A weekly link round-up of sociological work – work by sociologists, referencing sociologists, or just of interest to sociologists. This scatterplot feature is co-produced with Mike Bader.
Sociology and Science(!)
- Social science about the March for Science.
- Taking the “file drawer problem” literally in nutrition.
- Scientific racism strikes back.
- “1.16% of all attributions of single female authors turned out to be incorrect, whereas the rate for males is 0.04%.”
- What can we learn from repentant climate change skeptics? Reddit’s a nice place to start for this sort of data, but I’d love to see some more rigorous data collection!
- What can we learn from Doctors about fighting fake news? [Though I do wonder how well these techniques are working, given the persistence of anti-vaccine campaigns.]
Race and Racism
- “I couldn’t escape Rachel Dolezal because I can’t escape white supremacy. And it is white supremacy that told an unhappy and outcast white woman that black identity was hers for the taking.”
- Reflections on race, safety, and gentrification in Rogers Park.
- Black banking gaining traction.
- The City of Pittsburgh adapts the “Rooney Rule” from the Steelers, meaning they will interview at least one non-white man for every leadership position.
Urban Sociology
- Seeing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
- “The down payment is too damned high.” On congressional plans for the FHA.
Demography
- “Out in the Country.” LGBT demography in the rural UK.
- The changing demography of the US armed forces.
Big Data, Big Discrimination
- “Turkish, one of [Caliskan’s] native languages, has no gender pronouns. But when she uses Google Translate on Turkish phrases, it “always ends up as ‘he’s a doctor’ in a gendered language.” The Turkish sentence didn’t say whether the doctor was male or female. The computer just assumed if you’re talking about a doctor, it’s a man.”
- Perfect(?) price discrimination through big data.
Sociology of Technology
- What was Google Books? On the limits of class action lawsuits and the strangeness of arguably the world’s greatest library being inaccessible.
- The internet of things we don’t need, juice edition.
