Rotundus.com

Can War Foster Cooperation?

"while war has many negative legacies for individuals and societies, it appears to leave a positive legacy in terms of local cooperation and civic engagement. We discuss, synthesize and reanalyze the emerging body of evidence, and weigh alternative explanations. There is some indication that war violence especially enhances in-group or “parochial” norms and preferences, a finding that, if true, suggests that the rising social cohesion we document need not promote broader peace"

In Vaccines we Trust? The Effects of Anti-vaccine Propaganda on Immunization: Evidence from Pakistan

"In July 2011, the Pakistani public unexpectedly learnt that the CIA had conducted a fake vaccination campaign as part of the operations to capture Osama Bin Laden. This episode was extensively used by Taliban groups to discredit the health system and vaccination campaigns." Should you be surprised that vaccination rates there dropped? Probably not.

Natural Disasters by Location: Rich Leave and Poor Get Poorer

Seems to me that this applies to a lot more than just natural disasters.

Study of the Week: What Actually Helps Poor Students? Human Beings

"What’s shared by tutoring, small group instruction, cooperative learning, and feedback and progress monitoring – the interventions that come out looking best? The influence of another human being. The ability to work closely with others, particularly trained professionals, to go through the hard, inherently social work of error and correction and trying again."

Why Isn’t My Professor Conservative?

An article primarily focused on reasons other than discrimination as to why conservatives are underrepresented amongst the professoriate in modern universities.

Does power really corrupt?

... or is this conclusion found in academic journals in part as a result of publication bias?

Another quote from Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, this time from Theodore Adorno:

It is difficult to even sign appeals with which one sympathises, because in their inevitable desire to have a political impact, they always contain an element of untruth … The absence of commitment is not necessarily a moral defect; it can also be moral because it means insisting on the autonomy of one’s own point of view.