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 […]
Sander van der Linden on Viral Altruism
When online charitable appeals take off, social psychologist Sander van der Linden perks up. He studies ‘viral altruism,’ and in this Social Science Bites podcast he details to host David Edmonds how he studies this phenomenon.
Are Ethnographers Ever Wrong?
Steven Lubet, the author of ‘Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters,’ explains the importance of his approach to investigating the discipline — to ‘put it on trial’ — and to reiterate the idea that accuracy matters in social science. Spurring on his restatement is a recent review on Social Science Space that Lubet argues missed his point entirely.
Patricia Goodson on the POWER of Better Academic Writing
A combination of influences — practice, classroom and POWER — has made Patricia Goodson’s book ‘Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing’ a winner for many academics around the world, and now the Textbook & Academic Authors Association has awarded Goodson’s book with one of its 2018 Textbook Excellence Awards. We talk to the author about writing, both her own and perhaps yours!
Keeping an Eagle-Eye on the U.S. Supreme Court
Kenneth Jost has been watching the U.S. Supreme Court for decades, and producing annual yearbook looking at the term just passed. We asked him to reflect on his career and his subject. In this interview, originally posted in February, he predicted that “the fight over any Trump nominee would be a no-holds-barred battle.”
The State of Gun Research in the US: Six Questions Answered
The research needed to answer questions about the role of firearms in acts of horrific mass violence doesn’t exist – and part of the problem is that the United States government largely doesn’t support it.
First, Do No Harm: Five Tips for Collaborating With Government and Development Orgs
The appeal of collaborating with a government agency, or an organization funded by one, seems obvious. In practice, however, it’s not always easy to make collaborative research work well. Susan Dodsworth and Nic Cheeseman outline some simple lessons for those looking to collaborate while avoiding the common pitfalls.
New Members Appointed to Canada’s SSHRC
Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, or SSHRC, has announced the membership of its 18-member governing council.
Nick Seaver on Dissecting the Algorithmic Organism
When discussing the nexus of computer science and social science, the transaction is usually in one direction – what can computer scientists do for social scientists. But a recent paper from Tufts University anthropologist Nick Seaver reverses that flow, using the tool of ethnography to interrogate the tools of engineering.
