Academics love awards. We give out career awards, mid-career awards, early-career awards. We give out awards for the best paper, the best theory, the best teaching, the best service. But what function do all those awards serve? And are we the better for having them? In this episode we talk about how awards fit into the academic ecosystem. How do recipients benefit from them? How do they help the organizations and research communities that give them out? What kinds of biases are baked into the system, and how can we counteract them? Should we consider radically changing how academic awards work, or even doing away with them? Plus: We answer a letter about why academia and policy research have such different norms around checking their numbers.
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, on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/, and on instagram at @blackgoatpod. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes or Stitcher.
Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license. Our logo was created by Jude Weaver.
This is episode 84. It was recorded on September 2/3 (US/AUS), 2020.
Relevant To Your Interests
Testing 1-2-3
Our Most Significant Episode Ever
Don't Trust Me, I'm A Doctor
What Comes Next?
Nobody Goes There Anymore, It's Too Crowded
Being Different
Psychological Science Is Made Out Of People
Because Reasons (with Ellen Evers)
Situation Normal
Come Together
You Can Go Your Own Way (with Katie Corker)
Tech Tales (with Paul Litvak)
The PhD Who Caught the Car
A Blooming, Buzzing Confusion
A Jury of Your Nerdy Peers
Hanging in the Balance
Aboard the Hype Train
Moving along
Academic Kindness
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
DNA Today: A Genetics Podcast
Museum of the Missing
Strange by Nature Podcast
Sasquatch Chronicles
Hidden Brain