POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Some 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in 1992. The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS’s) board of directors. INTRODUCTION Human beings and…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In an article in the New York Times titled “A Peek inside the Strange World of Fake Academia,” Kevin Carey has provided much illustrative detail on the burgeoning business in very dubious academic conferences, impostor academic societies, and predatory journals. Beyond some of the illustrative detail that is often as compelling…
BY HANK REICHMAN Regular readers of this blog will recall how last year New York University Professor Andrew Ross was stopped from boarding a flight to Abu Dhabi, where NYU has a campus and where Ross had intended to conduct research. Ross, a vocal critic of the human-rights record of the United Arab Emirates, was…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the aftermath of the election there has been plenty of discussion, both among academics and in the media, of the role played by “identity” and especially race in the outcome. Mark Lilla’s much and deservedly criticized New York Times op-ed, “The End of Identity Politics,” got things going. Among the more…
BY MARTIN KICH If poetry is at its core the effort to give expression to the inexpressible aspects of our experience, then science is often a kind of poetry, or at least provides a complement to the poetic impulse. For science provides both a fundamental challenge to all simplistic notions about our existence and a…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These are the opening paragraphs of a new report by Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott for ProPublica: “A serial acquirer, AT&T must persuade the government to allow every major deal. Again and again, the company has relied on economists from America’s top universities to make its case before the Justice Department…
BY HANK REICHMAN Readers of this blog may be familiar with the regular National Public Radio (NPR) feature “Science Friday.” Last week one 35-minute segment, “Science in the Crosshairs,” focused on governmental and other threats to the academic freedom of scientists. It began with fetal tissue research: After furor erupted over a video seeming to…
BY AARON BARLOW What is a writer? What is a Digital Humanist? These sound like disparate questions, but they both are based on the academy of division that has grown up over the past century and more, particularly in American universities. Specializations are created and claims are staked. You’re either on the bus, as Ken…
BY HANK REICHMAN [CORRECTION: Professor Mann has pointed out to me that the damage award was made two years ago. Someone tweeted a link to a story on it this week and I mistakenly thought it was current. Nevertheless, the issue certainly is still alive] The Virginia Supreme Court has [in July 2014] ordered the…