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 …
Recently arrived: this two-volume collection of the poetry of Chinese diplomat Liao Entao. This was assembled by Research Scholar Evelyn Ch’ien in work that was funded partially through a Kickstarter campaign.
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 …
Here’s a clip from First Peoples, a 2015 PBS series about the prehistory of the human race. This clip features archaeologist (and Ronin Institute Research Scholar) Jeff Rose talking about his field work in Oman and the very earliest expansion of anatomically modern humans into the Arabian Peninsula, the first step out of Africa in …
Ronin Institute Research Scholars Ruth Duerr and Soren Scott were honored last week by the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) at the Federation’s January 2016 meeting. ESIP Awardees, featuring Ruth Duerr (second from left) and Soren Scott (far right). Photo by Bruce Caron. Headlining the awards ceremony was Ruth Duerr’s receipt of the …
Read more “Ronin Institute Research Scholars Honored with Awards”
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!”
Happy Holidays to everyone out there. Just a quick reminder that you can make a charitable donation to help support the Ronin Institute AT THE SAME TIME and FOR FREE! If you use the Amazon Smile program, they will donate 0.5% of what you spend to the nonprofit of your choice. The trick is you …
Two stories came out of UC Berkeley over the weekend that will make you question your opinion of academia — or maybe reinforce your opinion. The first story comes from Michael Eisen’s blog and has a bad news, good news, bad news flavor. The bad news is that a prominent astronomy professor at Berkeley named …
On July 1, a symposium at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts tackled the role of bureaucracy in academia. The event was framed this way: Does bureaucracy go hand in hand with neoliberalism, or is it neoliberalism’s guilty secret, a riposte to its professed efficiency? How is bureaucracy represented in literature and theory – from Franz …
