In a recent discussion, Jon Tennant (@protohedgehog) outlines both the advantages of post-publication peer review (PPPR), or ongoing peer-review, and the main obstacles to its growth and establishment in academia. I would add to his list that the growth of PPPR is severely hampered by the fact that traditional, anonymous, pre-publication peer review is deeply…
Outline of an evolutionary history of the title track on popular music albums 1966-1990
Abstract I counted the proportion of popular music albums per year that have a title track between 1966 and 1990 (inclusively). A title track is a piece of music that has exactly the same title as the album on which it is found. I compared the change in frequency of albums with title tracks between…
Of raw fish, retractions, and the cumulative nature of research
@protohedgehog brings attention to a strange and perhaps novel kind of retraction. Unless the published retraction leaves out a big part of the story, this one is hard to understand. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have announced that they are retracting Ottman et al (2016) because, according to the authors “It has come…
The fall of the public physical anthropologist
In a recent note on his facebook page, John Hawks describes an AAA panel on “Biological Anthropology and the Public”, organized by Caroline VanSickle and Natalia Reagan. Citing Jess Beck (whose excellent academic blog gets orders of magnitude more views than mine), he focuses on the question of the damage done by the prevalent notion…
ArcheoThoughts 