Socialist Paradise

They been spending most they lives, living in a socialist paradise.

But now they have slogans.  That will help.

"Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms..."

Okay, so maybe it won't help.

"Let us establish the climate of attaching importance to military affairs more firmly across society!" 

Hey, wait a minute.  That's what the U.S. has been doing.  Don't steal our slogan, Big Un!

"Let us build a fairyland for the people by dint of science!"

Hey, you stole that from our "climate scientists"!  This is getting very close to copyright infringement.  Make up your own government pathologies, North Korea!

(Nod to M.K.)

No Wonder Mungo was such a great chair

Interesting piece at VOX describing research done on how the citation history of a department head is correlated with changes in the publishing performance of the department down the road.

Here's the money shot:

My boy KG Mungowitz sits at around 5400 cites on Google Scholar.  I think Duke owes him some royalties or something.

Here's what the article says about some common departmental decision rules:

It is not unusual for senior administrators to select chairs who have either undergone a decline in research productivity or made fewer research-specific investments over their careers (McDowell, Singell, and Stater 2009, 2011). Our study suggests that this may be a mistake.

Hat tip to Mark Thoma