There is a theory in criminology that says that if a broken window in a building is left unrepaired, that building will soon have all its other windows broken. The rationale behind it is that signs of urban disorder and untended public spaces elicit antisocial behaviour. The idea is reminiscent of the concept of “criticality” […]
When I buy in a market I only deal with myself regardless of whether the market is competitive or in the hands of a monopoly. Given the price, I choose how much to buy. In an auction to get a Government project a firm has to anticipate what the other firms are bidding, but and […]
Some decades ago, the American social scientist Donald T. Campbell imagined interdisciplinary research as a fish-scale structure according to which scholars should make an effort to create links between disciplines, spanning areas ignored by others, in an overlapping pattern aiming to cover the entire web of knowledge. He suggested that scholars should overcome the “ […]
Scientific progress has undoubtedly being fed by singular individuals. Those who have pushed the boundaries driven by endless curiosity aiming to understand how the world surrounding us works. Mankind regards Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin or Marie Curie (among others) as unique minds that have contributed to shape the understanding of the world we live on […]
Author: Jaume Navarro received his PhD in history of science from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (1998). He has been a researcher at the universities of Cambridge, Imperial College (London) and the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin). Currently he is an Ikerbasque Research Professor and a member of the Praxis Group at the Faculty […]
One of the most common misconceptions regarding inequality consists of thinking that an unequal distribution of resources is the result of an unequal effort to achieve them. Although this might be the case in certain situations, when it comes to particular individuals, the fact is that there are systemic structural forces governing the result of […]
I am concerned here with the ways science and the future were interpreted during the interwar years. I argue that we need to come to deal not just with “the view of science”, but rather with sharply contrasting and competing narratives vigourously expressed in a new media-rich world after the First World War. Our vision […]
Slonim et al . (2014) discuss the problems of blood allocation in different countries and suggest a mechanism that can improve it. The present article is a summary of their main ideas. In the wealthy countries blood is mostly supplied via voluntary donations. The way blood is collected varies from country to country. Some have […]
What is a radiation dosimeter? Why do we need one? To give you an interesting and short response I will remind you what the Japanese government officials offered to Fukushima evacuees after the 2011 nuclear disaster. Having failed to reach their original radiation decontamination target, the government proposed that evacuees could return to their homes […]
Every year, as the International Women’s Day approaches, a classic topic for the media is to summarize statistics related to the gender wage gap . The empirical evidence is overwhelming: differences between men and women in the labor market are persistent in all countries. If we look at Europe and US data in recent years […]