Latest in Comments on Science and Academia

  • How not to ask your research question (and what to do about it)

    How not to ask your research question (and what to do about it)

    In software engineering, the structure of research theses, most notably dissertations, is straightforward: (1) Formulate a research question, choose a method, build a theory, then (2) generate at least one interesting hypothesis, choose a method, and test the hypothesis as part of the theory’s attempted validation. A dissertation can do both parts 1 and 2…

  • Anecdotal evidence on the method wars

    Anecdotal evidence on the method wars

    On a whim, I asked my Twitterverse (which includes a fair number of computer scientists) what they think about the following question: When peer-reviewing somebody else’s work submitted for publication, what should you do if you find that the authors have a different belief than you about what can be known? There were only 11…

  • Pay-walled research papers do not constitute published work

    Pay-walled research papers do not constitute published work

    I just had another discussion with a reviewer (by way of an editor) who insisted that I cite (presumably their) work buried behind an Elsevier paywall. How obnoxious can you be? It is 2019 and there are still editors and reviewers who consider articles, which are not freely accessible on the web, published research? That’s…

  • How software engineering teaching and the legal department collide

    How software engineering teaching and the legal department collide

    Any non-trivial university has a legal department, often several (at least one for matters of teaching and one for matters of fundraising). The legal department concerned with teaching has to protect the university from lawsuits by students. By extension, this department protects students from professors who ask too much of them. Often, there may be…

  • Inverted research funding

    Inverted research funding

    Most people believe that scientists first perform basic (“fundamental”) research and then perform applied research. Basic research delivers the fundamental insights that then get detailed and refined as they hit reality in applied research. Along with this comes the request that basic research funding should be provided by the country (because few companies would ever…

  • It does exist!

    It does exist!

    During a trip to Porto’s Ceija I was able to confirm that one of the professorial caste’s most cherished yet elusive objects does exist: The conceptual machine. In this case, it is a 3D metal printer, and it printed this piece of hardware (and many others); this one took about 12h to finish.