Author Archives: legallysociable

Many top-cited papers initially rejected by good journals

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A new study finds that top-cited scientific studies are often rejected, sometimes without even going out for peer review:

Using subsequent citations as a proxy for quality, the team found that the journals were good at weeding out dross and publishing solid research. But they failed — quite spectacularly — to pick up the papers that went to on to garner the most citations.

“The shocking thing to me was that the top 14 papers had all been rejected, one of them twice,” says Kyle Siler, a sociologist at the University of Toronto in Canada, who led the study. The work was published on 22 December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

But the team also found that 772 of the manuscripts were ‘desk rejected’ by at least one of the journals — meaning they were not even sent out for peer review — and that 12 out of the 15 most-cited papers suffered this fate. “This raises the question: are they scared of unconventional research?” says Siler. Given the time and resources involved in peer review, he suggests, top journals that accept just a small percentage of the papers they receive can afford to be risk averse.

“The market dynamics that are at work right now tend to a certain blandness,” agrees Michèle Lamont, a sociologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose book How Professors Think explores how academics assess the quality of others’ work. “And although editors may be well informed about who to turn to for reviews, they don’t necessarily have a good nose for what is truly creative.”

The gatekeepers seem to be exercising their power. Academic disciplines usually have clear boundaries about what is good or bad research and the journals help to draw these lines.

An alternative explanation: the rejections authors receive help them shape their studies in productive ways which then makes them more likely to be accepted by later journals. If this could be true, you need to expand the methodology of this study to look at the whole process. How do authors respond to the rejection and then what happens in the next steps in the publishing cycle?

“America’s Ugly Mansions”

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As this Forbes piece notes, “Money, after all, doesn’t buy taste.” See some of America’s ugliest mansions here:

“Everyone has opinions on other people’s houses,” says Sarah A. Leavitt, a curator with the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., which recently unveiled the exhibition House and Home, surveying how the American hearth, from two story colonials to row houses, has changed over the last 200 years. For some, their nightmarish take on someone else’s dream home may be “because they would have done it differently.” For others, the critique may be “because they can’t afford it.”

Most homes, after all–colonials, capes, ranches and splits, follow the same boxy patterns. Developers “have to appeal to the common denominator,” Leavitt says, leaving only those with deep pockets to tailor their own palaces.

One thing seems to unite these ugly homes: they have features or portions that are out of proportion with the rest of the house or with what people typically expect in homes. Take the Gas Station home. A portico is not necessarily a problem but one that extends over the driveway at a two-story height looks cartoonish. Or the Concrete Blocks house. Concrete can be effectively used in modern architecture but an elongated concrete garage looks like too much. Thus, if you have money and want a big house, try to have a design that has some moderation.

If you want to vote for which home you think if the worst, go here.

When Christmas lights and decorations violate the moral minimalism of the suburbs

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I’ve seen lots of stories this year about Christmas lights and decorations on people’s houses. The biggest displays. The ugliest displays. Those that synced up their decorations to a hot song. The traffic generated, both on the street and online.

Such stories tend to contain some reaction from neighbors. Most seem either slightly amused with their excessively festive neighbors (“if they want to pay that kind of electric bill, that’s their choice”) or resigned to their fate. But, the variety of reactions illustrate one of the key pieces that holds suburbia together: the moral minimalism where residents tend to leave each other alone. In other words, suburbanites get along by not rocking the boat too much and not adversely affecting each other through their actions.

Christmas lights and decorations can cross these lines. They pit two opposing trends against each other: the moral minimalism of suburbs versus the excessive consumption and cheer of Christmas time in America. This is the one time of year that people can enhance their bland exteriors – often regulated by homeowner’s associations – and truly show their individuality. Large SUVs and garish homes illustrate bad or excessive taste at all times but Christmas means you can buy all sorts of things. It’s Christmas, after all. Yet, such displays threaten to decrease the quality of life of others and even lower property values (this is what some neighbors claim). What if your good cheer irritates your neighbors?

Hence, most people settle for limited decorations. This might be due to their own muted cheer or good taste but it also depends on the social control of the neighbors. Too much means that we may have violated the suburban trust. Such situations can get ugly. Best to display our Christmas cheer in ways that keep the suburban neighbors happy or at least indifferent.

College courses tackle The Simpsons

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Continuing the trend of the media showing interest in college students getting credit for classes involving pop culture, here is a brief overview of college courses tackling The Simpsons:

He currently teaches a course about the Broadway theater and how “The Simpsons” have embraced various musicals and plays. Next semester, he shifts to an online literature course titled “The D’oh of Homer” that includes readings from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” — all referenced in “Simpsons” episodes…

According to the SUNY Oswego website, “Sociology of ‘The Simpsons'” is still an accredited course at the Central New York school. Sociology professor Dr. Tim Delaney published a book in 2008, “Simpsonology: There’s a Little Bit of Springfield in All of Us.”…

Jean acknowledges a theme in many episodes is the comparison of the C. Montgomery Burns character — the miserly owner of Springfield’s nuclear power plant — to the lead character in the movie “Citizen Kane,” Charles Foster Kane…

“They need to reach students however they can. And using ‘The Simpsons’ to grab their attention, I think, is brilliant,” she says. “Fighting against pop culture isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

For those skeptical of such classes, here is my brief defense of using The Simpsons:

1. It is the longest-running American sitcom. That alone means it has a unique place among television shows. It has never been the most popular show but it clearly has staying power.

2. Television may seem irrelevant to the college classroom but given that the average American adult watches 5 or so hours a day (the figures do vary by age), it is a powerful force.

3. The Simpsons has a particular way of critiquing many aspects of American society. Perhaps it is the writers, perhaps it is the animated format that allows for a different kind of humor. I recently used the episode “Lisa the Skeptic” (Season 9 Episode 8) in class to illustrate the debate between religion and science. This episode lays out the two sides and then in the end skewers both by suggesting the real issue is rampant consumerism.

Miami fights climate change with fees derived from new waterfront condos

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Miami can could lose big with the consequences of climate change but in order to fight the consequences, the city needs to approve more oceanfront development:

The more developers build here, the more taxes and fees the city collects to fund a $300-million storm water project to defend the shore against the rising sea. Approval of these luxury homes on what environmentalists warn is global warming quicksand amounts to a high-stakes bet that Miami Beach can, essentially, out-build climate change and protect its $27 billion worth of real estate.

The move makes budgetary sense in a state with no income tax: Much of South Florida’s public infrastructure is supported by property taxes…

By 2020, Miami Beach plans to complete 80 new storm pumps that will collect and banish up to 14,000 gallons of seawater per minute back into Biscayne Bay. Construction started in February. The goal is to reduce sunny day flooding — which frequently invades streets at high tide whether or not it is raining — and prepare the community for future ocean swell…

The $300 million project is ambitious for a city with a $502 million annual budget. A new stormwater utility fee on homeowners, hotels and stores helped Miami Beach save enough money to borrow the first $100 million.

The project started before planners worked out all the funding. It’s unclear how the city will raise the rest. “We don’t have time for analysis-paralysis,” said Levine. “We are going to have to get creative.”

It is hard for cities to turn down development when the luxury market is hot. Not only does an overheated housing market attract new residents, a hip reputation, and the interest of developers, it can also generate money for the city through taxes, fees, and increased spending.

Yet, development isn’t simply a game where more equals better. Whether the consequences are flooding or gentrification or a lack of affordable housing, cities tend to approve such projects that bring in money and growth. But, this ignores the bigger picture and the broader consequences that could affect everyone. The money may be pouring in now but what happens if this leads to flooding and a hampered tourist and investor economy for decades to come? What if avoiding the question of affordable housing contributes to other social problems or causes needed workers and citizens to move to other communities? As urban sociologists have asked for decades, who wins when big development takes place? Usually not the normal citizens. Instead, the growth machines – the powerful businesspeople and politicians – tend to profit.

Of course, funding to combat future problems is not easy to obtain. No state income tax in Florida helps contribute to hot housing markets. Should the federal government help pay to alleviate climate change? Should there be state or federal policies that do not allow building such expensive developments right on properties near the ocean (similar questions are raised about floodplains around major rivers)? Cities and other governments have a long way to go in order to figure out this issue.

The American Dream and how Chicago magazine determined “Chicago’s Best Places to Live”

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Chicago has a new list of the best places to live that includes 12 Chicago neighborhoods and 12 Chicago suburbs. Here are the factors the magazine used to identify these communities

First we looked at the factor that tends to be uppermost in the minds of families these days: safety. We eliminated from contention all community areas that notched violent crime rates higher than 7.0 offenses per 1,000 inhabitants last year (the city average: 9.3 per 1,000). That meant tossing out the Loop (9.9 per 1,000) and the historic South Side neighborhood of Pullman (11.2 per 1,000), for example. And we eliminated suburbs with violent crime rates above their county’s average—which removed from contention such otherwise appealing places as Evanston (2.2 per 1,000) and Oak Park (2.7 per 1,000), both in Cook County (2.1 per 1,000).

Then we turned to education. If a town or community lacks a public school whose students score above average on standardized tests, we dinged it. And because raising kids in an area that’s at least somewhat diverse is a goal of most parents, we nixed spots where more than 92 percent of residents are of any one race. (Bye-bye, Kenilworth, Western Springs, and Winnetka.)

For the places that remained, we looked at ease of transportation downtown, giving extra points to those that have several el stops and at least one Metra stop. (Places with outstanding schools and low rates of property crime also got bonus points.) And we considered how home prices in these places have fared in recent years compared with prices in neighboring areas, as well as whether buyers there can get good value for their money—which is not the same thing as paying the smallest amount. (For detailed price charts covering all Chicago suburbs and neighborhoods with at least 20 home sales in 2013, see this page with all the housing data.)

Finally, I hit the pavement to assess which spots possess those hard-to-define qualities that matter hugely when you’re looking for somewhere to live. Things like vibrancy (are there lots of bustling restaurants and shops?). Beauty (are there architecturally interesting buildings or just cookie-cutter developments?). Friendliness (does the community have a natural center that brings people together?). Is it, quite simply, a great place to call home?

So it boils down to safety, good schools, good transportation, higher than average housing values, and quality of life. Such measures are not uncommon on Best Places to Live lists.

However, it struck me upon reading this list that these traits tend to match a particular vision of a good community. If I may put it this way, it is a middle to upper-class ideal where kids are safe and nurtured and communities are protected from the difficulties of the world. It roughly matches the American Dream where people can live in small-town type places (even though most Americans do not live in such areas, they harbor the ideal of living in a tight-knit community – even if they may not want to contribute much to it) in relative comfort.

Just to take the two examples from DuPage County, Wheaton and Hinsdale, these communities partly derive their ranking from protecting this particular vision over the decades. Not everyone can move into these communities; it requires a certain amount of money as the affordable housing the communities discuss has much more to do with allowing senior citizens and recent college graduates to have somewhere to live rather than truly addressing low-income residents.

Maybe this methodology does reflect what many Americans want. The suburbs on the list are nice and the Chicago neighborhoods, while having more diversity, tend to be the more sought-after ones. At the same time, such lists could reinforce the notion that protected and wealthy places are the best ones, the ones we should all aspire to live.

California doesn’t know what safety standards to adopt with driverless cars

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Who should certify the safety of driverless cars? California is considering this question:

DMV officials say they won’t let the public get self-driving cars until someone can certify that they don’t pose an undue risk. The problem is that the technology remains so new there are no accepted standards to verify its safety. Absent standards, certifying safety would be like grading a test without an answer key.Broadly, the department has three options: It could follow the current U.S. system, in which manufacturers self-certify their vehicles; it could opt for a European system, in which independent companies verify safety; or the state could (implausibly) get into the testing business…

Manufacturers generally would prefer self-certification. That may be where California ends up, but for now the DMV is exploring independent certification — something that doesn’t exist for driverless cars.

In July, the DMV asked third-party testers whether they’d be interested in getting into the game. The department doesn’t have the expertise to create a safety standard and testing framework, so “the department wanted to get a very good sense of what is out there in the market,” according to Russia Chavis, a deputy secretary at the California State Transportation Agency, which oversees the DMV and requested a deeper exploration of third-party alternatives to self-certification.

 

I can’t imagine California or another US state allowing corporations to do this on their own. Perhaps it would be allowed if they agreed to provide generous payouts if their products failed? Yet, given the hubbub about Toyota and its stuck pedals as well as the Takata air bag scares, this is a public safety issue.

I wonder what the public would want. Americans like progress and like cars. But, there would be some fear regarding the safety of driverless cars until they have some sort of independent certification. And how would Google’s reputation these days affect perceptions of these cars?

The “particle” rules governing human interactions in crowds

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A group of physicists suggests humans follow particular rules while interacting in crowds:

Skinner and his coauthors, a pair of computer scientists at the University of Minnesota, looked at six data sets that capture individual movements in crowded places: four from natural settings, like video footage of pedestrians on a college campus, and two from laboratory experiments, in which participants were tracked with cameras as they navigated a corridor that narrowed into a bottleneck. Such data sets have become available only in the last five years, as improvements in camera technology and the field of computer vision have made large-scale pedestrian tracking possible.

Initially the researchers assumed they would find a “repulsive force” between people, like the one that pushes charged particles apart. As they looked closer, they realized it wasn’t that simple: There was a repulsive force between individuals, but it only operated sometimes. “Two people walking head first into each other have a strong interaction,” Skinner says, “but people walking side-by-side have almost no interaction.”

So the researchers went looking for a new rule. They found it in a variable they called “time to collision,” which explained many of the course adjustments they observed. The closer two people get to colliding, the more energy they expend getting out of each other’s way. To be technical, they found that the interaction between individuals in a crowd could be described as 1 over the square of the time to collision: As a collision becomes more imminent, the energy you apply to avoiding it goes up drastically.

Unlike with particles, the mechanism that produces these adjustments is an instinctive mental calculation rather than any kind of physical force. There’s also a limit to how far out we can—or need—to account for other people’s movement. When the time to collision was more than three seconds, the researchers found that the interaction energy between two pedestrians fell to zero, meaning people weren’t taking each other into account at all.

This seems to apply mainly to areas where people are going opposite directions, whether in an open concourse at a stadium or a crowded city crosswalk with two masses of people trying to get past each other. In these situations, there is usually an area of stronger flow on each side but then in the middle – between the two larger flows – is a zone where such collisions are imminent. I know because I often walk in such zones when in a hurry. It can be difficult in those situations to avoid people and not everyone likes to walk in such high-stakes areas where there is a higher probability of bumping into people.

The article goes on to talk about applications of these findings. I would guess that means having more clearly marked traffic flows and trying to avoid the weaker flows or neutral areas that I mentioned.

Keeping track of speeding in E-Z Pass lanes – but not enforcing it?

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Some states monitor speeding through open road tolling:

Several states, including New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, say they monitor speeds through the fast pass toll lanes and will suspend your E-Z Pass for multiple speeding violations.

In all, five of the 15 E-Z Pass states have some kind of rules on the books for breaking the speed limit in the convenience lanes.

This makes some sense. Yet, the states don’t consistently enforce these rules. Here are two examples:

“You can lose your E-Z Pass privileges if you speed through E-Z Pass lanes,” says Dan Weiller, director of communications for the New York State Thruway Authority. “You get a couple of warnings. We don’t have the power to give a ticket, but we do have to power to revoke your E-Z Pass, which we will.”…

In Pennsylvania, a warning usually suffices for lead-footed drivers, says Carl DeFebo, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. “If a collector spots an E-Z Pass customer blasting through at a high rate of speed, they’ll get a license plate,” he says. “We do have the ability to send a warning letter to the customer, and that has proven effective. If the customer doesn’t heed the warning we have the ability to suspend their E-Z Pass privileges but we haven’t done that recently.”

My interpretation: states have had the ability to monitor speeding at these open toll lanes. Theoretically, they could even calculate the time it takes to drive between points and could track speeding on the open highway. But, widely ticketing people in these open toll lanes would be unpopular and seen as heavy-handed so they don’t crack down on everyone.

I want to know: is this strategy effective? Does the threat of a ticket (whether it is on posted signs before the tolls or is in the user agreement) actually slow people down? If this is really a safety issue, shouldn’t this be enforced consistently? It sounds like the speeding on Chicago highways that takes place among most drivers but the state won’t raise the 55 mph speed limit near Chicago.

The difficulties in finding out the most popular street name in the United States

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FiveThirtyEight tries to find out the most common street name in the US and this leads to comparing Census information from 1993 with a Reddit user’s work:

The chart on Reddit that sparked your question looks very different from the 1993 list of most common street names from the Census Bureau.

Why, for example are there 3,238 extra Main streets in that chart compared with the census records in 1993? To find out, I got in touch with “darinhq,” whose name is Darin Hawley when he’s not producing charts on Reddit. After speaking to him, I think there are three explanations for the difference between his chart and the official data.

First, some new streets may have been built over the past 20 years (Hawley used 2013 census data to make his chart). Second, some streets may have changed their names: If a little town grows, it might change the name of its principal street from Tumbleweed Lane to Main Street.

Third, I don’t know how the Census Bureau produced its 1993 list (I asked, and a spokesperson told me the researcher who made it can’t recall his methodology), so Hawley might have simply used a different methodology to produce his chart. Because I wasn’t able to find any data on the frequency that American streets are renamed or the rate at which new streets are being built, I’m going to stake my money on this third explanation. Hawley told me that he counted “Main St N” and “N Main St” as two separate streets in his data. If the Census Bureau counted them as just one street, that could account for the difference.

That’s not the only executive decision Hawley made when he was summarizing this data. He set a minimum of how far away one Elm Street in Maine had to be from another Elm Street in Maine to qualify as two separate streets. That’s a problem because streets can break and resume in unexpected ways.

In other words, getting an answer requires making some judgment calls with the available data. While this is the sort of question that exemplifies the intriguing things we can all learn from the Internet, it is also a question that likely isn’t important enough to spend a lot of time with it. As an urban sociologist, this is an interesting question but what would I learn from the frequencies of street names? What hypothesis could I test? It might roughly tell us the names that Americans give to roads. What we value may just be reflected in these road names. For example, the Census data suggests that numbered streets and references to nature dominate the top 20. Does this mean we like order (a pragmatic approach) and idyllic yet vague nature terms (park, view, lake, tree names) over other things? Yet, the list has limitations as these communities and roads were built at different times, roads can be renamed, and we do have to make judgment calls about what specifies separate streets.

Two other thoughts:

1. The Census researcher who did this back in the early 1990s can’t remember the methodology. Why wasn’t it part of the report?

2. Is this something that would be best left up to marketers (who might find some advertising value in this) or GIS firms (who have access to comprehensive map data)?