I’m not sure it qualifies as an actual war, but politicians such as U.S. Representative Lamar Smith and Senator Tom Coburn have certainly been firing broadsides at the National Science Foundation and social science research. So it is heartening to hear President Barack Obama single out the social sciences in his speech at the 150th anniversary meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. The President pledged to protect peer review and research integrity:

With all the one of the things that I’ve tried to do over these last four years and will continue to do over the next four years is to make sure that we are promoting the integrity of our scientific process; that not just in the physical and life sciences, but also in fields like psychology and anthropology and economics and political science — all of which are sciences because scholars develop and test hypotheses and subject them to peer review — but in all the sciences, we’ve got to make sure that we are supporting the idea that they’re not subject to politics, that they’re not skewed by an agenda, that, as I said before, we make sure that we go where the evidence leads us.  And that’s why we’ve got to keep investing in these sciences. 

And what’s true of all sciences is that in order for us to maintain our edge, we’ve got to protect our rigorous peer review system and ensure that we only fund proposals that promise the biggest bang for taxpayer dollars.  And I will keep working to make sure that our scientific research does not fall victim to political maneuvers or agendas that in some ways would impact on the integrity of the scientific process.  That’s what’s going to maintain our standards of scientific excellence for years to come.

Some sociologists will bristle because we weren’t enumerated alongside psychology and political science, while others will surely take issue with the President’s emphasis on hypothesis testing. I’m just glad to hear such a clear statement of support for the social sciences and the integrity and independence of the NSF review process — especially in light of Representative Smith’s draft “High Quality Research Act.”

Well, the TSP headquarters are abuzz: Girl w/ Pen has arrived! Our newest Community Page, Girl w/ Pen consistently makes good on its aim of bridging feminist research and popular reality. Their interdisciplinary team of writers and editors is exceptionally accomplished and prolific, and we’ve been fans for years.

GWP is an important go-to resource for gender scholars, but its clear writing and engaging style attract a much broader general readership. Take a look at just a few recent posts: Virginia Rutter’s Nice Work column breaks down and explains a new Gender & Society piece on overwork and gender segregation; Adina Nack’s Bedside Manners column examines condom distribution in Catholic colleges; Heather Hewitt’s Global Mama takes up the future of online feminism; Susan Bailey’s Second Look considers women’s history month; and founding editor Deborah Siegel details her TEDxWindyCity project on gender in early childhood. But this really just scratches the surface—the site boasts at least a dozen regular columnists, writing such columns as Body Language, Body Politic, Girl Talk, Global Mama, Mama w/ Pen, Off the Shelf, Pop Goes Feminism, and Science Grrl.

We owe special thanks to TSP’s web editor Jon Smajda and the entire GWP team for managing the transition to The Society Pages. We’re delighted to be working together!

Clear Points, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose

When the media flat-out gets your research wrong or presses it into service in an argument that’s the opposite of what you’ve found, it’s hard to get stoked about taking journalists’ calls. But, as pay walls become costlier and less permeable, I’ve got one key, if difficult, bit of academic advice: start giving away the punchline.

Your abstract is now your calling card. “I present findings, discuss implications, and suggest directions for future research” is not a sufficient closing sentence when you may only have 250 words to say what your paper is about, what makes it special, what it actually means. This is to say, if you’re not clearly giving away information in the one place you can*, it’s your fault if others get it wrong. Of course, they still might use your findings in really dumb ways. No controlling that. more...

Sociological Images was one of the first TSP Community Pages, going back to our days as the Contexts editorial team. Gwen Sharp and Lisa Wade do awesome work there—with a host of excellent guest writers—but it’s time to give the site a refresh. And that’s where you come in.

Look, we don’t have giant Scrooge McDuck piles of money. Or any piles of money. In fact, our bloggers do their work entirely for free, Doug and Chris donate their time as editors, our grad students write and edit and provide great insight because this is the stuff that interests them. We love what we do. But we’re not great with graphic design, and so we’re reaching out.

If you’ve got just the barest, scrawled-on-a-napkin idea for a new logo for SocImages, we want to see it. Our five favorite sketches will get $50 apiece for going to the trouble of getting creative on our behalf. If our favorite one is submitted by someone with the design skills and know-how to turn in into a real working logo, then we’ll pay a full $500!

Parameters: This should be a sketch. We value designers’ and artists’ work and time, and we’re clearly asking for some affection here, too, but we don’t want you creating a fully-realized, finished logo at this point, just a mock up of one. The logo should be for the web, and should be adaptable to smaller format avatars, but follow the current size and shape of the Soc Images banner.

Inspirations/Dislikes: We like text. We don’t like eyeballs or magnifying glasses. We have two different taglines, either of which could be incorporated: “Seeing is believing” and “Inspiring Sociological Imaginations Everywhere.” Black, red, and white are good standards and we like them, but we’re open to color. In fact, here are some logos Gwen and Lisa have identified as personal favorites (note that what they like about the logo for Go Fug Yourself is that it’s simple, clean, and represents the content of the blog well)—click to expand each thumbnail:

Now, if you’ve gotten inspired (some in our office certainly have), please submit a pdf or jpeg of your idea to socimageslogos@gmail.com. Be sure to include your name and email in a corner of the image.  Submissions are due May 1st—not long, but that’ll keep you from trying to make a finished product!

All the best from the TSP team.

In the wake of our award from the Merlot group for outstanding multi-media educational resource, we have been thinking a lot about on-line teaching and learning here at TSP. Can everyone now say “MOOC”? Okay, that’s not been the only topic of conversation but it is a big—or should we say, massive—one. Anyway, if you are interested or intrigued about these huge courses now being pioneered on-line, the New York Times ran a fun little first person reporting piece on the phenomenon over the weekend. (And thanks to our colleague Rachel Schurman for highlighting this piece).

The Society Pages scored a nice little win in Las Vegas last week—not at the slots or the craps tables, but at the 6th Annual Meetings of the Sloan Consortium for Emerging Technologies for On-Line Learning. Our award was for Outstanding Peer-Reviewed, On-line Resource in Sociology. It came, unsolicited and much appreciated, from the Merlot (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and On-line Teaching) group, whose social science committee was chaired by Mike Miller, a sociologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

The conference was an eye-opener in many ways. An amazing array of new technologies and devices and platforms for higher education is already on the market or in production, and the amount of energy and capital devoted to new resources is astounding. (One plenary speaker claimed that venture capitalists invested over $1 billion in educational startup funds in 2012 alone.)

We were also honored to give a presentation on TSP. I gave a quick overview of the site and all its wonderful features and contributions, and talked about the unique publishing partnership with Norton that is our support system. And there was a good deal of talk and exchange—both enlightening and inspiring—about all of the ways in which the site is used for teaching and learning these days. more...

Write On

In Michael Pollan’s least-heralded, but perhaps best-loved, book, A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams, the author sets off to learn about architecture and building so as to create the perfect place to write. And he does! He eventually comes up with a little ship of a building, small but functional, with everything in its place and a pleasant view of his home at a nice enough remove to allow thoughts to bud and grow. How idyllic. more...

Sally Hillsman of the American Sociological Association makes a strong and timely case for sociology as a “STEM” discipline in the February issue of Footnotes. Though STEM is an acronym for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,”  the social sciences have struggled to find a place at the STEM table.

In response, Professor Hillsman offers three compelling points:

1. Sociology is part of the national science community.

2. Sociology is a core part of applied science.

3. Sociology is a gateway to science for undergraduates.

Not every sociologist self-identifies as a scientist, though it is difficult for me to conceive of my research and teaching as anything but social science. Yet even friendly colleagues in the natural sciences seem surprised to learn that a sociologist like me spends time specifying and testing hypotheses, writing and reviewing National Science Foundation grants, attending the American Academy for the Advancement of Science meetings, and thinking about how my work might contribute to the systematic understanding of the (social) world.  By spreading the word about the great diversity of good work being done by our colleagues, I’d also like to think that our Society Pages project can play some role in raising the profile of the social sciences.

The most recent wave of social science legitimacy issues are likely a product of internal conflicts as well as external attacks, but it isn’t all doom and gloom. In our view, sociology offers a near-ideal setting for teaching and learning scientific thinking — the phenomena we study are immediately engaging and accessible, yet their complexity demands critical analysis and sophistication in conceptualization and method. What better setting for educating our students and publics about science?

Addendum to my post last week criticizing Scalia’s characterization of the state of sociological research on the question of the impact of gay and lesbian parents on child development:

Phil Cohen (and others, in both public comments and private communications) point out that Scalia didn’t just miss the ASA brief or make up his claim that there is “no clear answer” among sociologists on the matter.  Rather, it would appear that he got the line from reading another brief on parenting submitted by sociologist Mark Regenerus and his colleagues that explicitly and directly countered the organizational consensus account. (See Cohen’s account.)

So is Scalia off the hook? Not quite that easy. For one thing, Regenerus’s brief is based on a highly controversial paper published in the journal Social Science Research about a year ago. (To say that that study has been controversial is putting it mildly; just take a look at some of the reactions chronicled previously by Cohen). Setting aside the question of how this piece got published in the first place (a significant matter of speculation and consternation in the field), one wonders if Scalia read the paper, or subsequent commentary about it—much less really parsed through the research on both sides of the issue. And even if some of the findings hold more water than most sociologists will allow, there seems little ground to warrant the larger societal implications that Regenerus imputes.

I won’t get into the specifics further, except to paraphrase Cohen’s summary: So what we have here is one sociologist (or one sociologist and his collaborators) denying the scholarly consensus which Scalia takes to mean there is no consensus. “Just like with evolution and climate change,” as Cohen puts it. I guess there are folks scientists who still think the earth is flat or that gravity isn’t really real either.