The "Facebook Fallacy" and Whipsaw Attitudes Toward Web Advertising
Facebook’s IPO has disappointed many, but to think that it presages a complete meltdown of the online ad market is a bit of an overstatement.
The Typography of Authority — Do Fonts Affect How People Accept Information?
A nifty little experiment across a two-part New York Times column shows that some aspect of authority resides in not only your words, but the typeface they appear in.
How Cats Always Land on Their Feet — Via High-Speed Video Analysis
An age-old question is answered with current technology and timeless teaching skills.
What I'm Doing This Weekend
I’m doing the same thing this weekend I’ve done on the same weekend for over a decade. The video might help you understand why.
Interview with Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch
An interview with Ivan Oransky — physician, journalist, and co-founder of “Retraction Watch.”
Data Integrity and Presentation — Journalism, Verification, Skepticism, and the Age of Haste
Representing data graphically is always tricky. It doesn’t help when a journalist misses many opportunities to verify the data, provide context, and ask some probing questions.
Driving Innovation: Finding the Balance Between Fair Reward and Profiteering
Vitriol may have obscured important points in a post last week. The growing business strategy of our era is to drive the cost of everyone else’s product to zero in order to make more money from your own product. This imbalance stifles innovation and creation.
What Cricket Looks Like to Americans
Yes, American baseball is a subtle game full of grass, dirt, leather, and wood. But if you’re a cricket fan, it can be downright bewildering. This video will show you how we feel about cricket.
Altmetrics – Trying to Fill the Gap
With the speed of communication today, researchers, authors, and grant funders are impatient to get an indicator of its value. Waiting 1-3 years for publication and citation seems interminable. Conflating an article’s impact with its journals’ impact creates uncertainty, as […]
Data-mining the Library
Libraries generate a great deal of information about their own processes, including circulation records. Making that information available to others could be the basis for a consortium to share and market such library data.
Policy, Shmolicy: Many Authors Disregard Self-Archiving Embargoes
When it comes to self-archiving final manuscripts, NIH-funded authors either do not understand–or blatantly disregard–government and publisher policy. What can be done?
A Proposed List — 60 Things Journal Publishers Do
An attempt to list a bunch of things journal publishers do. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.
How Does Science Progress? By Branching and Leaping, Perhaps
For some time I have been working on a basic model of scientific progress (or, since “progress” is a value-loaded term, a model of how science progresses). It has implications for certain issues related to scientific publication, so I thought […]
The FDA Spies On Its Own Scientists — Cloaks and Daggers Emerge When Scientists and Authorities Clash
A lurid story of intramural hijinks at the FDA shows how far from mission an organization can drift when it gets its priorities wrong.
Economic Stocks and Flows — A Lecture Using a Phillips MONIAC Economic Analog
A fluidic computer designed to model a national economy holds lessons for doing things directly and physically. Sometimes, you have to get your hands wet.