Academic

Sounds like a Comprehensive Exam Question

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A recent NY Times article pointed out a literature issue in the field of biology, and I began to wonder if political scientists have the same problem. The problem: even though Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species laid the foundation for Modern Biology, it is surprisingly uncommon for biologists to actually read the book … Read more

Are rational decisions produced by the conscious or subconscious mind?

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Are people capable of making fully conscious decisions? Or does our subconscious play an unforeseen role in influencing our decisions? If our subconscious does play a role, can we still make rational decisions?

The following documentary (referred to us by Geoff McGovern) deals with the "hidden motives" of the mind. It got me thinking about whether we can still claim people are making rational decisions even if we believed they were making those decisions subconsciously.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/23327/scientific-american-frontiers-hidden-motives#s-p1-so-i0

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Do Deployed US Troops foster Economic Growth?

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While browsing newly posted articles at the Social Science Research Network, I came across this paper by Garett Jones and Tim Kane.  The abstract: In the midst of a major U.S. military effort in Iraq and the Middle East, economists should be able to assess the relationship between U.S. troops and growth.   The necessity of … Read more

A cup of coffee, a blow up doll, and some functionally unpleasant commuters

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Die hard rational choice social scientists are often puzzled when they see people making less than optimal decisions. For example, it is hard to explain why people choose to pay the cost of punishment and make themselves worse off just so that they can punish someone who acted unfair or against the rules. I came across an example of this in yesterday’s Washington Post when a reporter published a story about a little known short cut near the Dulles Airport. According to the reporter, drivers normally sit in traffic, moving slowly, on a toll road as they drove passed the airport, but they could avoid the traffic and save time and money by taking the public access road through the airport. The only problem is that the public access road is only meant for airport traffic. It is against the “rules” to drive on it unless you are utilizing the airport’s services or are have a passenger with you during rush hour. People have found creative ways around these rules, like buying a cup of coffee from the sole gas station in the airport or driving with a blow up doll in the passenger seat. However, these methods are not exactly seen as legitimate ways to get around the rules. The "right" thing to do is to stay on the toll road and not cut through unfairly through the airport road.

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Bridging the Gap between the Hard Sciences and the Humanities

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NY Times Article References New BU Program Two professors at Binghamton University, Dr. David Sloan Wilson of the Biology department and Dr. Leslie Heywood of the English department, are currently developing a joint Science and Humanitities program called the "New Humanities Initiative". This program will add a rubric to BU courses which expose students to … Read more

Strategic Behavior? It’s all in the Eye of the Beholder

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Michael referred me to this Blog Entry, at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, that deals with the choices of US political parties. It links the idea of what the optimal behavior in business cycles should be to what the optimal behavior in electoral cycles should be. The blogger argues that it is in … Read more

When War and Academia Collide

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Academics in all subfields of political science often lament that policy and military failures arise from the lack of communication between policy-makers and the academic community.  The recent tragic death of Michael Bhatia highlights some of the issues involved with the tenuous collaboration between those who analyze data and those who generate them, and the sometimes unfortunate consequences.  Bhatia was killed on May 7 in an explosion that targeted the American soldiers with whom he had been embedded in Afghanistan.

Bhatia had been teaching at Brown University’s Watson Institute for
International Studies as well as working on a doctoral degree from
Oxford University when he decided to enroll with the military’s Human
Terrain System. The program, run by the U.S. Army’s Training and
Doctrine Command, hires social scientists to collect and share
information abut Afghani culture with U.S. troops. Bhatia is the first
civilian in the program to die.

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Genetically Pre-Disposed to Enjoy Politics?

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A new study finds that our genes may determine how interested we are in politics. Interesting…

"Social scientists are stumped. Why do we bother to go to the polls when we know our individual vote has no chance of determining the result of a national election? Variations in turnout — by age, race, income or whatever — are hard to fit into a theory of human conduct that assumes that people are rational. But with time to spare before the November election, molecular biology is coming to the rescue. In the same way that researchers have teased out a role for genes in determining sexual orientation or the propensity to smoke, they are deploying genetics to understand our political choices."

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