(credit: own photo)
Today marks the first birthday of All About Work. In one year, it’s received over 10,000 hits, and working on it has been a lot of fun for me.
The five posts that received the most hits during the year are: (more…)
Around this time of the academic year, the enthusiasm of last September has been almost completely exhausted. Deadlines for big class projects are fast approaching, everyone is sniffling with a cold or has gigantic lack-of-sleep circles under their eyes (or both), crankiness is running rampant, and the end of the semester seems a looooong way away. So maybe that’s why my eye was caught this past week by two different discussions of academic bad behavior. (more…)
Jacquelyn makes some excellent points in this post about sexist comments in workplaces, and the responsibility of everyone – not just the person the remark was directed at – to counteract the attitudes underlying these kinds of remarks.
You’re enjoying your morning tea, browsing through the daily digest of your main society’s list-serv. Let’s say you’re an ecologist, like me, and so that society is the Ecological Society of America*, and the list-serv is Ecolog-L. Let’s also say that, like me, you’re an early career scientist, a recent graduate student, and your eye is caught by a discussion about advice for graduate students. And then you read this:
“too many young, especially, female, applicants don’t bring much to the table that others don’t already know or that cannot be readily duplicated or that is mostly generalist-oriented.”
I’m not interested in unpacking Clara Jones’ (yes, a woman’s) statement beyond saying that “don’t bring much to the table that others don’t already know” is basically a sexist way of saying that female applicants “are on par with or even slightly exceed others,” which is rather telling in and…
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In my last post, I wrote about the #overlyhonestmethods discussion on Twitter and its insights into creative (and funny) ways that researchers deal with unexpected problems in their work. While I was following #overlyhonestmethods, I came across a mention of a creative-sounding study reviewing the research on whether specific foods can cause cancer. Since the media regularly covers cancer research – and often makes wrong or misleading reports about it – I found the text of the whole article to see what it had to say. When I saw that the article had the awesome title of Is Everything We Eat Associated With Cancer? A Systematic Cookbook Review, I knew I had to write something about it. (more…)
In a previous post, I mentioned the initiative by the Academy of Management at the 2012 Academy of Management (AoM) meeting to promote live Twittering during conference sessions. The listing for each session in the conference program included a hashtag for the session, assigned by the conference organizers, to encourage attendees to send Tweets about the session and the presentations.
The conference ended this past Tuesday (August 7), so I thought I’d look on Twitter to see whether or how the AoM hashtags were used. (more…)
As you might imagine, when I saw the headline Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals? floating around the Internet, I got more than a tad nervous. Given what I do for a living, I started to wonder if the RCMP would soon be dropping by to arrest me for aiding and abetting. However, once I started reading the articles in question, I relaxed a little bit. Both make very broad and questionable claims, and I found neither to be completely convincing. However, they both raise points that are worth considering for business degree programs, and, I would contend, for degree programs in general. (more…)
A few weeks ago, Canadian scientists went to Parliament Hill to hold a protest rally that they dubbed “the Death of Evidence“. The speakers at the event outlined the effects of the federal government’s research funding cutbacks. They pointed out that research supported by government funding actually saves money, because it produces reliable evidence that helps government make sound decisions. They also emphasized the difficulty or impossibility of restarting their work if it ends.
My own research isn’t in the “hard” sciences, so the cutbacks protested at the Death of Evidence rally don’t directly harm my work. But my colleagues whose research will be affected are mad and very frustrated, because they know the value of the work they do.
And personally I’m angry about the disrespectful way that these researchers learned they were losing their funding. (more…)
June is the month for convocation (graduation) ceremonies at a lot of post-secondary institutions in Canada. And this year, I was delighted that one of the award winners at my university graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in business, along with a business diploma. This made me happy because my own undergraduate degree from Simon Fraser University is a Bachelor of Business Administration with majors in business and English. Business programs should encourage their students to take more non-business courses, and it’s not just because of my own experience that I say that. (more…)
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