Monthly Archives: January 2012

Wikipedia to Go Dark on Wednesday to Protest Bills on Web Piracy

Imagine: a day without Wikipedia…. Wikipedia to Go Dark on Wednesday to Protest Bills on Web Piracy – NY Times

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Martin Luther King: Science Advocate

@livingarchitect, Rachel Armstrong, passes along this great piece. It is a wonderful reminder of why reason & faith should not be seen as mutually exclusive. And captures some real insights on how an mindfully open science that is divorced from … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Basic News, Economics & STEM Research, Open Access, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | Leave a comment

NSB report on merit review “lacks teeth” with regard to enforcing Broader Impacts Criterion

At least according to a quote from Luis Echegoyen included here: Clarifying Review Criteria | January 16, 2012 Issue – Vol. 90 Issue 3 | Chemical & Engineering News.

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, NSF, Peer Review, US Science Agencies | Leave a comment

Red Wine and Lies – Percolator – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Many of the responses in the article are great examples of ad hominem fallacies. What do I conclude about red wine from the fact that someone doing research on resveratrol fabricated research results? Nothing at all. Does the article present … Continue reading

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Open Access: Sharing Inspiration & Experience

@livingarchitect , Rachel Armstrong, posts this nice 90 second vid on sharing our work as we move along in our research. As I watch it, I recall Alex Mosiak’s post previous to this one. There is an important distinction to … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Open Access, Public Pedagogy, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, Transdisciplinarity | Leave a comment

Questioning the Wisdom of Crowds

Has there been an uncritical rush towards teamwork in the workplace? What are the consequences? In the course of this essay about the value of retaining individual autonomy in the workplace, open-plan office space and even the sacred cow of … Continue reading

Posted in Future of the University, Interdisciplinarity, Multidisciplinarity, Public Pedagogy | 1 Comment

Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job – Boing Boing

Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job – Boing Boing.  Attention graduate students, and other job seekers: this is the way to write a job cover letter.

Posted in Basic News, Graduate Studies, Transdisciplinarity | 1 Comment

The Real Danger Is to Research – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Real Danger Is to Research – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education. Article argues that the recent move to censor publications on  bird flu virulence goes too far. The board that made this decision lacks the relevant expertise, … Continue reading

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Science has a reflexive moment (sort of)

I came across this report from a workshop that discussed the need for consideration of the societal impacts, both beneficial and potentially harmful, of recent developments in the field of synthetic biology by synthetic biologists. It seems to represent a … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, STEM Policy, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security | Leave a comment

‘Fracking’ (and its risks) Goes Global

Ian Urbina at the New York Times has written another excellent piece on the character of the economic momentum behind and environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing: this time in a global context. He focuses on South Africa, but Poland, Peru, … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Climate Change, Degrowth Economics, Environmental policy, Gas Fracking, Occupy Wall Street, Open Access, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | 3 Comments

Scientists Ought to Take an Entrepreneurial Attitude toward Broader Impacts

Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled. This is the definition of entrepreneurship the article linked below discusses as the best ever. I agree that it’s excellent as definitions go. Let me suggest that adopting … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, NSF, Peer Review, STEM Policy, US Science Agencies | 1 Comment

NSF “clarifies” Broader Impacts « Gas station without pumps

After reading the report (the body, not the hundreds of pages of appendices), I’m at least as confused as I was before about what the h*** NSF expects for Broader Impacts. (Gas station without pumps, hereafter GSWOP) What is revealed … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, NSF, Peer Review, STEM Policy, US Science Agencies | 1 Comment

NSF Tweaks Its Merit Review Rules – ScienceInsider

Jeffrey Mervis on NSB’s decision and report on NSF’s merit review criteria. Still digesting the report, which is quite substantial. But it looks as if NSB and the Task Force on Merit Review did a bang-up job. Highlights include: Retaining … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, Metrics, NSF, Peer Review, STEM Policy, Transformative Research, US Science Agencies | Leave a comment

Research Bought, Then Paid For – NYTimes.com

Catchy title for an argument against the Research Works Act. Research Bought, Then Paid For – NYTimes.com.

Posted in Accountability, NIH, Open Access, Peer Review, STEM Policy, US Science Agencies | Leave a comment

Does open access really threaten peer review?

Here, I mean peer review in the sense of pre-publication review by experts in a relevant field of manuscripts submitted for publication in scholarly journals. Peer review, in this sense, has been the backbone of scholarly publishing at least since … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Future of the University, Metrics, NIH, Open Access, Peer Review, STEM Policy, US Science Agencies | 2 Comments

DCMS Blog: Welcome to the ‘Priceless?’ blog

Claire Donovan, a friend and colleague of CSID (and of individual members of the collective) launches a new interactive blog. The first topic: on the very idea of measuring cultural value. DCMS Blog: Welcome to the ‘Priceless?’ blog.

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‘Badges’ Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas – College 2.0 – The Chronicle of Higher Education

The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market. ‘Badges’ Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional … Continue reading

Posted in Future of the University, Graduate Studies | Leave a comment

The Uneasy Technocratic Alliance

John Siegmund set the tone for the City of Denton’s appointed Gas Well Task Force. He articulated a classic engineering technocratic position that goes as follows. The problem with fracking is capitalism. The short-term profit motive of capitalists leads to … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Environmental policy, Gas Fracking, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | 2 Comments

The Successful Secede

This is something I have been talking about now for almost three years. The realization was a logical outcome of following the critiques of Serge Latouche, Michel Foucault and a few others. I am not quite sure why more academics … Continue reading

Posted in Basic News, Degrowth Economics, Occupy Wall Street, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security | Leave a comment

Hobbes: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

A new book is out on Thomas Hobbes and our current political situation. This is an interview with the author, Prof. Ted H. Miller: Nature (and nature’s architect) had fallen short. With the right science, human beings could become the … Continue reading

Posted in Degrowth Economics, Philosophy & Politics, Public Pedagogy, Public Philosophizing, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security | Tagged | Leave a comment

Reshaping History… Research

Historians are also talking about what we at CSID have been describing for a while vis. the humanities & the future of the university… Life beyond the tenure track was a big topic. In a series of columns in the … Continue reading

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A call for accountability in economics

Similar to a former post of mine about econometrics, this Chronicle article makes the case that the institutional incarnation of economics (i.e. economics as an academic discipline embedded in university and college institutions and its attendant culture) needs a reality-check; … Continue reading

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New Ways to Measure Science | Wired Science | Wired.com

Thanks to @jasonpriem for Tweeting this article on altmetrics. New Ways to Measure Science | Wired Science | Wired.com.

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Anguish Trumps Activism at the MLA – Labor & Work-Life Issues – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Anguish Trumps Activism at the MLA – Labor & Work-Life Issues – The Chronicle of Higher Education. A constant drumbeat of this stuff now….

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MLA considers radical changes in the dissertation | Inside Higher Ed

MLA considers radical changes in the dissertation | Inside Higher Ed. We are finally seeing some real movement, in terms of shifting perspectives toward the academy, dissertations, and the humanities. About time.

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