In a short post Paul Graham (computer scientist, venture capitalist, and opinion haver) notes that biographies of famous scientists tend to focus on the subset of their ideas that panned out, neglecting their failures. Biographies of Newton, for example, understandably focus more on physics than alchemy or theology. The impression we get is that his …
Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin has introduced a bill that would eliminate tenure at public universities in the state. The text of the bill can be found here. This follows on the heels of a similar bill that has been introduced in Iowa. The Missouri bill would also require universities to provide information about the …
Here’s something that should probably be worked into every college curriculum in the country: a course developed by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West of the University of Washington — Calling Bullshit. Note, this is not an official course at the moment, although they plan to submit it to the University for approval. But right now, …
A recent editorial in Nature “Young scientists thrive in life after academia” on the future of careers for today’s scientists is on one hand, both optimistic, but on the other, deeply unsatisfying. The editorial is clearly well-intentioned, providing what it sees as a hope for a generation of new scientists facing the worse funding climate …
There’s a short piece in the Times Higher Ed by Henry Heller in which he outlines the transformation over the course of the second half of the twentieth century of American universities from publicly supported institutions working for the good of society as a whole to standard neoliberal corporations. The upheavals of the 1960s and …
Read more “Henry Heller on IP-Based Capitalism at Universities”
Ronin Institute Research Scholar Emily Monosson has written a new post (cross-posted as AAAS’s Sci-on-the-Fly) where she discusses the challenges of accessing paywalled literature when you’re working outside the traditional academic system. Here’s an excerpt: Now, as we enter the Golden Age of information and technology – somewhere, somehow, this scientific information increasingly became locked away …
Open science has well and truly arrived. Preprints. Research Parasites. Scientific Reproducibility. Citizen science. Mozilla, the producer of the Firefox browser, has started an Open Science initiative. Open science really hit the mainstream in 2016. So what is open science? Depending on who you ask, it simply means more timely and regular releases of data …
Marc Edwards, civil-engineering professor at Virginia Tech and driving force behind the research that revealed the high lead levels in the water system in Flint, Michigan, gave a great interview to the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has a number of fantastic, and terrifying, things to say about the culture of academic science. I am …
Read more “Marc Edwards (Flint Water Dude) and the Lie of Tenure”
Jacqui Shine has published a piece at Chronicle Vitae where she describes some of the ways in which academics without a university affiliation can access certain library resources. Based on a variety of conversations over the past few years, this seems to be the issue that offers the greatest challenge to independent scholars. I am …
Reprinted from the most recent issue of the Ronin Institute newsletter, Kitsune. If you talk to an academic, odds are it won’t take long before the conversation turns to how frustrated they are with the bureaucracies they have to deal with, both at the university and at funding agencies. The explosive growth of university bureaucracy …
Read more “A Proposal to Save the University: Everybody Drives a Truck!”
