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 […]
Our Man in Bogota Finds Colombia a Nation Resurgent
For most of the 20th century and into the 21st the South American nation of Colombia was wracked by civil wars, political […]
Statistical Association Takes on Use, Abuse of P-values
Even as it insists it’s not really saying anything new, the American Statistical Association Board of Directors has laid down a marker in the debate over what constitutes “statistical significance.”
The Stories We Tell, the Lives We Lead
Why does the Homeric of ‘violent’ seem so wedded to the term ‘street gang’? Criminologist Timothy Lauger answered that question in part in a an award-winning paper that looked at the stories gang members tell themselves.
Archived Webinar: US Funding Picture for 2016
In this archived version of a webcast held on February 17, Mark Vieth — senior vice president of the Washington government relations firm CRD Associates – addresses these issues and others, including what the just-released federal budget from the White House means for federally funded research.
I’m Looking Through You, Peer Review
Jon Tennant takes a look at the transformations underway aimed at tackling the widespread dissatisfaction with the system of peer review. He provides further background on the platform ScienceOpen, which seeks to enable a process of transparent, self-regulating, peer review, where knowledge sharing is encouraged, valued, and rewarded. By adopting a more transparent process of research evaluation, we move one step closer towards a fairer and democratic research process.
Lamar Smith’s National Interest Bill Passes House
Legislation that requires that future grants made by the National Science Foundation meet a test for being in the ‘national interest’ passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
A Murder in Egypt; an Attack on Academic Freedom
While murder and torture are inherently of concern, Giulio Regeni’s case has much broader implications for higher education in the UK and beyond, argues his friend Neil Pyper.
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.
