My daily selection of the most interesting news on the internets:
- What went wrong with economics – OF ALL the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself. A few years ago, the dismal science was being acclaimed as a way of explaining ever more forms of human behaviour, from drug-dealing to sumo-wrestling. In the wake of the biggest economic calamity in 80 years that reputation has taken a beating. In the public mind an arrogant profession has been humbled.
- Is blind peer review an illusion? – So, I’m reviewing a piece for a journal today. I wondered: is blind peer review an illusion? First, the sub-circles that many of us hang out in often are so small that one is likely to have seen the piece presented previously (probably worth sending the editor a note if you know the authors). Second, with tone, citation patterns and sub-topic one can often pick out, say, a Lizardo from a King. Third, it can be all-too tempting and easy to google the title of the manuscript, and more often than not one is likely to find the authors. I don’t know how widely “googling” is used by reviewers, it would be interesting to find out via an anonymous survey.
- Talentopolis – Today a highly significant demographic realignment is at work: the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated, and highly paid people to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and a corresponding exodus of traditional lower- and middle-class people from those same places. Such geographic sorting of people by economic potential, on this scale, is unprecedented. I call it simply the means migration.
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