• Setting boundaries for summers when faculty are not paid.

• Whoa. A “peer review ring” was caught and sixty papers were retracted. I’ve joked about such a thing before, but never truly thought that something like that would actually exist, especially on such a large scale. Considering the difficulty in detecting such a thing, it really makes you wonder how common this actually might be. This clearly can’t be the only one.

• “Randomized data showed similar patterns.”  You know those rhythmic courtship songs of Drosophila? Don’t bother, they don’t exist. They were merely an artifact of a sound analysis methods.

• Five tips on surviving the pre-tenure years, in the context of an institution with both teaching and research expectations. This is just one post tied to a whole bunch of ’em that are being assembled.

• “My career… has been a constant search for an academic home that would allow for me to teach with a focus on relevance, flexibility, self-awareness, real learning, and wisdom. That home is as hard to find as Shangri-La.”

• Here is a funny youtube in which professors read some choice lines from their teaching evaluations.

• The benefits of continuing to work in the lab as a PI.

• “To become a scientist you need experience in experimentation – but getting lab experience if you’re an undergraduate can be incredibly difficult.“

• Ashes to ashes. A good story in the New York times about how Ash trees are joining the club of functionally extinct trees in North America, including chestnuts and elms.

• A thoughtful reflection by Melonie Fullick about how we make choices in our research careers:

“Does it count?”: count for what? In most cases, it’s an academic job, one with some security and stability; so whether something counts towards tenure is the point, with all the implications this brings. This question of “what counts” – whether it’s articulated explicitly or operating as an underlying theme in academic conversation – reveals something about the ways in which academics’ decision-making is influenced by perception of what will be rewarded with advancement in the existing system.

• People selectively evaluate the practices of great people. For instance, John Adams’ vehement opposition to slavery was — at the time  — a great contrast with Washington, Jefferson and most other contemporaries, even though we don’t make as much of it nowadays. Just like many US citizens have given a pass to the slaveowning founders of the United States, is the scientific community willfully overlooking the overt misogyny of great scientists of the 20th century, including Richard Feynman? Is this something that we really should be sweeping under the rug, especially when this has happened so recently, and still continues?

• Thoughts on what to do and where to publish from the ever-thoughful Daniel Lemire:

What should a sane computer scientist do then? His main focus should be on producing lasting contributions to his field. He should then publish them where they are likely to be noticed… If all you have ever done is fight for scarce spots at a selective venues, you have achieved nothing of importance. Really important work creates tangible value that is self-evident.

• Is all that theoretical stuff from your social sciences colleagues sound like a bunch of muckety-muck involving hermeneutics and other stuff that you don’t think about that much? This Guide to Understanding Social Science Research for Natural Scientists might be the thing for you. It is actually for natural scientists and is genuinely interesting.

• How much of the administrative takeover of academia is the fault of faculty members? Food for thought:

Institutions are made up of groups of people, and when some groups become relatively larger and better-paid than other groups, the balance of power in the institution shifts. Bergmann was already concerned about excessive growth of administration in higher education a quarter-century ago. Many faculty at institutions of higher education have been quite willing to hand over the reins of steering their institutions to non-faculty professionals, and instead to retreat to their research and their classrooms. Many administrators have been quite willing to take up those reins. The role of tenure-track faculty in higher education has diminished, and the role of administrators has increased.

And, the last two are World Cup links:

• You know how diving and embellishment messes up the sport and looks stupid and embarrassing. Well, US players are at a disadvantage because they’re no good at it.

• One of my favorite museum exhibits is the daily set of newspaper front pages from around the world, by the Newseum in Washington, DC. They have a link to see them online, too. Using that site, someone put together a striking collection of newspaper front pages covering Brazil’s staggering 1-7 loss to Germany this week. My local paper’s headline was, in all caps, “IT’S THE WURST.”