Interesting

A Crisis in the Humanities: The norms governing scholarship now often serve to protect a rigid orthodoxy on certain politically charged issues—with ideological tests substituted for proper academic standards

We begin from what ought to be a platitude: The humanities and the social sciences are academic disciplines aimed at understanding the human world and the larger reality of which it is a part. There is room for debate about what it means to “understand” a historical episode, or a literary text, or a social phenomenon. But it should not be controversial that, like all academic research, scholarship in these disciplines is in the business of asking questions; that these questions have answers (when they are well-posed); that these answers are not simply evident and can therefore only be arrived at indirectly, by appeal to evidence and argument; and that it is the role of academic disciplines to cultivate methods for collecting the evidence relevant to their questions and for assessing scholarly proposals on the basis of it.

Oh, my

University of Kentucky researcher accused of falsifying data for a decade

A former high-ranking researcher at the University of Kentucky has been penalized by federal investigators in a scientific misconduct case that spanned a decade and included allegations that he falsified data in at least 10 papers and numerous grant applications.

Eric J. Smart, who was an associate professor and vice-chairman of the UK Department of Pediatrics and the Barnstable-Brown Chair in Diabetes Research, resigned from UK in May.

Smart is now a chemistry teacher at a local high school.

This is funny

PhD Comics: Professional Trading Cards

There's even a template where you can make a trading card for your own professor. :)

I may not be in academia but I spent sixteen years of my life in it, so I appreciate things like this.

Thanks to PF Anderson (tweeting as @pfanderson) for the link.

Someone needs to come up with trading cards for such librarian luminaries as Melvil Dewey, Will Manley, and Nancy Pearl. :)

Cool graphs of verbal vs. mathematical aptitude in various academic majors

Verbal vs. mathematical aptitude in academics

Worst verbal? Accounting and social work majors
Worst math/quantitative? Social work majors
Worst reading? Social work majors

Doesn't sound great for that profession. Philosophy majors do well in all three categories.

I was a history and sociology major with the honours programme (which was essentially a 'Great Books' curriculum that was in addition to other classes--I added a classical civilisation with a Judaic studies minor after I actually received my BA. Sadly, I was one class short of a linguistics major. (Damn phonological analysis, which was never taught when I could take it.) So I was an social sciences/humanities geek. When I took the GRE my intended major was history.)) Like the analysis for history, my quantitative was about average (somewhere in the upper 500s--that was 21 years ago and I have no idea where my original scores are) and my verbal high (somewhere in the upper 600s or lower 700s, I think). What I sucked majorly in was the special subject test for history of all things, because it had a lot of art history. I have since rectified that deficit. I wonder how'd I do these days? I think my brain is turning somewhat to mush. I need to exercise it more.

This can be so true...

Here's a great comic from Zack Weiner. (And yes, I saw it on JMG. I really will find something original to post tonight.

But, darn it, it's too funny to ignore.