In 2012, Rink Hoekstra received two emails on the same day. One was from a journal editor, telling him that a manuscript was being rejected based on the recommendations of two reviewers. The other was from one of those reviewers, complimenting

They Give You This, But You Pay For That

Sep 23rd, 2020 1h 9m

Academics are under enormous stress right now, raising the possibility of a rising rate of burnout. Longtime structural trends in higher education have increased pressures for demonstrable productivity. On top of that are a global pandemic, res

An Award-Winning Episode

Sep 9th, 2020 1h 4m

Academics love awards. We give out career awards, mid-career awards, early-career awards. We give out awards for the best paper, the best theory, the best teaching, the best service. But what function do all those awards serve? And are we the b

Contact Sport

Aug 26th, 2020 1h 7m

The contact hypothesis is an old idea in social psychology. It posits that under the right circumstances, bringing people from different groups together can reduce prejudice. In this episode, we discuss a new field experiment by Salma Mousa tes

Does Not Compute

Aug 13th, 2020 1h 1m

Scientific journal articles have a lot of numbers. Scientists are smart people with even smarter computers, so an outsider might think that, if nothing else, you can count on the math checking out. But modern data analysis is complicated, and c

Objective Unknown

Jul 29th, 2020 1h 5m

How does psychology's response to the replication crisis fit into a broader history of science? In this episode we discuss a paper by sociologists Jeremy Freese and David Peterson that takes on that question. Are "epistemic activists" in psycho

The Impending Fall of Academia

Jul 15th, 2020 1h 7m

The upcoming academic term will be unusual, to say the least. The global pandemic led to emergency shutdowns in March, and it is likely that many colleges and universities will continue teaching partially or wholly online. And protests against

Inexact Science

Apr 30th, 2020 1h 7m

Scientific knowledge is always contingent and uncertain, even when it's the best we have. Should that factor into how we communicate science to the public, and if so, how? We discuss a recent article about the effects of communicating uncertain

COVID Operations

Apr 15th, 2020 1h 2m

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating major and serious disruptions to just about everything, and higher education is no exception. In this episode we talk about how our work has been affected by measures to slow down the coronavirus. How have we a

Joe Public, Will You Marry Me?

Apr 1st, 2020 1h

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about public trust in science - how much there is, in what ways, whether we deserve it or not. In this episode, we discuss an article by historian and philosopher Rachel Ankeny that asks whether "tru

Just Be Cause

Mar 21st, 2020 1h 7m

Many important questions about cause and effect are impractical to answer with a randomized experiment. What should we do instead? In this episode we talk about doing causal inference with observational data. Has psychology's historical obsessi

Auxiliary Turtles All the Way Down

Feb 12th, 2020 1h 8m

The path from theory to study consists of a thousand decisions, big and small. How and how much do these decisions matter? We discuss a recent crowdsourced meta-study that tried to find out. Fifteen teams of researchers were given 5 different h

The Expertise of Death

Jan 29th, 2020 1h 10m

How important is expertise in conducting replications? Many Labs 4 was a large, multi-lab effort that brought together 21 labs, running 2,220 subjects, to study that question. The goal was to compare replications with and without the involvemen

Going Off the Record

Jan 17th, 2020 1h 14m

The Graduate Record Exam - the GRE - is widely used in graduate school admissions. In recent years however, a number of graduate programs, including a few in psychology, have stopped requiring it in a movement that has been dubbed "GRExit." In

The Year 2019 in Review

Dec 26th, 2019 1h 3m

In our annual end-of-year episode, we talk about noteworthy reflections and events from the year that just passed. Alexa reflects on breakups, and wonders why we don't take them more seriously as a significant disruption to other people's lives

Letting Loose Your Inner Reviewer Two

Dec 12th, 2019 1h 12m

Peer review is a major part of how science works today. In this episode we talk about how we approach doing peer reviews. How do you distinguish between differences in approach or preference - "I would have done it a different way" - versus thi

Doctorpiece Theater

Nov 29th, 2019 1h 4m

To get your PhD you have to do a dissertation. For some this is an important product that demonstrates your ability to produce original research. To others, it's a vestigial ritual and a waste of time on the way to becoming a productive scholar

The Last Straw

Nov 13th, 2019 1h 7m

Speaking up about injustice and bad behavior in a professional setting - as a witness, or as the target of it - is hard. It's uncomfortable, it's difficult, and it can generate backlash and other risks for yourself and your career. In this epis

Talk the Talk

Oct 30th, 2019 1h 6m

Academics give a lot of talks. Job talks, conference talks, colloquium talks, brownbag talks, pub talks. In this episode we talk about talks. How do you approach different audiences and formats? How do you manage a format or audience where inte

Everybody Act Normal

Oct 16th, 2019 1h 15m

Scientists have to follow a lot of rules. We have IRB rules, journal submission rules, university rules - lots of rules. But some of the most important rules in science aren't rules at all - they are norms. Guiding principles that shape the wor

For the Lulz

Oct 3rd, 2019 1h 1m

In a previous episode we talked about making small talk in academic life and in general. In this episode we continue the theme, taking a break from our usual Very Serious Topics to answer the ultimate small-talk question: What do you do for fun

Who Do You Serve?

Sep 18th, 2019 1h

The three pillars of academic work are research, teaching, and service - in that order. But service is incredibly important for universities and professions to function well and for academics to contribute to their communities. In this episode

Axe Grinders Begone

Sep 4th, 2019 1h 3m

In the past decade, scientists in psychology and elsewhere have changed a lot in how we evaluate what makes research replicable, robust, and credible. New theories and findings in metascience and methodology - and repopularization of old ones -

A Friend You Haven't Met

Jul 24th, 2019 1h 4m

Part of academic life means talking to new people about yourself and your work - whether it's on a job interview, at a conference, or casual conversations outside of academic settings. In this episode we talk about talking to strangers. How do

Simine Flips Out

Jul 3rd, 2019 1h 2m

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, publication