Everything Hertz

131: Long live the overhead projector!

May 3rd, 2021 | 1 hr 3 mins

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

130: Normalizing retractions (with Dorothy Bishop)

April 19th, 2021 | 1 hr 14 secs

Dan and James chat with Dorothy Bishop (University of Oxford) about the importance of normalizing the retraction of scientific papers, publication ethics, and whether paper mills (companies that make fake papers at scale) are an issue in the psychological sciences

129: Transparency audits

April 5th, 2021 | 56 mins 51 secs

Dan and James discuss the recently proposed "transparency audit", why it received so much blowback, and the characteristics of successful reform schemes

128: How do you generate new research ideas?

March 15th, 2021 | 1 hr 11 mins

Dan and James chat about how they come up with new ideas, why everyone seems to be trying to monetise their hobbies, and why it's so hard for most labs to have a singular focus of research.

127: Speak up or shut up?

March 1st, 2021 | 51 mins 11 secs

We discuss when is the right time in your academic career to begin speaking up to critique your research field or whether the risk of retaliation means you should shut up and keep your head down

126: The division of scientific labor (with Saloni Dattani)

February 15th, 2021 | 52 mins 13 secs

We have a wide-ranging chat with Saloni Dattani (Kings College London and University of Hong Kong) about the benefits of dividing scientific labor, the magazine she co-founded (Works in Progress) that shares novel ideas and stories of progress, and fighting online misinformation

125: Upon reasonable request

February 1st, 2021 | 46 mins 58 secs

Dan has a blue-sky proposal to increase data sharing—that funders mandate scholars to store and analyse data on their servers for which the funder decides what constitutes a reasonable data request (among other benefits)

124: From Ptolemy to Takeshi's Castle

January 18th, 2021 | 51 mins 17 secs

We discuss under which circumstances retracting decades-old articles is worth the time. We also chat about why LinkenIn is underrated (yes, really) and special journal issues are overrated.

123: Authenticated anonymity (with Michael Eisen)

January 4th, 2021 | 53 mins 49 secs

Part two of our chat with Michael Eisen (eLife Editor-in-Cheif), in which we discuss the pros and cons of collaborative peer review, journal submission interfaces, Michael's take on James' proposal that peer reviewers should be paid $450 dollars, why negative comments on peer reviews need to be normalised, plus much more.

122: Reoptimizing scientific publishing for the internet age (with Michael Eisen)

December 21st, 2020 | 40 mins 4 secs

The internet should have transformed science publishing, but it didn't. We chat with Michael Eisen (Editor-in-Chief of eLife) about reoptimizing scientific publishing and peer review for the internet age

121: Transparent peer review

December 7th, 2020 | 57 mins 35 secs

Dan and James discuss the pros and cons of transparent peer-review, in which peer review reports are published alongside manuscripts, as a keynote feature at the recent Munin Conference on scholarly publishing.

120: How false beliefs spread in science (with Cailin O'Connor)

November 16th, 2020 | 47 mins 26 secs

Dan and James chat with Cailin O'Connor (University of California, Irvine) about the how false beliefs spread in science and remedies for this issue

119: Rules of thumb

November 2nd, 2020 | 56 mins 46 secs

Dan and James discuss how rules of thumbs in science, such as those often applied to sample sizes and effect sizes, lead to mindless research evaluation

118: Evidence-free gatekeeping

October 19th, 2020 | 1 hr 4 mins

Dan and James answer audio listener questions on the worst review comments they've received (and how the responded), their thoughts on the current state of preprints, and how institutional prestige influences researcher evaluations.

117: How we peer-review papers

October 5th, 2020 | 1 hr 4 mins

Dan and James choose a preprint and walk through how they would peer-review it. James also provides an update on his recent proposal that scientists should be paid for performing peer reviews for journals published by for-profit companies

116: In my opinion

September 21st, 2020 | 1 hr 17 mins

Dan and James chat about a recent twitter discussion on open science funding and the benefits of Editors sharing their opinions online. James also outlines three project proposals that he thinks deserves funding, which Dan ranks.

Episode Archive