Popular Posts

  • 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...
  • 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...
  • Sociology and Social Anthropology: what's the difference?
    The Royal Anthropological Institute has started an interesting website to promote the discipline. I was struck by what it had to say about ...
  • Getting your tables right
    It's that time of year when MA/MSc student minds turn to dissertation writing. In my neck of the woods that frequently involves communi...
  • 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...
  • Writing a Master's Thesis
    It's that time of year when my MSc students are starting to seriously worry about choosing a dissertation topic. With that in mind here ...
  • Leslie Thomas RIP
    Until a month ago I'd not knowingly read a word written by Leslie Thomas. Despite my total ignorance I had him confidently pigeon-holed...
  • 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...
  • The Best Dennis Skinner quotes
    This , from Haze , is a bit of fun, though perhaps a bit parochial. Do listen to Tony Blair's impression of the Beast of Blosover: it&#...
  • The Social Structure of Brexit 3
    Last time around on this theme. It seems to me that  a fair amount of silliness has emerged in the discussion of what drove the Brexit vote...

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)