Everything Hertz

It’s conference season so in this episode Dan and James discuss the ins and outs of scientific conferences. Here’s what they cover: Research parasite award How much do you save when you don’t run an fMRI study They come up with an even better name than “Research parasite” Could the GOP weaponise the open science movement? Conspiracy theories Attempts to slow down science by taking science out of c...

James and Dan are joined by Nick Brown (University of Groningen) to discuss how the New Bad People — also known as shameless little bullies, vigilantes, the self-appointed data police, angry nothings, scientific McCarthyites, second-stringers, whiners, the Stasi, destructo-critics, and wackaloons* — are trying to improve science Here’s what they cover Power imbalances in academia Publication bias...

Daniel Lakens (Eindhoven University of Technology) joins James and Dan to talk meta-analysis. Here’s what they cover: Daniel’s opinion on the current state of meta-analysis The benefit of reporting guidelines (even though hardly anyone actually follows them) How fixing publication bias can fix science Meta-analysis before and after that Bem paper How to correct for publication bias Whether meta-an...

Daniel Lakens (Eindhoven University of Technology) drops in to talk statistical inference with James and Dan. Here’s what they cover: How did Daniel get into statistical inference? Are we overdoing the Frequentist vs. Bayes debate? What situations better suit Bayesian inference? The over advertising of Bayesian inference Study design is underrated The limits of p-values Why not report both p-value...

In this episode, Dan and James are joined by William Gunn (Director of Scholarly communications at Elsevier) to discuss ways in which you can object to published research. They also cover: What differentiates an analytics company from a publishing company? How scientific journals are one of the last areas to fully adopt the dynamic nature of the internet Data repositories How to make a correction...

Dan and James are joined by Michèle Nuijten (Tilburg University) to discuss 'statcheck', an algorithm that automatically scans papers for statistical tests, recomputes p-values, and flags inconsistencies. They also cover: How Michèle dealt with statcheck criticisms Psychological Science’s pilot of statcheck for journal submissions Detecting data fraud When should a journal issue a correction? Futu...

We all know hipsters. You know, like the guy that rides his Penny-farthing to the local cafe to write his memoirs on a typewriter - just because its more ‘authentic’. In this episode, James and Dan discuss academic hipsters. These are people who insist you need to use specific tools in your science like R, python, and LaTeX. So should you start using these trendy tools despite the steep learning c...

Dan and James continue their discussion on work/life balance in academia. They also suggest ways to get your work done within a sane amount of hours as well as how to pick the right lab. Some of the topics covered: Feedback from our last episode Why the podcast started in the first place The "Red Queen" problem Does the "70 hour lab" produce better work? Some experiments aren't suited to a 9-5 sch...

In this episode, we talk work/life balance for early career researchers. Do you need to work a 70-hour week to be a successful scientist or can you actually have a life outside the lab? Some of the topics covered: An update on "the postdoc that didn't say no" story Brian Wansink's response De-identifying data in research The perils of public criticism Criticising the research vs. criticising the p...

In episode 34 we covered a blog post that highlighted questionable analytical approaches in psychology. That post mentioned four studies that resulted from this approach, which a team of researchers took a closer look into. Dan and James discuss the statistical inconsistencies that the authors reported in a recent preprint. Some of the topics covered: Trump (of course) A summary of the preprint Th...

Dan and James discuss a new paper in the inaugural issue of Nature Human Behaviour, "A manifesto for reproducible science". Some of the topics covered: What's a manfesto for reproducibility doing in a Nature group journal? Registered reports The importance of incentives to actually make change happen What people should report vs. what they actually report A common pitfall of published meta-analyse...

Dan and James have their very first guest! For this episode they're joined by Robin Kok (University of Southern Denmark) to talk e-health. They also cover a recent blog post that inadvertently highlighted questionable research practices in psychology. Some of the topics covered: The grad student who never said no Postdoc work/life balance Questionable research practices Torturing data (with rattan...

Dan and James discuss Zombie theories, which are scientific ideas that continue to live on in the absence of evidence. Why do these ideas persist and how do we kill them for good? Some of the topics covered: Why do some ideas live on? Zombie theories in heart rate variability research Reasons why zombie theories proliferate more in the social sciences Attractiveness and simplicity Theories become...

Dan and James discuss a new population study that linked health anxiety data with future heart disease. Some of the topics covered: Web MD and health anxiety How would healthy anxiety contribute to heart disease? A summary of the study Ischemic heart disease = coronary artery disease Do people with healthy anxiety take better care of thier health? Don't be fooled by percentage increase of risk for...

Dan and James discuss a recent study of over one million Swedish men that found that higher resting heart rate late adolescence was associated with an increased risk for subsequent psychiatric illness. Some of the topics covered: How did these authors get such an enormous dataset? The benefits of testing so many people What we liked about the study (hint: lots of things) Measuring cardiovascular e...

Dan and James discuss authorship in the biomedical sciences

Dan and James talk about how they learn new things. Some of the topics discussed: Internet memes Consolidating old ideas rather than learning new ones Why learn a new skill when you just get someone else to do it? A lesson of not having a good understanding statistical software... James and Dan butt heads about meta-analysis (again) Learning new things is interesting How did people learn things be...

Pre-registration, p-hacking, power, protocols. All these concepts are pretty mainstream in 2016 but hardly discussed 5 years ago. In this episode, James and Dan talk about these ideas and other developments in biomedical science. Some of the topics discussed: James loves blinded reviews, scihub Dan loves protocols, learning stats through social media, reproducible science Links The COMPARE initiat...

Dan and James discuss complaints and grievances. Stay tuned for part 2 where things get positive. Some of the topics discussed: Conflicts of interest Criticism in psychology Why does there seem to be so much bad blood in psychology? Retracted papers: fraud or sloppiness? Authors not acknowledging your peer-review remarks The short-term nature of research The benefits of 'centers of excellence' Lin...

When interpreting the magnitude of group differences using effect sizes, researchers often rely on Cohen's guidelines for small, medium, and large effects. However, Cohen originally proposed these guidelines as a fall back when the distribution of effect sizes was unknown. Despite the hundreds of available studies comparing heart rate variability (HRV), Cohen's guidelines are still used for interp...

P-values are universal, but do we really know what they mean? In this episode, Dan and James discuss a recent paper describing the failure to correctly interpret p-values in a sample of academic psychologists. Some of the topics discussed: Common p-value misconceptions James tests Dan on his p-value knowledge p-values vs. effect size The problem of sample size with p-value interpretation The Faceb...

Science funding has a series of built in incentive structures, but what sort of science does this produce? Some of the topics discussed: Feedback from our 'Public health and Pokemon' episode (#22) Incentive structures in science What we should be doing in science compared to what we are doing Quantity vs. Quality The analysis of Trump's tweets for negativity vs. positivity Pre-registration How muc...

Can you be a "serious academic" while still posting photos on Instagram? In this episode, James and Dan discuss a recent article bemoaning the infiltration of the "selfie epidemic" into academia. Some of the topics discussed: James and Dan share their thoughts on the article The REAL 'c' word.... Social media and conferences Snapchat + academics = snapademics Using Instagram stories to share you r...

Pokemon Go is sweeping the world and getting people walking again! But is the Pokemon Go 'model' a golden opportunity to tackle obesity or just another fad? Some of the topics discussed: James plays "Pokemon or Cholesterol medication?" Dan tries to explain Pokemon Go to James James' first contact with Pokemon Go "trainers" Should health interventions be modeled on Pokemon Go? Other exercise augmen...

It's well established that steroid use is associated with many adverse healthy outcomes, but what does it actually do to your brain? Dan and James discuss an interesting new paper that compared brain structure in long-term steroid users and non-using weightlifters. Some of the topics discussed: A summary of the study How are steroids typically used? What are the differences in use between sports?...