Popular Posts

  • On metaphors - cultural and social capital again
    Recently, as you no doubt know,  I've been beating up on the use of the term "capital" in phrases like "cultural capital...
  • Open letter to Prof. Richard Wilkinson & Prof. Kate Pickett
    Dear Professors Wilkinson and Pickett You don't know me and are unlikely to read this letter. Even if you do, I know  you won't r...
  • Blah blah sociology
    Taking a look at the videos on the British Sociological Associations web site of  its last conference I found one nice thing - richly deser...
  • Bauman, plagiarism, blah, blah
    Another week, another plagiarism scandal. THE is reporting that one of Britain's favourite blah blah sociologists Zygmunt Bauman has...
  • The Great British Class Fiasco
    It's been a bad week for my blood pressure. I'm trying manfully to ignore the hooplah arising from MT shuffling off her mortal coil...
  • Is there an anti-quantitative bias in British sociology?
    My title is inspired by a book chapter written more than 30 years ago by my former colleague Christopher T. Husbands  called: The anti-quan...
  • Economists and empirical evidence
    I don't suppose that economists are less likely than any of the rest of us to make  daft pronouncements about empirical issues without a...
  • Bukowski on writing
    I came across this poem by Charles Bukowski which expresses something important about integrity in writing. I wouldn't take it literally...
  • Is sociology useless?
    Something I've been meaning to blog about for a while. The Guardian 's Aditya Chakrabortty has been putting the boot into  sociolog...
  • Witch Hunt at London Met
    This is important. Professor Steven Jefferys Director of the Working Lives Research Institute at London Metropolitan University  and two o...

Caveat Emptor

The opinions expressed on this page are mine alone. Any similarities to the views of my employer are completely coincidental.

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Happy Talk

Check out the repost of a nice Andrew Gelman piece on the perils of the "single definitive study". I'm not entirely sure what he means by "happy talk", but it's very apt as a description of the sort of academic gushing  that seems to be required by the "impact agenda". Nothing against publicity, BTW, but perhaps one should have something worth saying first. Anyway, a good excuse to listen to REM.
Posted by Colin at 02:08

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)