Monthly Archives: May 2013

Writing with soul

Last fall I heard from a medical student who was trying to get a personal essay published in a prestigious journal that has a section devoted to first-person musings. The writer thought I might be able to help him with his revisions, since that journal had run a couple of my pieces. His essay had […] … learn more→

End robo-research assessment

Some clever and thoughtful people at the American Society for Cell Biology have done us all a favor by putting in writing something that is so good and so true that I’m delighted by it. The Journal Impact Factor has gone from being a rough measure of relative journal significance to being the measure of […] … learn more→

Tax avoidance

A Senate investigation has revealed that between 2009 and 2012, Apple avoided paying taxes on $44 billion in profits that it earned offshore. Where the corporation did pay taxes on its offshore earnings, it paid at a much reduced rate. Taking advantage of low corporate tax rates in Ireland, it made that country the base–at […] … learn more→

MOOC Professors claim no responsibility for how courses are used

Robert Ghrist, a professor of mathematics and electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, knows that wielding vast networks on behalf of nonuniversity benefactors can be tricky business. Mr. Ghrist specializes in applied topology, an abstract math field. In practice, topological math can help someone harness huge collections of sensory inputs—like those collected […] … learn more→

The College sports bubble

It is fashionable to talk of “bubbles” these days — unsustainable, somewhat speculative ventures nearing the bursting point: the dot-com stock market bubble in 2000, the housing crisis bubble of a few years ago, and maybe a college tuition bubble today. Broadly defining “bubble,” maybe we are nearing one in major-college intercollegiate sports. If you […] … learn more→

Hope for peace in Syria fades as Russia backs away

There was a moment of hope, a week ago, that there could yet be a negotiated resolution to the Syrian civil war. That hope now appears ended, with key Syrian government ally Russia backing away from what could have been international agreement on the need end the war. Instead, the Syrian war is increasingly spilling […] … learn more→

Do not resuscitate: the journal impact factor declared dead

Science is a highly competitive business so measuring the impact of scientific research, meaningfully and objectively, is essential. The journal impact factor (JIF) has emerged over the past few decades as the most used scientific metric for the assessment of research quality. As a research scientist, Medical Research Institute Director and former Editor-in-Chief of a […] … learn more→

The little engines that could

In the recent blizzard of press over the cost of higher education, the impact of technology, and the continued relevancy of the curriculum, much of the ongoing effort by higher education institutions to improve their environment has been lost as other more polarizing stories pushed to the front of the queue. For much of their […] … learn more→

Scholars in bondage

Once confined to the murky shadows of the sexual underworld, sadomasochism and its recreational correlate, bondage and domination, have emerged into startling visibility and mainstream acceptance in books, movies, and merchandising. Two years ago, E.L. James\’s Fifty Shades of Grey, a British trilogy that began as a reworking of the popular Twilight series of vampire […] … learn more→