Archive for 'Idiocy'
This Journal Brought to You By . . .
It was shocking at the end of April when The Scientist reported that Elsevier had published a scholarly-journal-like series that was actually advertising paid for by Merck. The peer-reviewed-like articles in the journal-like object were either reprints or summaries of articles that reported results favorable to Merck drugs. There were also “review” articles that had [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on May 9th, 2009 under Commercialization, Idiocy, Information Ethics, Information Literacy, Scholarly Communications, information industries.
Comments: 5
Heather Has Two Mommies and Just Canceled her Amazon Account
A current kerfuffle on the Internets has to do with Amazon de-ranking GLBT-themed books as reported on the LA Times Jacket Copy blog.
Amazon’s policy of removing “adult” content from its rankings seems to be both new and unevenly implemented. On Saturday, self-published author Mark R. Probst noticed that his book had lost its ranking, [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on April 13th, 2009 under Commercialization, Idiocy, Information Ethics.
Comments: 5
Dumber Students Or Out Of Touch Academics
Are students getting dumber or are the academics working with them just getting more out of touch with those they teach? That debate has been hanging around for a while and now the noise level is increasing by more than a few decibles. I first wrote about this back in January 2006 when I discussed [...]
Posted by StevenB on September 15th, 2008 under Idiocy, Student Issues, Teaching.
Comments: 4
Truth, Information and Knowledge: u r boring me
A funny and ultimately disheartening? article in the Washington Post portrays librarians as the last defenders of truth in a decadent culture consumed with trivia and superficialities, even going so far as to describe librarians as “trench warriors for truth.” Here’s a dramatic excerpt from a chat reference service:
“We’re losing him! We’re going to [...]
Posted by Marc Meola on April 30th, 2008 under Authority, Idiocy, Information Literacy, Libraries and Learning.
Comments: 3
Selective Dissemination of Information
A researcher recently discovered something odd: she couldn’t use “abortion” in a keyword search Popline, a standard database on reproductive health hosted at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. What the–?
Turns out, it’s now a stop word. Like “a” and “the.” Something you want excluded from a search. What the–?
Turns out, federal [...]
Posted by Barbara Fister on April 4th, 2008 under Idiocy, Information Ethics, Political political.
Comments: 6