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 […]
President Signs Bill Setting Policy for NSF, NIST
Legislation that sets policy for the National Science Foundation has been signed by President Obama. The bill no longer includes funding restrictions on social science but does include language that has been used in the past to attack the disciplines.
Book Review: Metric Power
In Metric Power, David Beer examines the intensifying role that metrics play in our everyday lives, from healthcare provision to our interactions with friends and family, within the context of the so-termed data revolution. This is a book that illustrates our growing implication in, and arguable acquiescence to, an increasingly quantified world, but, Thomas Christie Williams asks, where do we locate resistance?
Is the Concept of Race Science’s Biggest Mistake?
There is a clear consensus among anthropologists that races aren’t real, that they don’t reflect biological reality, and that most anthropologists don’t believe there is a place for race categories in science.
Research > Publication > Impact (You Might Need a Strategy for That)
A publication strategy should include carefully-defined goals, a purposeful timeline, and actionable steps for proposing and writing the kinds of pieces large or small that allow others to access what we’ve learned, produce impact, and propel our careers forward.
Early Career Paper Authors Sought for NIH Honor
Ten years ago, the National Institute for Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) started an annual event to commemorate […]
Sandy Pentland on Social Physics
In this Social Science Bites podcast, MIT’s Sandy Pentland tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about the origins of social physics in the barren days before the advent of widespread good data and solid statistical methods and how it blossomed as both a field and for Pentland’s own research.
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.
Rapeglish: A Program that Spits Out Hate — For the Greater Good
A new computer program from the author of ‘Misogyny Online’ slices up and shuffles around an archive of sexualized vitriol, rape threats, and aggressive sleaze received by real-life women and presents its own version of what is called Rapeglish.
