Are you a professional researcher engaged in the fields of physics, chemistry, mathematics, economics, medicine or biology? Are you Russian? Are you a man? Would you like to know your (likely) mean age of death (MAD)? If so, look no further than the journal Seriya 16. Biologiya. 2016;(4):12-18. (in Russian). Where you will find details […]
Tag: academic
Least Interesting Units: a new concept for enhancing one’s academic career opportunities
In these days where ‘Publish or Perish’ pressures are rife in academia, scholars who wish to enhance their career opportunities might want to turn to the work of dr.ir. Marcoen J.T.F. Cabbolet, who is a research affiliate at the Free University of Brussels. In a new paper for the journal Science and Engineering Ethics he […]
Professor Dreier’s Academic Drivel Report
Peter Dreier, who is the Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department, at Occidental College in Los Angeles, confesses his sins and exposes his academic hoax in a Feb 2016 article for The American Prospect Magazine entitled: Academic Drivel Report “Six years ago I submitted a […]
A peer-reviewed journal of one’s own (Žižek Studies)
“For some, the notion of a journal devoted to the work of a theorist very much alive and intellectually kicking is discombobulating.” – explain the editors of the International Journal of Žižek Studies “As its title unambiguously proclaims, it is devoted to the work of Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher/cultural theorist.” And yes, Improbable is […]
Atlantic profile of Ig Nobel winner Oppenheimer and murky academic writing
“The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing” sings a headline in The Atlantic magazine. The article beneath the headline, by Victoria Clayton-Alexander, is profiles Ig Nobel Prize winner Danny Oppenheimer [pictured here] and others who fight muddle and murk. The article says, in part: (Oppenheimer for his part believes he got the award because of the paper’s title: “Consequences of […]
How to write a technical paper (c.1956)
To complement Improbable’s archives on the subject of “How to write *“ [1] ‘How To Write A Scientific Paper’ [2] ‘How to Write Consistently Boring Scientific Literature’ [3] ‘How to Write a Scientific Paper’ (again) [4] ‘How to write a crank letter‘ [5] ‘How to write a love letter‘ Can we also now recommend ‘How […]
Profiling the IJIRS journal
Gopal Chakraborty, B.Sc (Physics Hons.), M.Sc (Physics), CWD, PHD (Pursuing), Assistant Professor of Physics, GKCEM, JIS GROUP, is the editor-in-chief of an unusual academic publication entitled : The International Journal Of Innovative Research and Studies (ISSN: 2319-9725). It’s unusual in several respects – in that it’s a monthly, multidisciplinary, international, English language journal, with zero-level […]
Philosophy? Tedious?
In his Presidential Address at the 53nd [sic] Annual Meeting of the Florida Philosophical Association, professor David McNaughton, of Florida State University, US, revealed that he had been inspired by a 2007 Guardian article by Jonathan Wolff (head of philosophy at University College London) which began: “Why is academic writing so boring?” Professor McNaughton refined […]
Finger-Lengths Pointing at Academic Performance, They Say
A further advance in the campaign to find meaning and importance in a person’s relative finger lengths: “2D:4D Asymmetry and Gender Differences in Academic Performance,” John V.C. Nye, Gregory Androuschak, Desirée Desierto [pictured here], Garett Jones, Maria Yudkevich, PLoS One. 2012;7(10):e46319 “We provide the first evidence of a non-linear, quadratic, relationship between 2D:4D [the relative […]
Spotlight on Unusual Research Institutes (part 1 of 2)
The Central Institute for Questions and Answers (affiliated to the University of the Arctic Circle) has produced a swathe of scholarly papers. This one for example, published by the Social Science Research Center, Berlin, in their journal WZB-Mitteilungen, issue 115, March 2007, in which Professor Dr. Dr. I. Q. Besser-Wisser (author of the definitive five-volume […]