Editors of scientific journals have a lot of power. For one thing, journals are the main way that scientific work is distributed, so editors' decisions control the flow of information among scientists and to the public. For another, publications are probably the single most consequential product in evaluating scientists for jobs and career advancement. Simine just wrapped up a term as an editor of a journal, and in this episode she reflects on how much power she had, why it was probably too...

Research methods and statistics are a part of nearly every undergraduate psychology curriculum. They get dedicated courses of their own as well as coverage within other courses. In this episode we step back and reflect on how they should fit into an undergraduate curriculum and how we should be teaching them. Can and should we try to teach them important concepts without the underlying math? How do we integrate methodology into "substantive" teaching about psychology theories and findings?...

Many academics have flexibility in when, where, and how they get work done. In this episode we talk about the work habits we've developed to be productive, and the ones we've tried on that didn't fit. What are the differences between working in an office, at home, at a cafe, or elsewhere? How do you create routines and protect your time to get things done? Is it better to work with other people or alone? How do you recognize when the advice that works for everybody else doesn't work for you?...

Most doctoral training in psychology follows an apprentice model: Grad students affiliate with a primary advisor and lab, and do most of their training under that one person. But what happens when grad students and professors develop professional relationships outside of that traditional model? In this episode we discuss the politics and etiquette of students and faculty interacting and working together outside of the advisor-advisee model. How much control do - and should - advisors have...

To users of R, it is more than just another way to analyze data - it goes along with a different mindset about the centrality of coding in doing science, a way of thinking about openness and reproducibility, an intersecting set of tools, and a community of users with its own culture and mindset. In this episode we talk about the rise of R within the psychology research community. How has the importance of statistical software changed over time? Should we be teaching R to grads and undergrads?...

What if there were no journals? Would academic life be barren and empty, noisy and chaotic, happy and egalitarian, or something else entirely? In this episode we conduct an extended thought experiment about life without journals, in order to probe questions about what journals actually do for us anyway, what are other ways to achieve those things, and how we might overcome the downsides of the current scientific publishing ecosystem. How else could peer review work? How would researchers find...

What is the connection between methodology and ethics? In the early days of the twenty-teens, some people referred to the changes afoot in psychology as a "scientific integrity movement," but that term quickly faded. In this episode, we explore the connections between scientific rigor and scientific ethics. What are the ethical dimensions of good methods? When do we have an ethical obligation to make sure that our studies can answer our questions? Are there ethical obligations that go beyond...

Psychology calls itself a behavioral science, but how often do we measure actual behavior? In this episode we discuss what is involved in measuring realistic, meaningful behavior in psychology research - not just self-reports and response times. What counts as "behavior" anyway? Why does it seem like psychologists measure less behavior than they used to? What are the scientific, professional, or logistical reasons why researchers decide not to measure behavior? Our discussion is anchored...

If you are a scientist, criticizing science is a part of the job. We write peer reviews of papers and grants; after talks we ask questions, make comments, and ask questions that are more of a comment; and sometimes we even run replications or new studies to test each other's conclusions. But the scientific ecosystem does not have people who hold the dedicated job of science critic, in the way that fields like art, theater, and music have critics. In this episode we consider an argument made...

Self-promotion: the idea makes some people cringe and others salivate. In this episode, we talk about self-promotion in academic science. What amount - and maybe more importantly, what kind - is right? Why do some people shy away from it while others dive in? What even counts as self-promotion? Is it a luxury to be able to do without active self-promotion? How do cultural and other differences play into self-promotion? Plus: We answer a letter about bringing open science practices into...

Love them or hate them, conferences are a big part of academic life. In this episode we talk about getting the most out of a conference experience. How do you meet people (the dreaded "networking") and make the transition from feeling awkward to comfortable when you're new to a conference? How do you decide what to go to and what to skip? What are the etiquette and norms you should know about? How does the experience of going to a conference change over the course of your career? We share our...

Whether you call it a crisis, a renaissance, a revolution, or something else, there is no doubt that psychology is in the middle of a period of great change. How will future historians, scientists, and others look back on this moment in our field's history? We speculate on what changes we think will stuck, whether some things will look silly or naive in hindsight, what new problems or issues will rise in importance, and more. Plus: We respond to a letter about whether, when, and how to...

Go to the "Psychology" section in a bookstore and chances are it will be full of self-help books. In this episode we talk about self-help and its relationship to academic psychology. What is the difference between a scientist and a self-help guru? How do we feel about the ways that self-help books talk about empirical research, and do we think they should do more of that or less of it? What self-help books have we read, and what did we think of them? Plus: We answer a letter from a n00b...

Continuing an annual tradition, for our last episode of 2018 we talk about noteworthy events and reflections from our lives in the past year. Alexa finds that she's growing more sentimental with age. Alexa and Sanjay commune over rediscovering reading books for pleasure. Sanjay muses about the legitimate benefits of taking a sabbatical. Simine reflects on the joys of meeting new people and reinventing yourself on the road. Plus: We answer a letter about how you now when a place of work is...

Many psychologists study the brain or the body in relation to the mind. Alexa once thought psychophysiology and neuroscience would become a central part of her research; Sanjay flirted with the idea; Simine never seriously considered it. In this episode, we talk about how we see neuroscience and psychophysiology in relation to our own work. How well would those areas integrate into the research each of us does? What sorts of psychological questions are they not particularly well suited for?...

The open science movement is not the first time psychology has tried to reform itself. Why do some scientific reform movements succeed and others fizzle out? In this episode we talk with Fiona Fidler, a philosopher and historian of science at the University of Melbourne. Fiona's doctoral thesis was an investigation of a decades-spanning attempt to reform statistical practice in psychology based on critiques of null hypothesis significance testing. Her research included interviews with reform...

Scientists, like all humans, care about more than one thing in life. Scientists want to discover true or useful things about the world. But we are not indifferent to money, prestige, loyalty to friends and family, or other important things. How should scientists deal with situations where more than just our pure scientific ideals are on the line? In this episode we discuss conflicts of interest. What are conflicts of interest anyway? What are commonly occurring ones? Why does our field of...

Personality tests are perennially popular - good ones and bad ones alike. In this episode we talk about personality testing in the public sphere. What do we think accounts for their popularity. What do people get out of taking them? What distinguishes good ones from bad ones? And we spend a little time trying to guess each other's Big Five profiles. Plus: A letter about raising open science when you're applying to graduate school. The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett,...

p-values. Love them or hate them, they are everywhere in science. In this episode we talk about some of our thoughts and feelings about this ubiquitous statistics. What are the drawbacks and benefits to dichotomizing results into "significant" and "nonsignificant"? What do we think of other statistical approaches as alternatives or complements, like effect size estimation or Bayes factors? Do we ever actually care about what p-values actually represent (the probability of data given a...

"Public trust in science is declining" is a common refrain - but it turns out that it isn't true, or at best it's complicated. In this episode we discuss whether, when, and why the public should trust science. Why is public trust in science important anyway? How should people decide whether to trust research they cannot technically evaluate? Should scientists avoid criticizing each other in public because it will erode our public image? What is a scientific consensus, when should you take one...

Getting tenure and being promoted to associate or full professor are huge milestones in an academic career path. In this episode we talk about what comes afterward. What does it feel like and how long does that last? Do you keep going in the same direction or pause to take stock and make a switch? What new responsibilities and other surprises come at you and how do you handle them? And now that you have more autonomy, how can you be less beholden to other people's ideas of what defines...

Conferences are expensive, carbon-belching, superficial prestige-fests. At least, that's what some people will tell you. In this episode we consider some of the arguments against academic conferences. Are they really worth the costs to the individual and to the planet? Can you actually communicate scientific substance in a conference or a talk? Are keynotes just warmed-over nuggets from your old Psych 101 class? And what are you even supposed to get out of conferences anyway? We discuss these...

In this episode we tell personal stories about being different, and we reflect on how our identities and experiences - in life and in professional spheres - have been shaped by that. Sanjay talks about growing up multiracial and trying to figure out what that meant while the world was trying to define it for him. Simine talks about not conforming to gender expectations and the assumptions and reality about sexual orientation that go with that. Alexa talks about how her understanding of her...

We aren't analyzing you right now, we can't help you with your problems, and regardless of whether your Uncle Horace would make a great case study we aren't interested in meeting him. So what are these psychology degrees good for anyway then? In today's episode we talk about how our training and work as psychologists has influenced us as people. Are psychologists are good or bad at relating to others (and how much of the answer is about self-selection versus causation)? Has being a...

On today's episode we are joined by Ellen Evers, an assistant professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. We talk with Ellen about working at a business school, and how it is similar and different from being in a psychology department; how people in different fields think about rationality, and how that plays out in her own interdisciplinary work; and how the larger conversation around open science and replicability has made its way into decision research and...