Latest posts
Methods to start a creative process and generate ideas for research
There are many ways to contribute to theory and potentially fruitful avenues of research, and reading top research articles, it can seem obvious and self-evident. However, most people who have tried to come up with interesting research ideas, know it is far from...
Ways of Making a Theoretical Contribution
In the book: Theory Construction and Model building skills, Jaccard & Jacoby outline 16 ways to make a theoretical contribution when conducting research. These are introduced in chapter 3, and numbered from 1 to 16. Each is elaborated on in subsequent chapters. I...
Yet more on academic fraud: the case of Francesca Gino and Data Colada
There is fraud everywhere. There are some people want rewards they can not achieve without cheating. Some (possibly most) find ways to rationalize and justify their actions. The autobiography written by Diederik Stapel, where he tries to explain and admit his actions...
Who publishes in journals like Sustainability? A bibliometric analysis
Recently Khrono reported that the journal “Sustainability” has been removed from the list of journals that give publication points in Norway. The decision cited several issues, including inconsistent and superficial review and editing practices, as well as a vast...
Pedagogisk utviklingsprosjekt
Undersøkelse av tiltak i en hybridundervisnings situasjon: Likestille læringsutbyttet for to studentgrupper, de som følger undervisning via nett og de som er fysisk til stede. Njål Andersen Introduksjon Det siste tiåret har det blitt økende fokus på å tilrettelegge...
Advice on the basic parts of writing an article…
and indeed, most academic writing 🙂 https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~lp15/Pages/Scream.html Researcher, Don’t Make Your Readers Scream! Practically everybody who reads your research paper, referees especially, wants to know only a few basic things: What did you do?...
How we can spot emotions on how people walk
Status and emotions are quite easy to spot and identify, as is evaluating our own and others status. There is a website where you can look at a dot-drawing of people walking, based on biometric data. Amazing how easy it is to spot differences, also based on gender....
Science mapping research on body image: A bibliometric review of publications in Body Image, 2004–2020
Research on Body Image has traditionally focused on the negative aspects; though more recently, more attention has been given to positive body image as well. What I found most interesting when I conducted this study, was the marked shift from TV in the mid 2000s, to...
Peer review and journal rejection – a painful reality!
In the past year, I have had the dubious pleasure of having some of my papers rejected by journals. It is draining. First, A LOT of time and emotional energy goes into each paper. I scrutinize it before submission, and really believe in it. Then I go though the...
Crazy Hotness diagram – scientifically tested
A few years ago, I discussed the concept of the Crazy-Hotness line, popularized on How I Met Your Mother, with some colleagues. We had fun with it. Today I saw an article that actually tested the intuition behind this fun idea... and also look at the counteridea, for...
How much confidence should we have in our own and others research findings?
Most authors have an inherent self-interest to present their findings in their research articles in the best possible light, sometimes at the expense of accurately stating the reliability of their findings. This can lead researchers to build on prior work that is not...
Applying for jobs.. the slog
Applying for an academic job is a little different from other jobs, especially in the amount of documentation some schools require. Academic CV’s are famously long. But then there are documents such as: research statement (2-6 pages) teaching statement diversity...
How to build a search in Web of Science
While it is fast and simple to conduct a basic search on Web of Science (WoS), to build a corpus for a bibliometric analysis, the search needs to be precise, with as many relevant articles as possible included, while excluding irrelevant ones, that will just create...
Mapping the literature on parents with mental illness, across psychiatric sub-disciplines: a bibliometric review
Research on parental mental illness is often carried out in disorder specific research silos. Drawing on the different research areas, it is possible to leverage and combine existing knowledge, and identify insights that can be transferred across research areas. In...
Meta-Analysis and incremental findings…The importance of being humble:
A meta-analysis was recently published in Journal of Applied Psychology... the conclusion is short and sweet, basically saying that the Honesty Humility dimension of the HEXACO model does not offer any incremental validity for predicting Organizational Citizenship...
When scientists are wrong..
Many studies and findings are questioned as a replications fail. When some are approached about possible weaknesses, like Amy Cuddy (and with her mentor Susan Fiske at her back), they fight tooth and nail. Others do it differently. A finding Dan Ariely has based part...
Replication vs. reproducibility
There is a distinction (not always observed by various authors) between Replication and reproducibility. Replication is re-running studies to confirm results. This means, collect own data, and get the same effect for your study. Reproducibility is the the ability to...
There are many ways to scientific fraud
An entertaining version of it was published ten years ago, by Neuroskeptic at: http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/11/9-circles-of-scientific-hell.html and since then, also as an article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691612459519 as both can be...
Tweet to increase our citation scores?
Citation scores are berated as being a poor predictor of article quality.. but still the best one available. Scholars are also often judged on citation scores. So the question of how to increase ones citation score is salient. The most important is of course to...
Advice through a PhD, from Oliver Williamson
We all know our PhD journey has been unique, special, just like the snowflakes we are. Reading the advice Oliver Williamson gave his phd students, makes me smile, it is advice I should have got during my journey. It would have been perfectly tailored to me. The essay,...