French Men Drink More and Faster When the Music Is Cranked to 11

A field study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research manipulated sound levels in a bar while observing the beer drinking behavior of male patrons.

Journal Choice Strategy

We have been discussing what should happen if a peer reviewer receives the same manuscript she reviewed for a different journal that rejected the manuscript. One of our commenters asserted the following:

Identical submissions to 2nd/3rd/4th choice journals suck! I thought the whole point of having reviewer comments was to improve the paper, but apparently not.

On Blogging: Faith and Tenure

Speaking of prof-blogging, I’ve had the pleasure of two additional excellent commentaries on blogging issues this week.
I think many people referenced John Hawks’ first piece on using blogging as part of one’s dossier for tenure. What received far less link-love were his followups, including a discussions of integrating blogging with your normal scholarly activities and graduate student blogging. I’ve been watching prof-blogging developments with some interest. When I started, I was aware of many graduate student or postdoc blogs but many fewer scientific-researcher professor blogs. Abel Pharmboy had similar observations only six months ago. Since then it seems like every week there is a new one to read! Despite the NegativeNancies it is becoming more likely that blogs will become integrated into the academic crediting system in some way. John Hawks’ observations are going to be a key foundation of which this new aspect of academic behavior is built I would suspect.
The second item is actually a podcast. I’ve listened to maybe 5 or fewer in my life so I will admit I’m not really a podcast expert. Thomas Robey posted a recording of:

The talk I gave last weekend at the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation about blogging as a useful tool for talking about ethics, science and religion in the classroom and in the public sphere is online. Listen to it here. It features my motivations for blogging, my experience here and at Clashing Culture, and some ideas about how blogs could play a larger role in dialogue about science and society in the public and within the mission of the ASA.

It’s worth a listen. It is a very nice oral version of the “what is blogging” review that is starting to appear in the scientific print literature.