“We don’t want the [professors we hire] to be worrying within the first five or six years whether they’re going to be tenured or not.”*

The faculty contracts will last for one, three or five years, and will be renewed based on merit “rather than on a set rule within the boundaries of tenure,” Darkazalli said. He said that abandoning the tenure model means that faculty members will be less inclined to pursue the kind of “trivial publication and research” professors on the tenure track sometimes feel is required of them to succeed**, and instead focus on teaching and research beneficial to their students.

* Not added: “We want them to feel their livelihoods are in jeopardy each and every year.”

** Also unsaid: “We want them to tackle the really big questions.  The ones that might take one, three, or even five years to answer.”

Here’s my guesses for the first round. I also have power rankings and a little bit on data gathering. I’ll update the thread for each round. Update: I’ve put the winner in bold.

Round 2 Update. All games scheduled for Sunday, March 12th. Update: I’ve put the winner in bold.

Quarterfinal Update. All games scheduled for Saturday, March 18th. Now using new and improved algorithms!

Current Championship Odds. As of Sunday, May 19th. (Based on my predictions for semifinal and possible championship match ups.)

• Maryland – 1/1
• Syracuse  - 7/2
• North Carolina – 9/2
• Northwestern – 6/1

The editors tout the “evaluative not developmental” editorial reviews as a main feature of the nascent journal. One month review times and no R&Rs. It sounds great, after all I frequently get frustrated with the fact that reviewers do not recognize the my brilliant ideas, eloquent prose, and innovative statistical techniques. Who likes being forced to explain regression models to reviewers or to be asked by an editor to add three literatures and simultaneously cut 3,000 words?

At the same time, editorial focus on “evaluative” rather than “developmental” reviews implicitly assumes that authors can equally access venues to support the development of their work. I do not think that this is true.

None of the deputy editors work in a small liberal arts college or even a medium size university. All can find colleagues knowledgeable enough in their field to read their work down the hall, on campus or, at worst, across town. In many places, such opportunities do not exist.

Perhaps a quick decision will compensate for the loss of more extensive reviews or the opportunity for less experienced scholars to fix the fixable elements of papers. After all, if they truly hold to a month long review process, then it doesn’t hurt a new scholar much to try for publication and, if unsuccessful, send it out to a journal with a more developmentally-minded editor.

Perhaps, too, we expect too much of the editorial process. It is, as the editors write, “a poor structure for developmental feedback.” Reviews and editorial comments cannot provide complex advice to develop papers; though on the margin, developmental feedback from editors and reviewers can help newer and less well-established scholars learn how to write. I don’t expect reviewers to serve as dissertation committee members, but I hope that the editorial process does not simply become pass/fail either.

I do not mean to denigrate the effort of the editorial board; quite the opposite, I applaud it. I think that the publication of Sociological Science provides a boon for the field. One or two journals that provide this type of review might create incentives for other journals to decrease review times. The fact that only well-formed ideas and prose written by established scholars will certainly help the journal’s prestige initially. And there should be room for more than one editorial model within our field. Open access will certainly increase our potential audience.

That said, I am as yet unconvinceed that open access will create equal access for members of the discipline.

The premise of TESS is that investigators submit ideas for Internet-based survey experiments, these are reviewed, and successful proposals are fielded at no cost to the investigator using a platform based on a population sample (the GfK KnowledgePanel, formerly known as Knowledge Networks, which, yes, is also the company the collected the data for a certain other study that has been talked about a lot on sociology blogs).

We have a couple new mechanisms this time around.  One is a Short Studies Program, which allows people to submit shorter proposals for shorter experiments for which we are committed to turning around very quick decisions via internal review if possible.  Another is a Special Competition for Younger Investigators, which will give graduate students and recent Ph.D.s a competitive opportunity to field a larger experiment than the usual TESS parameters allow if they can make a good case for it.

Anyway, ironically, other blogs have actually posted our publicity announcement before I’ve said anything about it, so I might as well just link to Andrew Gelman’s post here.

Both, I believe, point to fundamental problems in our publication systems. Equally important, however, I submit that sociology’s handling of the Regnerus affair actually conveys a relatively healthy response that, through the subsequent devastating critiques, produced important knowledge. I also submit that the publication of Regnerus’s paper led to this outcome far quickly than what happened in response to the Reinhart and Rogoff scandal.

Social Science Research published Regnerus paper, with all of its substantial flaws, through the normal peer-review process, with substantial flaws of its own. Then what happened? A flurry of intellectual, political, and legal writing on the subject flourished — almost instantly. Regnerus made his data available. Neal took this data and made a publicly accessible and open source reanalysis repository based on that data, which then became a published critique of Regnerus’ original study. Science moved very fast and showed the flaws of the initial results.¹ Any author hoping to cite Regnerus’ findings in the future should now also cite the scientific response.

The process also led to substantial introspection about our discipline’s norms. The journal itself devoted considerable space to its own policies and shortcomings (and the description of the publication process provides an invaluable resource for graduate students who want to learn about reviews, writing, and editing). We had more discussions that I can enumerate that ranged, even this week, from retraction to conflicts of interest to the role of outside groups in scientific research.

The Reinhart & Rogoff paper, by comparison, was not subjected to peer review. Instead, they posted the paper as a working paper at NBER, an insider’s club of economists. It appears that the data were not made public. Upon release, a new paper (itself released as a working paper without peer review), found the original included an Excel (!) formula error and questionable analytical decisions (all with precedent in the literature, however). An additional analysis showed that Reinhart & Rogoff probably got the causal order wrong. The time lapse between the publication of the original and the revision in economics, without peer review: almost three years (a year and a half if you count the last revision). And its not as if their paper didn’t matter, world economies were put in precarious situations partially on the basis of their results.

I think that science worked in both cases. I am proud that sociology made quicker work of debunking incorrect findings compared to economics, and think that the institutional structure of a journal helped sociology move more quickly (NB: I am not proud that bad research got published in the first place). In both cases, however, our intellectual curiosity and academic freedom to pursue new research (and shared data) allowed subsequent research to correct the scientific record.

That said, we must be extra careful when our results affect the lives of our fellow humans through Supreme Court cases or central bank policies. We should strive to publish on topics important enough for people to read our work and to do so in a language that they can understand. Arguing no one reads or cares about our work is a poor defense and an indictment on much of our own research. We must always act as if our research matters (because it does) and in both cases I fear that our disciplines became too cavalier publishing results and not double- and triple-checking our work when the stakes for others’ lives were high.

Science always progresses haltingly. Progress comes from false starts, challenges to received wisdom, and questioned assumptions. If we expect peer review to be perfect every time or no bad research to be published we not only set ourselves against an impossible standard, which is a danger, but because we would expect everything to be flawless we would stifle innovative research and risk becoming beholden to received wisdom. That, I believe, is a greater danger.

Now we have another example, somewhat (though not a lot!) more pedestrian, in the question of what the world might have been like had the Supreme Court not taken Bush v. Gore. Sandra Day O’Connor has commented that perhaps the court shouldn’t have taken the case, and Mediaite dares to ask: how might history have differed? Check it out – parsimony or contingency? You decide.

This time the attack hits a little closer to home for sociologists. Although the focus seems to be cultural anthropology, as four of the five grants received at least part of their funding from that program, two of the five PIs are sociologists. The Directory of the NSF is being asked to defend awards given to Michael Macy (Cornell) and Linda Kalof (Michigan State).

The lead Democrat on the committee, Representative Johnson, has penned a pretty militant letter in favor of NSF autonomy, and is asking Representative Smith to withdraw his request. (h/t to @howardaldrich for the two letters.)

When questioned during a news conference Thursday about an alleged plot to blow up a Via Rail train, Prime Minister Stephen Harper — making a dig at his Liberal rival, Justin Trudeau — said that “this is not a time to commit sociology.”

Why not? Why does the prime minister consider it an offence — or perhaps a sin — to use sociology to help shed light on the roots of terrorism or, for that matter, other pressing problems in contemporary society?

Part of Mr. Harper’s thinking may be based on a belief that, in the face of disaster and terror, many people just want to hear a strong voice of reassurance and authority. There’s another, more sinister interpretation of his comments: If you probe too deeply into the roots of terrorism or other problems, you might come to the conclusion that Conservative party’s ‘solutions’ themselves are suspect. It follows that thinking sociologically must to be avoided at all costs.

Consider the well-documented sociological finding that measurable demographic and socio-cultural characteristics can’t predict whether an individual will become radicalized and engage in terrorist acts. Much of the impetus for suicide bombing comes instead from a desire to retaliate against what are perceived as repressive actions on the part of foreign powers.

Yet the Conservative government is now investing a lot of money to compile information on the demographic and socio-cultural characteristics of people with connections to terrorist groups. Their hope is that this information, properly analyzed, will tell us more about what kinds of people to keep an eye on. Sociological research suggests that this is probably not an efficient use of funds.

The government (and Canadians) would be better off investing that money in good police work and a vigorous public debate about whether Canadian foreign policy is contributing to the kind of repression in foreign lands that incites terrorism.

Sociology, and science more generally, can help to solve many of the most pressing problems facing the world. Members of the Conservative government, however, continue to intone that famous line from W. H. Auden’s satirical Reactionary Tract for Modern Times: “Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science.”

The Conservatives pulled the plug on the census. Federal government scientists complain they are being muzzled. Federal librarians have been issued a code of conduct constraining their participation in conferences and public events.

Mr. Harper shut down a world-renowned freshwater research station in Northern Ontario because its investigations into the effects of global warming on marine life don’t suit Conservative policies. Environmental deregulation triggered widespread protests by Idle No More and may lead to the demise of fragile ecosystems. Economic deregulation has led to an influx of temporary foreign workers, many working for less than standard wages. This depresses the income of Canadian workers and prevents unemployed Canadians from finding work.

Canada was once known internationally for sound evidence-based policy. Current comments by the prime minister suggest we are now on the path to policy-based evidence. Facts are ignored, suppressed or distorted to suit government ideology. Doing otherwise has become an offence.