Inevitably, some researchers fixate on celebrities, neither using nor even acknowledging the power of modern bloodcomposition, finger-length, and genetics analysis tools. “Superstar CEOs,” Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate, SSRN paper #972725, March 15, 2007. The authors, at University of California Berkeley and at University of California Los Angeles, respectively, explain: “We analyze the impact of […]
Month: September 2009
When did insults lose their sting?
Insults just aren’t what they used to be, according to a study called The Decline of Public Insult in London 1660-1800 by Robert B Shoemaker, professor of British history at Sheffield University. Shoemaker pored over records of court proceedings from the late 16th through to the early 19th centuries, paying special attention to the insults. […]
Official judges of pointlessness?
‘Pointless’ university studies to be weeded out by new government panel —Changes to government funding may force academics to prove that their inquiry has real-world relevance— So say the headlines on a September 23, 2009 report in The Guardian. The poor souls who become official judges of these matters might have a miserable time of […]
Ig winner gets “genius” grant
L. Mahadevan, who shared the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize in physics, has just been awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. He won his Ig, together with Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled. The MacArthur Grant (of $500,000) honors that and related work. (The image here shows […]