Vedran Zerjav

@Nightingale_P @GGCanto But if a theory can be seen as a ring, one can say the same about a field? Also difficult to say what constitutes ‘coordinated’.

@GGCanto That's what I'm worried about. Maybe I need to look downstream.

General question to academics: in your field, how common do you think citation rings are? Where there is co-ordinated attempts to boost citations. Background - I'm doing some initial work on it and wondered if its known to be a big phenomena.

Time to introduce double-blind review into grant proposal evaluation?

What we do — and don’t — know about how misinformation spreads online nature.com/articles/d4158…

@DrKorica I suggest that it is always much better to rely on their own thinking than on a ‘hallucination generator’ of likely associations to make any argument. And unless they can verify that they could have written the content themselves, it is a very dangerous territory to be in.

@LocaGiorgio The real problem is the 'UK education empire' thinking. Ultimately it is just one system (out of many others). When the symptoms of the disease are obvious, we get the advice 'we must all look at ourselves in the mirror and contemplate about the nature of education'. Own up, UK.

@vzerj The issue is that UK Universities are built around customers not students. The proof? Many MSc have 95% international students, meaning that they exist only as cash cows, not for responding to a need for education. This has nothing to do with diversity, but just greed.

No need for yet more mystification of the problem - there is plenty of people who have a pretty good idea of what education (also university) is (and is not) for.

"It is logically impossible to (a) hold moral high ground, (b) to do nothing in response to past responsibilities; and (c) to claim to be in favor of global poverty reduction." Should poor countries remain poor? open.substack.com/pub/branko2f7/…

"Any form of university education that claims its quality is demonstrated through commercial university rankings has been mis-sold." Rank hypocrisy - how universities betray their promises on responsible research assessment wonkhe.com/blogs/rank-hyp… via @wonkhe

This is a very important converation for project policy. Project failures (beyond budget overruns, etc.) cost lives long-term as they hinder new, healthy, vital projects.

Manchester’s researchers are on a mission to tackle some of the UK’s most challenging resilience and security problems. They've just been awarded £4.2 million to help build a secure world. @UKRI_News manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/…

The strength of a research field hinges on the work of its reviewers. But too often we forget good reviews are a result of training, experience, and constructively critical supportiveness. Definitely not only about 'expertise'. science.org/content/articl…

@unitate_fortior @ipagov Goodhart’s law etc

@unitate_fortior @ipagov and problems with validity of ‘evidence’ 🙂.

@unitate_fortior @ipagov lack of resilience that is

@unitate_fortior @ipagov By estimating costs for the lack thereof?

@andyinBrighton I would like a signed copy please!

It's been a long project itself which started well before the pandemic. We are delighted with the outcome and hope you enjoy it and find useful insights for your research, teaching and practice

Via Scott Long. For those interested, I've uploaded my entire library of books on Palestine/Israel to the cloud, in digital form (mostly pdf and epub) so you can access them. It's a little over 1700 books, a lot of them good and important, some of them historical or political curiosities. Nearly all are in English, I'm afraid. You can download any that interest you individually, or the whole library (about 13 GB). And feel free to share this. Link: drive.google.com/drive/folders/…

"I am reminded of what silence can do and how long it can haunt a place and a people." theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

There seems to be barely noticeable disconnect between policy and its implementation into practice. But worry not, the diagram also suggests that the future is bright 😠.