The Problem With Sugar-Daddy Science
The pursuit of money from wealthy donors distorts the research process-and yields flashy projects that don't help and don't work.
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The pursuit of money from wealthy donors distorts the research process-and yields flashy projects that don't help and don't work.
Six whistleblowers and ex-government scientists describe how the Trump administration made them bury climate science - and why they won't stay quiet.
The factors are complicated, but they tie broadly back to America's history of systemic racism.
Machine-learning systems are black boxes even to the researchers that build them. That makes it hard for others to assess the results.
There have been big declines in the proportion of humanities and social science papers published in Norwegian, conference told
The Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Global Sprint was held online over the course of two-days (29-30 November 2018), where participants from around the world were invited to develop brief guides (stand alone, self paced training materials), called "Things", that can be used by the research community to understand FAIR in different contexts as well as some initial steps to consider.
It's no secret that retractions have a stigma, which is very likely part of why authors often resist the move - even when honest error is involved.
SAGE Publishing is today retracting 22 articles by a materials science researcher who published in two of their journals - but the anonymous reader who brought the problems to their attention…
Respondents to a Nature poll want to make their own decisions about how to interpret citation metrics. That requires data to be freely accessible.
The incoming president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, nominated Bulgaria's Mariya Gabriel to take charge of research, innovation and education, but has scotched research from the name of the brief for the first time, relabelling it the 'Innovation and Youth' portfolio.
Reviewing and accepting study plans before results are known can counter perverse incentives. Chris Chambers sets out three ways to improve the approach.
The publisher is scrutinizing researchers who might be inappropriately using the review process to promote their own work.
Sen. Maria Cantwell calls for committee hearings on whether Trump administration is trying to "undermine science."
Graphics are becoming increasingly important for scientists to effectively communicate their findings to broad audiences, but most researchers lack expertise in visual media.
In recent years traditional journalism has experienced a collapse, and science journalism has been a major casualty. One potential remedy is to encourage scientists to write for news media about science.
The outcomes of a 4-year pilot phase which gathered information from over 500 institutions are discussed, outlining future directions for efforts to promote gender equity in STEM.
International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) and Digital Science have joined forces to make Dimensions and Altmetric data available to ISSI members at scale, and at no cost for scientometric research purposes.
Data-visualization techniques can clarify the uncertainty in information or make it more confusing if not implemented well.
The Native Hawaiian protesters blocking the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea appear to have settled in for the long haul.
Researchers at Eawag have been awarded the 3R Swiss Competence Centre award for their outstanding research work representing a milestone in the promotion of alternatives to animal experiments.
An interview with Jason Lorgan, executive director of campus stores at @UCDavis, about the university's innovative new textbook-affordability program.
With its research on safety for all, Volvo has a clear gender perspective on industrial innovation. So far they are quite alone in this respect.
Whatever you find when you google depends on the people who have developed the algorithms. American researcher fears enhanced sexism and racism unless the IT sector begins to promote diversity.
Abstract: There are many reasons why open source projects have difficulty attracting contributors. Current academic incentive structures are some of the strongest. Wanting to maintain a competitive advantage, too great a focus on novelty when publishing papers, and too little credit given to writing documentation and tutorials, all encourage researchers to reinvent the wheel in a closed team. Although I will discuss these barriers, my talk will focus on some challenges that are much easier to overcome. Not knowing where to start. "Imposter syndrome" and the various intersecting biases that accompany (and often underpin) it. Being unsure as to whether a project even wants any contributions. These can all be addressed with 10 simple rules. From laying out your welcome mat, through setting explicit expectations, to the graceful death of your project, these steps will will help you build and run an open and inclusive community-driven project online. (Breaking down capitalism may have to wait for another day.) Bio: Kirstie Whitaker is a research fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (London, UK) and senior research associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. Her work covers a broad range of interests and methods, but the driving principle is to improve the lives of neurodivergent people and people with mental health conditions. Dr Whitaker uses magnetic resonance imaging to study child and adolescent brain development and participatory citizen science to educate non-autistic people about how they can better support autistic friends and colleagues. She is the lead developer of "The Turing Way", an openly developed educational resource to enable more reproducible data science. Kirstie is a passionate advocate for making science "open for all" by promoting equity and inclusion for people from diverse backgrounds, and by changing the academic incentive structure to reward collaborative working. She is the chair of the Turing Institute's Ethics Advisory Group, a Fulbright scholarship alumna and was a 2016/17 Mozilla Fellow for Science. Kirstie was named, with her collaborator Petra Vertes, as a 2016 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. You can find more information at her lab website: whitakerlab.github.io.
Deaths of prominent life scientists tend to be followed by a surge in highly cited research by newcomers.
Quantitative Science Studies, from the MIT Press, is the official open access journal of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI).
Two upcoming reports disagree on the wisdom of setting a 2050 target for ending the disease.
In a nationwide competition for elite research positions, committees that hold strong implicit gender biases and doubt that women face external barriers to their success are observed to promote fewer women.