Peer Review: the Publication Game and “the Natural Selection of Bad Science”
Editor’s Note: This is part II; part I can be found here. Professor Brian Wansink is head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. The lab has had…
How Is Science Judged? How Useful Is Peer Review?
The British journal Nature, home in 1953 to Watson and Crick’s important DNA paper, was by 1966 rather in the doldrums, with a backlog of submitted manuscripts and losing ground…
How the One-Size-Fits-All College Application Model Hurts Homeschoolers
The season for college admissions is upon us. My younger daughter is still a junior but her public school teammates are all abuzz with chatter of who applied where, who’s…
How Could a Professor Make ‘The Case Against Education’?
In his long-awaited book, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan argues that “the education system is a waste of time and money.” He is emphatically not against people learning skills…
Sorry, Students, but I Have Never Espoused Racism or White Supremacy
As I watched the antics of the hooded “Antifa” mobs at Berkeley and other large universities last year, I thought that I’d missed something in my many years as a…
Master’s Degrees in Janitorial Science?
There has been mounting evidence that the financial payoff from the traditional bachelor’s degree is declining, particularly for men. For example, Census Bureau data suggest that, from 2005 to 2016,…
An Ambassador of Civil Discourse
In today’s universities—and in society in general—the ability to engage in intellectually rigorous and courteous conversation can appear to be a lost art. All too often, the rule of politically…
What to Look For in Higher Ed in 2018
New Year’s Day means a time to take stock of what’s happened on college campuses. Higher education in 2017 had more of students leading campus protests, college administrators struggling to…
Howling Cow Ice Cream: An NC State Experiment in Hands-On Learning
In the past, I’ve been critical of commercial activity on North Carolina’s public university campuses. It competes with private business, attracts unfair tax advantages, and may (in some cases) violate…
UNC’s New Gen Ed Proposal Reflects Major Philosophical Shift from Knowledge to Process
It is imperative that universities take the time to deeply reflect on their purpose (or rather, purposes). There is no better time for UNC-Chapel Hill to do so than now,…