Excellence Adventures

Universities are increasingly talking about "excellence" as a basis for evaluating scholarship and making strategic decisions. We talk about a recent paper that analyzes the rhetoric around excellence, finds it wanting, and offers up some alternatives. Plus: We get ready for spring "break" (flying to beautiful places to keep working); the controversy around Brian Wansink's Food and Brand Lab; and should our letter-writer appeal an editorial decision based on an error?

Links discussed:

• Spoiled Science (Chronicle article about Brian Wansink)
• The Wansink Dossier (Tim Van Der Zee's compendium of anomalies in Food and Brand Lab publications)
• Excellence R Us: University Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence by Samuel Moore, Cameron Neylon, Martin Paul Eve, Daniel Paul O’Donnell, and Damian Pattinson

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 5. It was recorded March 20, 2017.