PowerPoint, and what do professors have left? Students! As it should be, argues Bent Meier Sørensen.
Awaiting Academic Success? When Frogs Fly
Critics of various bits of research often go to great lengths to make the studies seem silly, not serious. But ‘silly’ endeavors often result in serious societal gains — and maybe a boost for your career.
