Insights
Annoying Questions #1: Pandemics, Protests, Prizes & Peer Review
I’m trying out something new for the Friday emails for the rest of the Northern Hemisphere summer. Let me know what you think of it.
Do Women Leaders Really Do Pandemics Better?
Hilda Bastian reports in WIRED that we don’t have the evidence yet — and science “won’t solve gender bias with more bias.”…
Read MoreWhat the End of Peer Review Sounds Like
This morning I flicked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and heard Dr. Vin Gupta assert that one was 19 times more likely to contract the COVID-19 virus indoors than out. I Googled and found the study he was talking about — a review of 110 cases in Japan.…
Read MoreMetrics? Yes, Metrics!
Metrics? C’mon, the world is falling apart. What a weird time to talk about that.
ICYMI: In our falling-apart world, the countries that are measuring are staying ahead of the game — barely, but staying ahead. The countries that aren’t deeply and consistently measuring (and that are telling stories about the state of things instead) are falling behind, and are at risk of becoming global pariahs.…
Read MoreI Advance Masked
Science has spoken. So I walk Maxie, my beautiful, one-year-old golden retriever, nearly every day — long hikes in the mornings, even longer ones on weekends. Exercise, science shows, has benefits — especially exercise with dogs.
I wear a mask when I walk Maxie, even though it fogs up my glasses, especially in the heat and humidity of a DC summer.…
Read MoreIs The Conversation Now Worth Talking About?
Traffic to The Conversation — that written-by-academics-for-everyone-else site that’s always been a port of last resort for expert opinion content — is way up since the beginning of the pandemic, says Columbia Journalism Review.
“Way up” = 81 million page views in April for all The Conversation sites plus republication by other sites — double that of April 2019.…
Read MoreYou Can’t Unsee It
Have you seen the new New York Times’ interview with Jon Stewart? I wasn’t a huge fan of “The Daily Show” — while the most amusing shooting of barreled fish ever done, it still seemed to me shooting of barreled fish — but here’s a Stewart quote from the interview that sticks with me:
… Read MoreThe police are a reflection of a society.
Experts, the BLM Protests & COVID-19
Yascha Mounk writes this morning in The Atlantic that “The Virus Will Win.” A sobering read and — with 23 U.S. states showing increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases, just as much of the country moves into full-throated reopening — difficult to counter:
… Read MoreWhen the first wave of COVID-19 was threatening to overwhelm the medical system, back in March, the public’s fear and uncertainty were far more intense than they are now.
Should Your Organization Do Science?
From a recent episode of Tyler Cowen’s podcast “Conversations with Tyler,” with the economist Paul Romer:
… Read MoreCOWEN: If you could reform the World Bank, what would you do?
ROMER: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I think the Bank is trying to serve two missions, and it can’t do both.
Don’t Tell Us to Read Papers
Getting the public to read scientific papers has long been a fever dream of many scientists interested in public engagement — and the many consultants who claim to teach scientists how to write better.
Time to break the fever.
The science writer Carl Zimmer this week published a guide on “How You Should Read Coronavirus Studies, or Any Science Paper” in The New York Times.…
Read MoreThe Lie of Timely
Like most of you, I’m horrified, ashamed and frustrated by many of the events of the last eight days — much less the last three months — in the United States.
Is this a turning point? we might ask.
Not if the last 50 years — Watts 1965, Newark 1967, Miami 1980, LA 1992, Cincinnati 2001, Ferguson 2014, Baltimore 2015, Charlotte 2016, etc.,…
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