Episodes
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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115: A modest proposal
September 7th, 2020 | 1 hr 6 secs
We discuss James' recent proposal that scientists should be paid for performing peer review for journals published by for-profit companies—$450, to be precise. Dan also puts forward three meta-science projects that he thinks are worth funding.
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114: Diversity in science (with Jess Wade)
August 17th, 2020 | 53 mins 43 secs
We chat with Jess Wade (Imperial College London) about diversity issues in science, including her work increasing the profile of underrepresented scientists on Wikipedia and on getting more young women into science.
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113: Citation needed
August 3rd, 2020 | 53 mins 11 secs
Dan and James discuss whether scientists should spend more time creating and editing Wikipedia articles. They also chat about how they read scientific articles and the heuristics they use to help decide whether a paper's worth their time
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112: Leaving academia
July 27th, 2020 | 51 mins 7 secs
Dan and James chat about James' new industry job, why he quit academia, the biggest differences between academia and industry, and why it's crucial for early career researchers to have a plan B.
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111: The cumulative advantage of academic capital (with Chris Jackson)
July 6th, 2020 | 1 hr 26 secs
We chat with Chris Jackson (Imperial College, London) about the "Matthew Effect" in academia, how we can improve work/balance, and whether we should stop citing shitty people.
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110: Red flags for errors in papers
June 15th, 2020 | 46 mins 59 secs
We answer a listener question on identifying red flags for errors in papers. Is there a way to better equip peer-reviewers for spotting errors and suspicious data?
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109: Open scientific publishing [Live episode]
June 1st, 2020 | 51 mins 52 secs
Dan and James recorded a live episode on open publishing as part of the Open Publishing Fest. They also ran a survey (from start to finish) during the course of the episode on the public's perception of open scientific publishing and discuss the results.
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108: Requiem for a Screen
May 18th, 2020 | 47 mins 45 secs
We discuss the recent claim that screen time is more harmful than heroin and whether psychological science is a crisis-ready discipline
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107: Memes, TikTok, and science communication (with Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti)
May 4th, 2020 | 1 hr 5 mins
We chat with Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti (Chapman University, USA) about the role of memes and emerging social media in communicating science and statistics.