You know how it goes. You had every intention of attending the New York Lebowski Fest, which concluded last night with a panel discussion featuring the cast of the cult classic The Big Lebowski. The Coen Brothers’ comedy makes you laugh like few other movies, and it continues to reveal new layers with each successive viewing. But life got in the way, man. You couldn’t quite get it together to make the trip. Nothing to do but head to the bowling alley — or, better yet, drown your sorrows in a white Russian. Well, here’s a third option: Check out Miller-McCune’s recent roundup of ... Read More
States Prove Weak Link in Supporting Research Universities
August 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Robert M. Berdahl is an American historian, author and university administrator. He was chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1997 to 2004, and president of the Association of American Universities from May 2000 until May of this year. Q: Are universities in crisis today? How big a crisis are we in now? Is it mostly cyclical, or is it structural? What lasting impact is it likely to have and does it alter in any significant way, the model that then-Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development Vannevar Bush envisioned in his seminal 1945 paper, "Science, ... Read More
Retaining Excellence in U.S. Research Universities
August 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The same week that President Obama called for the United States to regain its lead as the world's best-educated nation, the University of California system turned away 30,000 students. This was roughly two years ago, but since then the fiscal picture has only darkened — for the federal government as well on the state level. The Golden State labors under a particularly gargantuan deficit — and the regents of the University of California responded by raising tuition a second time this year — but its predicament is emblematic of a central challenge for higher education across the United ... Read More
What a Chimp Teaches Us About Humans
July 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A cautionary tale about scientific hubris and overreaching that plays like a Planet of the Apes prequel, Oscar-winning (for Man On Wire) director James Marsh’s latest film, Project Nim, is about a chimp who learned to sign. A major media story back in the late ‘70s, the story of Nim Chimpsky began when he was taken from his mother at a primate research center in Oklahoma and given to a New York family to be raised as a human. The experiment was the brainchild of Herb Terrace, a Columbia University psychology professor, who felt if the simian could be taught sign language, he might be ... Read More
State Budget Cuts Hurting Quality of Research
May 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
State budget cuts pose a significant threat to the quality of research in the United States, a panel of educators said earlier this month at an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. While federal grants support 60 percent of university research, AAAS senior policy adviser Albert Teich said, America’s diverse and decentralized education system depends heavily on state funds as well. Two-thirds of U.S. universities with “very high research activity” are state-supported, according to the Carnegie Foundation. That in turn represents a big chunk of the total ... Read More
‘State of Minds’ Puts Research in the Spotlight
April 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One of the pleasant aspects of being the editor of Miller-McCune is regular and often unexpected contact with people and entities that are working to improve the world by introducing some small piece of it to factual reality. Look, for just one instance, at the network of investigative reporting and transparency nonprofits — from ProPublica and the Texas Tribune to the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Public Integrity — that has grown in the last decade or so, and tell me your old daily paper used to do accountability journalism better. Another hopeful part of the media future ... Read More
Dr. Seuss Analyzed for Political, Social Effects
March 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Of all the places he'd go in his wildly fertile imagination, Theodor S. Geisel — better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss — probably never dreamed he'd be referenced in the journal Critical Perspectives on Accounting. But the man who wrote a classic work of children's literature using a vocabulary of only 51 words (Green Eggs and Ham) would be amused to discover how many densely packed pages of academic prose are devoted to his work. Today, on the beloved author and illustrator's 107th birthday (which, as always, will be celebrated by the National Education Association as Read Across ... Read More
Comparative Effectiveness Research Cornered by Foes
February 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
That's how much the 2009 stimulus bill — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — devoted to this type of research, which aims to produce better information about the costs and benefits of alternative treatment options. It differs from clinical trials that compare new drugs to placebos and treatments to control groups. It instead compares multiple treatments, evaluating both effectiveness and cost. When done well, it can both improve treatment and save money. But that may not be enough. Although reliance on comparative effectiveness research seems eminently reasonable, opposition ... Read More
Outsourcing Science to Keep Results Untainted
December 9, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, the state of California released a 263-page report about the process of turning offshore oil rigs into reefs for the benefit of marine life. For the California Ocean Science Trust, which spent nearly two years preparing the document, the June afternoon was a victory for scientists everywhere. Whether the environmentalists in attendance appreciated it or not, the publication of "Evaluating Alternatives for Decommissioning California's Offshore Oil and Gas Platforms" represented a leap forward for the Golden State, which is turning to the nonprofit sector to produce ... Read More
A Wary Eye on ‘Big Oil’ Funding Energy Research
October 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The public investment in energy research has declined rapidly from its historic high during America's last major spasm of national interest in the topic, following the Arab oil embargo in the late 1970s. Three decades ago, 18 percent of all federal R&D money went into energy. Today, amid what many scientists consider a more fundamental crisis, the U.S. government now spends 1.6 percent of its R&D budget on energy. As a result, universities that have long done much of that research increasingly turn to a different source of funding: corporations with deep pockets and a vested ... Read More
