Everything Hertz

We discuss how living meta‑analyses—meta‑analyses that are continuously updated as new studies appear—can cut research waste and keep evidence current. We also chat about how using synthetic research participants is a terrible idea. Links The BMJ Christmas special paper on how recent is "recent" The synthetic panel service The paper describing a living meta-analysis platform for oxytocin research...

We discuss whether preprint servers and journals should require author identity verification for submitting manuscripts. This would probably speed up the submission process, but is this worth the potential downsides? We also discuss the similarities and differences between academia and professional sports and a weird case of author identity theft. Other links The BJKS podcast https://bjks.buzzspro...

Dan and James chat about a a new 'pop-up journal' concept for addressing specific research questions. They also answer a listener question from a journal grammar editor and discuss a new PNAS article on paper mills Links The pop-up journal The episode where Dan's wife went into labor The PNAS paper mill paper A blog post from the PNAS paper lead author, Reese Richardson. The Nature piece on the pa...

Dan and James answer listener questions on outsourcing in academia and differences in research culture between academic institutions and commercial institutions. Social media links Dan on Bluesky James on Bluesky Everything Hertz on Bluesky Citation Quintana, D. S., & Heathers, J. (2025, July 1). 192: Outsourcing in academia, Everything Hertz [Audio podcast], DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/3MC2R

James and Dan discuss James' newly funded 'Medical Evidence Project', whose goal is to find questionable medical evidence that is contaminating treatment guidelines. Links James' blog post from last year The carthorse child blog post The blog post announcing the project A write up in Nature about the project Other links Dan on Bluesky James on Bluesky Everything Hertz on Bluesky Citation Quintana,...

We chat about two new studies that took different approaches for evaluating the impact of paying reviewers on peer review speed and quality. Links James' 450 movement proposal The paper from Critical Care Medicine The preprint from Biology Open Other links Dan on Bluesky James on Bluesky Everything Hertz on Bluesky Citation Quintana, D. S., & Heathers, J. (2025, April 2). 190: What happens whe...

Dan and James discuss a recent piece that proposes a post-publication review process, which is triggered by citation counts. They also cover how an almetrics trigger could be alternatively used for a more immediate post-publication critique. Links The Chonicle piece by Andrew Gelman and Andrew King [Free to read with email registration] The paper by Peder Isager and collegues on how to decide what...

Dan and James discuss a recent editorial which argues that double-blind peer review is detrimental to scientific integrity. Links The editorial from Christopher Mebane: https://doi.org/10.1093/etojnl/vgae046 Other links Everything Hertz on Bluesky Dan on Bluesky James on Bluesky Everything Hertz on Bluesky Support us on Patreon and get bonus stuff! $1 per month: A 20% discount on Everything Hertz...

We chat about the events that started the replication crisis in psychology and Dorothy Bishop's recent resignation from the Royal Society Links The resignation blogpost from Dorothy Bishop The bluesky post from Sarah Weiten that asked the question, "If you had to cite an event that opened the "replication crisis" era, what would you point to?" The "Year of Horrors" paper from Eric-Jan Wagenmakers...

In this episode we chat about a Nordic approach for evaluating the journal quality and how we should be teaching undergraduates to evaluate journal and article quality Links The Norwegian journal register The Finnish journal register Episode 22 , where we played "Pokemon or Cholesterol medication?" Other links Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Everything Hertz on twi...

We discuss the recent retraction of a paper that reported the effects of rigour-enhancing practices on replicability. We also cover James' new estimate that 1 out of 7 scientific papers are fake. Links The story about data integrity concerns in 130 women’s health papers James' new preprint with the estimate that 1 out of 7 scientific papers are fake The retracted paper in Nature Human Behavior by...

Open access articles have democratized the availability of scientific research, but are author-paid publication fees undermining the quality of science? The preprint by Morgan and Smaldino - https://osf.io/preprints/osf/3ez9v Paul Smaldino's text book - Modeling social behavior Main edisode takeaways (AI-assisted summary) There is a wide variability in the quality of papers published in gold open...

Dan and James discuss a paper describing a journal editor's efforts to receive data from authors who submitted papers with results that seemed a little too beautiful to be true Main edisode takeaways (AI generated summary) This editorial on the reproducibility crisis emphasizes the importance of providing raw data in scientific publications and highlights the need for transparency and accountabili...

Dan and James answer a listener question on what practices should the behavioural sciences borrow (and ignore) from other research fields. Here are the main takeaways: Keeping laboratory records and using electronic lab management software is beneficial practices biology that would benefit the behavioral sciences The rate of pre-registration of meta-analysis in psychology is low, unlike other fiel...

We discuss how following citation chains in psychology can often lead to unexpected places, and how this can contribute to unreplicable findings. We also discuss why team science has taken longer to catch on in psychology compared to other research fields. Here is the preprint that we mentioned authored by Andrew Gelman and Nick Brown - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ekmdf Our episode with Nick...

Dan and James discuss why innovation in scientific publishing is so hard, an emerging consortium peer review model, and a recent replication of the 'refilling soup bowl' study. Other things they cover and links: Which studies should we spend time replicating? The business models of for-profit scientific publishers How many tacos can you buy with the money it costs to publish open access in Nature?...

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 somehow possible)? The downsides of PhD by publication The Gates Foundation's new Open Access policy Other links Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter...

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 things they chat about A listener question about including examiner's comments in thesis The different types of retractions and thier impact Why aren't versio...

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 academic dishonesty if they were reminded that future technology may catch them out? Here are some of the takeaways from the episode (generated with the help...

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 why we refer to the paper as a 'new' paper near the start of the episode. Links The paper on the invisible workload of open research Our live and in-person e...

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 also discuss whether open science is a cult that has trouble seeing outward. Links The blog post on the Master in dark arts defence from Dorothy Bishop The...

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 paper publication bonuses. Links The paper from Steve Lindsay on computational reproducbility: A Plea to Psychology Professional Societies that Publish Journa...

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, sample representativeness, p-values, and institutional prestige Links The paper on how science journalists evaluate psychology papers The preprint paper on sm...

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 on the proposed elimiation of the discussion section The paper on machine readable hypothesis tests Our episodes with Daniel Lakens Our episode with Lisa DeBruine Everything Hertz on social media Dan on twitter James on twitter Ever...

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 fooled, plus more! Buy Daniel and Christopher's new book, Nobody's fool, from your favourite bookseller here . Other links Everything Hertz on social media...