Monthly Archives: May 2015

Activist social science

Like way too many social scientists, I’ve been overly obsessed with the LaCour/Green retraction. Partly, it’s the perverse attraction of watching the slow-motion crash of a career, but more substantially, it’s a chance to reflect on how social science is … Continue reading

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How do people change their minds? Others?

More from Columbia University: Donald Green, a professor of political science, has asked Science to retract an article he and a UCLA graduate student, Michael LaCour, published last year.  The paper demonstrated that an extended and open-ended conversation with a … Continue reading

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Take the degree, leave the mattress.

Emma Sulkowicz dragged her mattress across the Columbia University campus for the last time this week, when she participated in a Class Day graduation ceremony.  This day, several friends helped Sulkowicz carry the mattress across the stages, but mostly she’s … Continue reading

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Will the revolution be tweeted?

More than forty years ago, the talented and tragic poet/musician/activist Gil Scott-Heron rapped–before there was rap–that the Revolution would not be televised.  Television was controlled by big corporations and commercial interests, and social change would come from the streets.  But … Continue reading

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Justice, peace, and indictments in Baltimore #Ferguson

When Maryland State’s attorney Marilyn Mosby decided to indict six police officers for the death of Freddie Gray, she may have been responding only to the evidence of criminal conduct by law enforcement. Her office found that police lacked probable … Continue reading

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