Everything Hertz

155: Don't you know who I am?

May 30th, 2022 | 46 mins 20 secs

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.

154: When the evidence is constructed around the narrative

May 9th, 2022 | 51 mins 14 secs

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

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

152: Sorry Not Sorry

April 4th, 2022 | 55 mins 46 secs

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

151: The dirty dozen

March 21st, 2022 | 39 mins 53 secs

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.

150: Why can't you do nothing?

February 28th, 2022 | 52 mins 33 secs

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

149: Medical misinformation (with Rohin Francis)

February 14th, 2022 | 56 mins 48 secs

Dan and James chat with cardiologist Rohin Francis about medical misinformation and how he uses YouTube for science communication

148: Academic reference letters

January 31st, 2022 | 51 mins 47 secs

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.

147: The $7000 golden ticket

January 17th, 2022 | 54 mins 27 secs

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 from New Science

146: Skills pay bills

December 27th, 2021 | 1 hr 9 mins

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

145: Our boat is sinking slightly slower

December 13th, 2021 | 48 mins 4 secs

We discuss the results from the cancer biology reproducibility project, the inevitable comparisons with reproducibility in psychology, and authorship expectations for posting open datasets.

144: The role of luck in academia

November 15th, 2021 | 53 mins 57 secs

If your child asked you whether they should pursue a career in academia, what would you say? We discuss this question along three more quick-fire topics: the death of expertise, memorable presentations, and the lack of internship options in most graduate programs

143: A little less conversation, a little more action

November 1st, 2021 | 54 mins 32 secs

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".

142: Red flags in academia [Live episode]

October 18th, 2021 | 57 mins 12 secs

In this live episode, Dan and James discuss red flags in academia, in terms of research fields, papers, and individuals.

141: Why we should diversify study samples (with Sakshi Ghai)

October 4th, 2021 | 57 mins 9 secs

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

140: You can’t buy cat biscuits with ‘thank you’ emails

September 20th, 2021 | 1 hr 1 min

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

Episode Archive