Academic Writing on 淳于棼的賭書潑酒

權力

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

開場白

「權力往往會使人腐化、極權使人絕對腐化」 — 阿克頓勛爵（Lord Acton 1834-1902）。

為什麼

「並非權力令人腐化，而是恐懼。掌權者因害怕失去權力而腐敗。受制於權力者，因懼怕為權力所傷而腐敗。」 — 昂山素季。

「時窮節乃見，一一垂丹青。」 — 文天祥的《正氣歌》。

「換了位置就換了腦袋是正常的事，畢竟想法總是會隨著權力的差異而改變，沒有人的內心是永遠一成不變的。」 — 哥倫比亞商學院教授、社會心理學家亞當加林斯基（Adam Galinsky）。

「人們對於權力的感受並不是客觀的，也許他只是小主管，但他卻總是想要掌控全局；有的真正握有權力的人，卻總是覺得自己渺小，這是權力認知的差異。」 — 哥倫比亞商學院教授、社會心理學家亞當加林斯基（Adam Galinsky）。

「權力與影響力會使人在客觀判斷與自我行為上失去平衡，導致的結果就是對別人要求很嚴格，但卻對自己放鬆。」 — 美國西北大學(Northwestern University)倫理與決策管理系教授愛麗絲·卡普蘭（Alice Kaplan）和哥倫比亞商學院教授、社會心理學家亞當加林斯基（Adam Galinsky）。

Matthew Hutson 在 2017 年 3 月 23 日的 Why Power Brings Out Your True Self: Are you a tyrant or a servant? 認為權力彰顯一個人的本色。它减少抑製；它釋放內在自我。

Hutson 又認為，當人們獲得權力時，：

他們更有可能按照自己的意願行事；
他們在會追求目標時，減少考慮和堅持；
他們的文化更易影響他們如何使用權力；
他們的價值觀會影響他們行使權力的負責任程度。

收場白

“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”

MSc Final Year Writing

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Prologue

A good report tells us the truth about its research; but a bad report tells us the truth about its author. —- modified from G.K. Chesterton, Heretics.

Phrase-bank

Dr John Morley, University of Manchester, Academic Phrasebank
Springer, English for Writing Research Papers Useful Phrases

Writing Guides

Dr Sandra Shannon, A Guide to Academic and Scholarly Writing
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Moeckel, Typical Structure of a Master’s Thesis

Pitfalls in writing researches

Mon, 28 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A researcher on the road from the framing of a research question to the publication of the manuscript may be led astray by pitfalls.

In their paper, Nine pitfalls of research misconduct, published on 15 May 2018 in the Nature Magazine, Gunsalus and Robinson coined the mnemonic “TRAGEDIES” to capture the interlocking factors that may lead to such astray. TRAGEDIES represents:

Temptation
Rationalization
Ambition
Group and authority pressure
Entitlement
Deception
Incrementalism
Embarrassment
Stupid systems

Gunsalus and Robinson gave some examples:

English as a foreign language writing

Sun, 27 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Prologue

“Dr Smith, we are happy to accept your superbly written paper for publication in the Journal. Tell me, who wrote it for you?”

“Dr Smith answered: ‘I am so happy that you found my paper acceptable. Tell me, who read it to you?’”

Preproducibility and cargo cult science

Sun, 27 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Reproducibility

In 1660, Boyle published his landmark book, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effect. In the book, he described the first controlled experiments of the effects of reducing the pressure of the air. He gave the purpose of the book:

” . . . I thought it necessary to deliver things circumstantially, that the Person I addressed them to might, without mistake, and with as little trouble as possible, be able to repeat such unusual Experiments . . . ”

Self-publishing

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Exclusive rights to do restricted act

Authors wish their works to be distributed or sold. As authors, they are the owners of the copyrights in their works. They have the exclusive right to do the following acts:

to copy the work;
to issue copies of the work to the public;
to rent copies of the work to the public;

Typography matters

Sat, 19 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

“Typography matters because it helps conserve the most valuable resource you have as a writer—reader attention. Attention is the reader’s gift to you. That gift is precious. It is finite. And if you fail to be a respectful steward of that gift, it will be revoked.”

— Matthew Butterick, Typography for Lawyers.

“Like oratory, music, dance, calligraphy—like anything that lends its grace to language—typography is an art that can be deliberately misused. It is a craft by which the meanings of a text (or its absence of meaning) can be clarified, honored and shared, or knowingly disguised.”

MSc Final Year Project

Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Black humour tell no spoon-feeding

Three black humour have long told the differences between a first degree and a graduate degree.

The first humour is:

Bachelor degree: the teacher gives you the questions and the answers.
Master degree: the teacher gives you the questions and you look for possible answers.
Ph.D: no one gives you questions and you do not know what you are doing.

Publication, publication

Sun, 13 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Reference

Gary King. 2006. “Publication, Publication.” Political Science and Politics, 39, Pp. 119–125.

Gary King is the Weatherhead University Professor at the Harvard University. He also serves as the Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. His web page is available here.

Advantages of the method

In his paper, King told students how to write a publishable paper by beginning with the replication of a published article. Many faculty in political science and most other scientific fields followed such procedure to start with a published work. The advantages are:

Tools of reproducibility

Sun, 13 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Reference

Florian Markowetz. Five selfish reasons to work reproducibly. Genome Biology, (2015) 16:274 - 277.

Stephen R Piccolo, Adam B Lee, Michael B Frampton. Tools and techniques for computational reproducibility. Gigascience, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1 December 2016, Pages 1 – 13.

Tools of reproducibility

Keep your project organized, name your files and directories in some informative way, store your data and code at a single backed-up location.