Testing Tenure: Let the Market Decide

Tenure debates and disputes are often irresolvable because of the complex and multivariate nature of contractual relationships between faculty and administration, and the nuanced and varying beliefs about tenure held by the professoriate. The Ceci et al. study leads this commentator to suggest a simple solution - allow individual institutions to define the parameters of tenure according to their unique core values

Piedritas de colores y un precepto de Darwin

Escribía Carlos Darwin el 18 de Septiembre de 1861 a un amigo a propósito de explicar como había crecido la geología a partir del primer momento en que él ingresó a ella durante los cinco años de realizar su viaje en el HMS Beagle: Hace cosa de treinta años apareció una discusión en el sentido de que el geólogo debería limitarse a sólo observar y abstenerse de ingresar al mundo de las teorías; recuerdo que en ese debate alguien declaró que a ese paso un hombre podría dedicar su tiempo a una excavación de grava y dedicarse a contar todas las piedritas y describir sus colores. ¡Que extraño resultaba que no fuera evidente que toda observación debe ir acompañada de un dictamen de que lo encontrado apoya a favor o en contra de un punto de vista, si aspira uno a que la observación rinda un servicio

Tracking science : an alternative for those excluded by citizen science

Abstract: In response to recent discussion about terminology, we propose “tracking science” as a term that is more inclusive than citizen science. Our suggestion is set against a postcolonial political background and large-scale migrations, in which “citizen” is becoming an increasingly contentious term. As a diverse group of authors from several continents, our priority is to deliberate a term that is all-inclusive, so that it could be adopted by everyone who participates in science or contributes to scientific knowledge, regardless of socio-cultural background. For example, current citizen science terms used for Indigenous knowledge imply that such practitioners belong to a sub-group that is other, and therefore marginalized. Our definition for “tracking science” does not exclude Indigenous peoples and their knowledge contributions and may provide a space for those who currently participate in citizen science, but want to contribute, explore, and/or operate beyond..

Accumulative Extremism: The Post-war Tradition of Anglo-American Neo-Nazi and Anti-Semitic Networks of Support

This essay explores the development of a transnational, Anglo-American neo-Nazi culture from the end of the Second World War to the present day. It stresses that it was the unique friendship between Colin Jordan and George Lincoln Rockwell that fuelled this tradition of cooperation, and plots how their World Union of National Socialists developed a mutual understanding between British and American activists in the 1960s. This survey of an emergent, post-war ‘tradition’ of Anglo-American interaction also highlights how Holocaust denial brought together British and American activists, and the from the 1980s onwards, we see a more complex series of interchanges emerge, including Blood & Honour and Combat 18. The chapter concludes by examining how this ‘tradition’ is now reproduced by a variety of websites

Can evolution get us off the hook? Evaluating the ecological defence of human rationality

AbstractThis paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of ‘ecological rationality’ have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallacies turn out to be artefacts of narrow norms and artificial set-ups. However, we argue that putative demonstrations of ecological rationality involve subtle locus shifts in attributions of rationality, conflating the adaptive rationale of heuristics with our own epistemic credentials. By contrast, other cases also involve an ecological reframing of human reason, but do not involve such problematic locus shifts. We discuss the difference between these cases, bringing clarity to the rationality debate

Assumption without representation: the unacknowledged abstraction from communities and social goods

We have not clearly acknowledged the abstraction from unpriceable “social goods” (derived from communities) which, different from private and public goods, simply disappear if it is attempted to market them. Separability from markets and economics has not been argued, much less established. Acknowledging communities would reinforce rather than undermine them, and thus facilitate the production of social goods. But it would also help economics by facilitating our understanding of – and response to – financial crises as well as environmental destruction and many social problems, and by reducing the alienation from economics often felt by students and the public

The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule

From bestselling author Michael Shermer, an investigation of the evolution of morality that is a paragon of popularized science and philosophy The Sun (Baltimore) A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an evolutionary ethics, science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us to eat) or why sex is enjoyable (to motivate us to procreate), they are now searching for the very nature of humanity. In The Science of Good and Evil, science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates to moral primates; how and why morality motivates the human animal; and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans. As he closes the divide between science and morality, Shermer draws on stories from the Yanamamouml;, infamously known as the fierce people of the tropical rain forest, to the Stanford studies on jailers\u27 behavior in prisons. The Science of Good and Evil is ultimately a profound look at the moral animal, belief, and the scientific pursuit of truth.https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/alumni_books/1017/thumbnail.jp