We chat about appeals to authority when responding to scientific critique, university ranking systems, Goodhart’s law (and its origin), and private institutional review boards. Links The history of Goodhart's law The original psychadelics paper in Nature Medicine The critique The response to the critique Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on twitter Everything Hertz on Facebook Support us on Patreon and get bonus stuff! $1 per...

We chat about the Theranos story and the parallels with academic research, as well as Twitter's new owner and whether academics will actually leave the platform Links Mastodon (the band) Elon Musk’s Onion article The Dropout podcast The Juicero Bad Blood: The Final Chapter podcast by John Carreyrou  "Macho Man" Randy Savage Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on twitter Everything Hertz on Facebook Support us on Patreon and get...

We discuss a journal's new "wall of shame" page, which details unethical behaviours in an effort to discourage future misconduct. We also cover scientific ideas that won't die (but one idea that HAS died), and ECNP's "negative data" prize The audio quality of this recording isn't up to our usual standards as we were both travelling and without our normal recording gear. We'll be back with our normal gear next episode! Links James’ letter to the editor/obituary on sympathovagal...

James and Dan chat about apologies vs. non-apologies, how to decide when to call it quits on a paper, and governments vetoing research proposals recommended by their own funding agencies Links for stuff we mention The tweet from Chris Jackson that started it all Chris Jackson's Hertz episode on the cumulative advantage of academic capital The Science Diagrams that Look Like Shitposts twitter account Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz...

Dan and James discuss a new preprint that details twelve p-hacking strategies and simulates their impact on false-positive rates. They also discuss the Great Resignation in academia and the academic job market. Links The twitter discussion on Associate editor pay kicked off by Eiko Fried The p-hacking paper from Angelika Stefan and Felix Schönbrodt The sample size preprint from Daniel Lakens Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on...

We discuss the latest paper to seriously use the Kardashian index, which is the discrepancy between a scientist's publication record and social media following, and a listener question on whether original authors should get the last word when a comment on an article is submitted Links The paper on citation impact and social media visibility of Great Barrington and John Snow signatories for COVID-19 strategy The Rapid Responses comments on the paper The peer review reports for the...

Dan and James chat with cardiologist Rohin Francis about medical misinformation and how he uses YouTube for science communication via his 'Medlife Crisis' channel. Links to stuff that was mentioned: Rohin's YouTube channel Rohin on Twitter Can you be so fit that you die video? Why does getting in the water want to make you pee video What is the stupidest nerve in the body video Can you legally buy a human skeleton video The Tibbies YouTube channel Up and atom YouTube Channel Belinda Carr...

Dan and James chat about why academic reference letters are terrible, a recent position statement on preprints, and whether the "great resignation" is also happening in academia. Links to stuff that was mentioned: The tweet from Dr. Eliza Bliss-Moreau on acedemic reference letter The tweet from Gilad Feldman about the 100 references he's submitted in 2020 alone The AMWA-EMWA-ISMPP joint position statement paper on medical publications, preprints, and peer review, Everything Hertz on...

We discuss the $7000 'accelerated publication' option for some Taylor & Francis journals that promises 3-5 week publication and a novel type of research fellowship. Details for the accelerated publication The New Science 2022 Summer Fellowship We have new merch! Use the discount code 'METAL' to get 20% off (valid until January 31st, 2022). Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on twitter Everything Hertz on Facebook Support us on...

We answer a series of questions from a listener on whether to start a PhD, what to ask potential supervisors, the financial perils of being a PhD student, the future of higher education, the importance of skills, what keeps us going, and more. Here are the specific questions that we answered in this episode (the background to these questions is shared in the episode): Would you have any advice on how I can even decide whether to commence a PhD? Are there any questions in particular...

We discuss the results from the cancer biology reproducibility project, the inevitable comparisons with reproducibility in psychology, and authorship expectations for posting public datasets. Links The paper investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology The paper on the impact of alphabetical order on career outcomes in economics (whose authorship order are determinedby alphabetical order That human sports science paper that inlcluded a cranionotomy Everything Hertz...

If your child asked you whether they should pursue a career in academia, what would you say? We discuss this question plus three more quick-fire topics: the death of expertise, memorable presentations, and including internships in more graduate programs Links Get a 30% discount on a Scite subscription for a year, just use the coupon code EVERYTHINGHERTZ via this link The “Remind me of this later” twitter bot The Chase, Chance, and Creativity book Everything Hertz on social...

Dan and James discuss the differences between 'talk' and 'action' in scientific reform and why reforms are taking such a long time to be realised. They also chat about whether messy (but correct) code is worse than no code at all, and revisit the grad student who never said "no". Other links Get a 30% discount on a Scite subscription for a year, just use the coupon code EVERYTHINGHERTZ via this link James' blog post on why he loves preprints The grad student who never said "no"...

In this live episode, Dan and James discuss red flags in academia, in terms of research fields, papers, and individuals. Thanks to everyone that participated in this live event! Links to stuff that was mentioned Get a 30% discount on a Scite subscription for a year, just use the coupon code EVERYTHINGHERTZ via this link The p-hacker app Burro racing on Wikipedia Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on twitter Everything Hertz on...

We chat with Sakshi Ghai (University of Cambridge) about why we should diversify sample diversity and retire the Western, educated, rich, industrialized and democratic (WEIRD) dichotomy in the behavioral sciences Links to stuff we discuss: Sakshi's piece in Nature Human Behavior Many Labs 2 paper The ‘helicopter' research piece Joseph Heinrich’s recent book, The WEIRDest People in the World Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on...

James proposes that peer review reports should be published as their own citable objects, provided that the manuscript author thinks that the peer review report is of sufficient quality and the peer reviewers agree Other links and things we discuss An update on James’ start up job The American service industry Dan’s first outing since the pandemic started The villlage of Hell, in Norway The villiage of F*****g (now changed to Fugging) in Austria The Hertz long term archive on Open...

We chat with Ashley Farley about her background as an academic librarian, the underrecognised importance of copyright in academic publishing, and her work as a Program Officer at the Gates Foundation An academic librarian’s perpsective on the importance of open reseasch The importance of copyright in research and what it means signing over your copyright The PDF crisis! What does a program officer at a grant funding organsiation do? Why should funding organisations care about open...

We chat with Michele Avissar-Whiting about her role as the Editor-in-chief of the Research Square preprint platform and how she weighs up the benefits and costs of potentially problematic preprints during a pandemic. Notes, links, and stuff we cover: The Journal Ghoul reference in the intro Michele’s role as a the editor for a preprint server How Research Square works Weighing up the urgency of preprints vs. potential danger The preprint-to- hype pipeline The Scholarly Kitchen piece on...

Dan and James share their thoughts on a recent paper that proposes ten rules for improving academic work-life balance for early career researchers and the figure from this paper that became a meme. Here are the rules: Long hours do not equal productive hours Examine your options for flexible work practices Set boundaries to establish your workplace and time Commit to strategies that increase your efficiency and productivity Have a long-term strategy to help with prioritization, and...

We discuss Journal Reviewer (journalreviewer.org), which is a website that provides a forum for researchers to share and rate their experiences with journal's peer review processes. We also cover how some journals negotiate the way in which their impact factors are calculated. Links The reference to James' mention of Dick Whittington James’ RIOT science talk Nichola's Raihani's tweet https://journalreviewer.org/ The South Park Yelp episode Other links Everything Hertz on social...

Dan Quintana and James Heathers chat about well-known psychology studies that we've now lost confidence in due to replication failures and the role of auxiliary assumptions in hypothesis-driven research. Other links The reversals in psychology website Anne Scheel and team's paper on whether you’re ready to test hypotheses Homer Simpson burning bridges meme The paper that suggests replications will make psychology too boring and nobody will want to study it Daniel Lakens’ blog post on...

We discuss a recent retraction triggered by the authors not paying a copyright fee to use a questionnaire (that also happened to be critical of the original questionnaire). Links for stuff that we mention: The paper that was retracted for not getting the correct licence for a questionnaire The retraction notice for this paper The Spectrum piece that discusses this story Why most online recipes begin with some ridiculous story Libkey, which provides one-click access to papers via your...

Some journals use nominal manuscript submission fees to discourage frivolous submissions. However, it has been suggested that increasing submission fees could reduce article processing charges. Dan and James discuss this proposal, along with the recently released code of conduct for scientific integrity from the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. James’ Atlantic piece Submission fees for mansucripts The scholarly kitchen blog post We have a new partner: Paperpile! Our PeerJ episode...

Dan and James discuss how academia should operate in a post-pandemic world. What pandemic practices should we keep and what should we abandon? Links and details: Quiz: Norwegian metal band or Norwegian town? Things are slowly getting back to normal in some (but not alI) countries. So what academic practices and routines should we keep from the pandemic and what should we kiss goodbye? Would it be possible to be physically located at your local university but to be employed/educated at...

Dan and James answer listener audio questions on indirect costs for research grants, the mind/body problem, and why many academics aren't trained to teach. They also profess their love for the overhead projector Some more details: Should we require universities to justify overhead costs, like heating and electricity? Overheads can inflate the costs of grants, some grants provide an additional percentage for overheads but others don’t allow this, which can eat into grants Get to know the...