I was involved in the early stages of creating DORA’s new implementation guide. One small contribution that I made was ensuring that there was a small section that talked about including graduate students and postdocs when considering research assessment reform.
This guide is timely and badly needed. Many American research universities are going to have to change what they think a successful research career looks like.
This update contains two new pet-themed hoaxes: a dog impersonating a scientist and a cat impersonating a scientist. The first of these occurred after the first version of this
document, and I missed it. This is indicative of how difficult it is to
keep on top of these events.
Also, a slight update about how Google’s search result is now displaying material from hoax papers as though they were real.
I am slightly amazed that what I thought would be a project that would close or at least slow down is still updated so regularly.
(E)ight selective colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and Vanderbilt University announced they will accept these “civility transcripts” among the factors they weigh in college-admissions decisions.
Sigh.
On the one hand, I appreciate this sentiment:
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best. (Heinlein 1978)
My problem with words like “civility,” “politeness,” and
“professionalism” is that they are coded. If it’s hard to counter someone who accuses you of “incivility” because it can mean many different things. Some can use it just as a way of saying, “You shouldn’t make that point at all.”
So in addition to being vague, civility and its relatives can easily be used just to enforce the status quo.
“Do it in the right way.” Yeah. This is the same language used to try to neutralize protests. The “right way” gets so prescribed that it effectively prevents expression.
On the other hand, there are some things one should not be civil about.
MR. NANCY: Shit, you all don’t know you black yet. You think you just people. Let me be the first to tell you that you are all black. The moment these Dutch motherfuckers set foot here and decided they white, and you get to be black, and that’s the nice name they call you. Let me paint a picture of what’s waiting for you on the shore. You arrive in America, land of opportunity, milk and honey, and guess what? You all get to be slaves! Split up, sold off and worked to death! The lucky ones get Sunday off to sleep and fuck and make more slaves, and all for what? For cotton? Indigo? For a fucking purple shirt? The only good news is the tobacco your grandkids are gonna farm for free is gonna give a shitload of these white motherfuckers cancer. And I ain’t even started yet. A hundred years later, you’re fucked! A hundred years after that, fucked! A hundred years after you get free, you still getting fucked outta jobs and shot at by police! You see what I’m saying?
[sees the rage on a slave’s face]
MR. NANCY: This guy gets it. I like him. He’s gettin’ angry. Angry is good. Angry gets shit done. (Green & Fuller 2017)
Anger is a legitimate form of human expression.
I do not like the idea of “civility transcripts.” At all. I am disappointed in the universities are going to consider them.
References
Heinlein RA, The Notebooks of Lazarus
Long (1978). G.P. Putnam’s Sons: New York.
Green M, Fuller B, 2017, “The Secret of Spoons,” American Gods.
