More of a Comment Than a Question

It's been a big week on psych twitter! Friend of the pod Nicole Barbaro returns to help us unpack all the drama surrounding the launch of Substack U (aka the University of Austin), as well as the fifty-ninth wave of the Great Tone Debate™ Here is the University of Austin's website: https://www.uaustin.org/ And here is the paper at the center of the last few days' controversy: https:...

In this episode we are joined by Steven Zhou, a graduate student in I-O Psychology at George Mason University, to discuss personality types. good and bad science communication, and what a healthy skepticism of academic research looks like. 

In this episode, we try to unpack the notion of offensiveness, and discuss recent controversies at Yale and Netflix. What does it mean to find something offensive, and how should institutions handle situations in which individuals invoke the notion of offensiveness? 

In this episode we muse about one of the least popular opinions possible for an academic to have: is it possible that grad students are actually not underpaid? 

In this episode a microphone-less Paul and brand new co-host Rachel Hartman discuss the general weirdness that pervades academic mentorship and scientific training, and ask 'is there such a thing as a bad grad student?'  Link to Project SHORT event 'Pre-Grad School - Finding the Right Program and Advisor Panel':  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/project-short-pre-grad-school-findin...

On this episode I'm joined by Felix Cheung from the University of Toronto to discuss his research on population-level determinants of human well-being, why Hong Kong residents are so unhappy, and thew social scientific investigation of economic inequality.  Find and follow Felix on twitter at https://twitter.com/felixckc?lang=en

Nicole Barbaro of WGU Labs and Utah Valley University joins the pod to dispel all my erroneous beliefs and misunderstandings about Attachment Theory Check out Nicole's website here https://nicolebarbaro.com/ , follow her on Twitter here https://twitter.com/NicoleBarbaro?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor , and subscribe to her substack here https://nicolebarbaro.substack.c...

In which I welcome back Rachel Ernstoff and Manuel Galvan from the University of North Carolina to discuss what everyone else seems to be discussing: Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Republicans' efforts to ban it from schools and workplaces.  You can read about Raj Chetty's work on social mobility across racial and gender groups here: https://voxeu.org/article/race-and-economic-opportuni...

I chat with Professor Lee Jussim of Rutgers University about ideological bias in science, academic freedom, social science as activism vs social science as truth seeking, and tennis.

I invite the amazing, intelligent, insightful Rachel Ernstoff back onto the pod to discuss 'Med-Gate,' - the court case concerning whether the University of Virginia violated the first amendment rights of expelled former UVA medical student Kieran Bhattacharya, and some more general discussion about how we should think about freedom of speech.  Oh and Manuel Galvan showed up too. 

In this episode I talk with my friend Alex Kogan (formerly Alex Spectre), the former professor of psychology from Cambridge University who was embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.  If you want to know what really happened with Cambridge Analytica, or if you've ever wondered how a happy-go-lucky pro-sociality researcher could end up crashing Facebook's market value by $10...

Journalist, author, and podcaster Jesse Singal joins the pod to discuss his new book 'The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills.' We also discuss some of the controversy around his work on youth gender dysphoria. Order the book online here . You can also find Jesse on the ' Blocked and Reported ' podcast, the ' Singal Minded ' substack, and on...

This week, we chat with fellow podcaster and social psychologist Mickey Inzlicht , Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto , and co-host of Two Psychologists Four Beer ( with Yoel Inbar ). We talk about the advisor-graduate student dynamic, the past and future of social psychology, the replication crisis, and discuss some of the recent Psych Academic Twitter controversies. Two Psychol...

This week, we talk to Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University . We talk about his new book, How Madness Shaped History , American politics, cancel culture, and political polarization. Ferguson, C. J. (2020). How madness shaped history: An eccentric array of maniacal rulers, raving narcissists, and psychotic visionaries. United States: Prometheus Books. https://www.goo...

This week, we had to cut our conversation short with a fellow social psychologist-philosopher, Barry Schwartz , professor emeritus of psychology at Swarthmore College, and a visiting professor at Haas School of Business. We discuss Barry's recent paper Science, scholarship, and intellectual virtues. Schwartz, B. (2020). Science, scholarship, and intellectual virtues: A guide to what higher ed...

This week, we chat with Don Moore , a professor in the Management of Organization group at the Haas School of Business, and author of Perfectly Confident . We talk about confidence, overconfidence, perseverance, the tall poppy syndrome, and share our favorite dad jokes. Don's book, Perfectly Confident: https://perfectlyconfident.com/

In our first episode of the new year,  we're joined by Rachel Ernstoff, a social psychology graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill studying intergroup relations and political polarization. In this episode, Rachel shares her fascinating background with us, after which we discuss political polarization and the research around it, the recent attack the Capitol, and Trump's Twitter ban. Rachel&...

This week, we talk to Rob Chavez , an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon . We discuss what social neuroscience is, how social psychology can inform neuroscience, and whether our understanding of the brain can have broader impacts on society. This is your Brain on Psychology – This is your Psychology on Brain (a guest post by Rob Chavez): https://thehard...

This week, we have an in-depth conversation with Kat (Kathryn) McCabe , a social ecologist and antiracism educator, about the modern antiracist movement and its potential impact on race relations. The Change Agency: https://www.thechangeagency.ie Short story "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

This week, we discuss the recent controversy surrounding a Nature Communications paper that looks at informal mentorship,  the gender of mentee/mentors, and subsequent scientific impact of the mentees. There has a been a call from the Twitter science community for the retraction of the paper. Edit : Smriti mentions that someone had tweeted and asked people to email the first author, but it was act...

This week, we talk about the different responses to the election from the left, and what can be done to heal the growing political divide in this country. Greater Good Science Center, "Bridging Differences Playbook": https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/Bridging_Differences_Playbook-Final.pdf Derek Thompson, "The Most Important Divide in American Politics Isn’t Race"...

This week, we talk to our friend Manuel (Manny) Galvan , a graduate student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about the election, political polarization in America, the excesses of the left, cancel culture, BLM/Defund the Police, and Manny's vision of a way forward. You can find Manny on Twitter @MGalvanPsych ; his blog, The Science of Social Problems :  https://scienceofsocialp...

Last week, we spoke to our very own faculty advisor, Serena Chen ! Serena's the first Asian-American chair of UC Berkeley's Department of Psychology , and one of the most refreshingly candid academics out there. We discuss the recent paper on the future of women in psychological science, on which Serena is a co-author, along with many other female faculty at Berkeley Psych. We also talk...

This week, we talk to Anne Scheel , a doctoral candidate at the Eindhoven University of Technology, about her upcoming paper Why Hypothesis Testers Should Spend Less Time Testing Hypotheses. Scheel, A.M., Tiokhin L., Isager, P.M., & Lakens, D. (in press). Why hypothesis testers should spend less time testing hypotheses. Perspectives on Psychological Science. https://psyarxiv.com/vekpu/ Kama Mu...

This week, we talk about the controversy over a blog by an anonymous person on Twitter, AlvaroDeMenard , about participating in " Replication Markets , a part of DARPA's SCORE program, whose goal is to evaluate the reliability of social science research." The thread about this on Twitter elicited a response from an editor at Science, Tage Rai , and consequently, multiple responses t...