Dan and James discuss how scientific research often neglects the importance of maintenance and long-term access for scientific tools and resources.Other things they cover:Should there be an annual limit on publications (even if this were some

178: Alerting researchers about retractions

Feb 29th, 2024 49m 45s

Dan and James discuss the Retractobot service, which emails authors about papers they've cited that have been retracted. What should authors do if they discover a paper they've cited has been retracted after they published their paper?Other th

177: Plagiarism

Jan 31st, 2024 42m 52s

We discuss two recent plagiarism cases, one you've probably heard about and another that you probably haven't heard about if you're outside Norway. We also chat about the parallels between plagiarism and sports doping—would people reconsider ac

176: Tracking academic workloads

Dec 29th, 2023 36m 12s

We chat about a paper on the invisible workload of open science and why academics are so bad at tracking their workloads.This episode was originally recorded in May 2023 in a hotel room just before our live recording of Episode 169, which is w

175: Defending against the scientific dark arts

Dec 7th, 2023 38m 10s

We chat about a recent blogpost from Dorothy Bishop, in which she proposes a Master course that will provide training in fraud detection—what should such a course specifically teach and where would these people work to apply their training? We

174: Smug missionaries with test tubes

Nov 1st, 2023 53m 21s

James proposes proposes a new type of consortium paper that could provide collaborative opportunities for researchers from countries that are underrepresented in published research papers. We also talk about computational reproducibility and pa

173: How do science journalists evaluate psychology papers?

Oct 1st, 2023 35m 7s

Dan and James discuss a recent paper that investigated how science journalists evaluate psychology papers. To answer this question, the researchers presented science journalists with fictitious psychology studies and manipulated sample size, sa

172: In defence of the discussion section

Aug 31st, 2023 35m 36s

Dan and James discuss a recent proposal to do away with discussion sections and suggest other stuff they'd like to get rid of from academic publishing.Links* The paper (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04267-3) on the proposed elimiation of

171: The easiest person to fool is yourself (with Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris)

Jul 20th, 2023 55m 42s

We chat with Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris about the science of cons and how we can we can avoid being taken in. We also cover the fate of the gorilla suit from the 'invisible gorilla' study, why scientists are especially prone to being

170: Holy sheet

Jun 23rd, 2023 50m 32s

We discuss evidence of data tampering in a series of experiments investigating dishonesty revealed via excel spreadsheet metadata and how traditional peer review is not suited for the detection of data tampering.LinksData colada post 1 (https

169: Using big data to understand behavior (Live episode with Sandra Matz)

May 31st, 2023 43m 44s

In our first ever live and in-person episode, we chat with Sandra Matz about the opportunities and challenges for using big data to understand human behaviorLinksEverybody lies book (https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really

168: Meta-meta-science

Apr 27th, 2023 48m 26s

Dan and James discuss a new paper that reviews potential issues in metascience practices. They also talk about their upcoming live show in May in Frankfurt.LinksOur upcoming show on May 8th, which will be a part of the at the 4th symposium on

167: Diluted effect sizes

Mar 16th, 2023 43m 39s

Dan and James chat about a new study that uses homeopathy studies to evaluate bias in biomedical research, a new-ish type of authorship fraud, and the potential for Chat GPT peer-review.LinksThe Chat GPT paper library tweet (https://twitter.c

166: Is science becoming less disruptive over time?

Jan 25th, 2023 52m 12s

Dan and James discuss a recent paper that claims that science is becoming less disruptive over time and the suggested causes for this decline.Links* Our prior episode (https://everythinghertz.com/165), which discussed PhD defences* The paper

165: Self-promotion

Dec 30th, 2022 41m 18s

Dan and James chat about self-promotion in academia, how they both wish they had doctoral defences (these aren't a thing in Australia), and replacing error bars with the letter "t".Links and stuff* The now retracted paper (https://www.hindawi

164: The great migration

Nov 28th, 2022 49m

James and Dan discuss the recent migration of scientists from Twitter to Mastodon and the pros and cons of sharing the prior submission history of manuscripts The Mastodon thread (https://mas.to/@SteinbockGroup/109385540133459884) discussion t

163: eLife's new peer review model

Nov 7th, 2022 54m 44s

Dan and James discuss eLife's new peer review model, in which they no longer make accept/reject decisions at the end of the peer-review process. Instead, papers invited for peer review will receive an assessment from eLife and the peer reviews

162: Status bias in peer review

Oct 17th, 2022 50m 43s

We chat about a recent preprint describing an experiment on the role of author status in peer-review, dodgy conference proceedings journals, and authorships for sale.Links* James' blogpost (https://jamesheathers.medium.com/publication-launder

161: The memo (with Brian Nosek)

Sep 12th, 2022 47m 58s

Dan and James are joined by Brian Nosek (Co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science) to discuss the recent White House Office of Science Technology & Policy memo ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally

160: Whistleblowing

Aug 31st, 2022 50m 40s

Dan and James share ten rules for whistleblowing academic misconduct. The Safe Faculty Project (https://www.safefacultyproject.org/) websiteSLAPP statues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrategiclawsuitagainstpublicparticipationOther linksEve

159: Peer review isn't working (with Saloni Dattani)

Aug 15th, 2022 51m 35s

Dan and James are joined by Saloni Dattani for a chat about the history of peer review, a reimagination of what peer review could look like, what happens when you actually pay peer reviewers, peer reviewer specialisation, post publication pee

158: Word limits

Aug 1st, 2022 45m 11s

By popular demand, Dan and James chat about journal word and page limits.They also the debate around a recent meta-analysis on nudge interventions.Links* The PNAS nudge meta-analysis (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2107346118)* The response le

157: Limitations

Jul 11th, 2022 46m 46s

Dan and James discuss a new preprint that examined the types of limitations authors discuss in their published articles and whether these limitation types has changed over the past decade, especially in light of methodological reform efforts.

156: Looking for seeders

Jun 21st, 2022 50m 57s

Dan and James discuss a recent paper that concluded (again) that most researchers aren't compliant with their published data sharing statement and whether torrents (remember them?) are a viable alternative for sharing large datasets.Links* Th

155: Don't you know who I am?

May 30th, 2022 46m 20s

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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law