Episode 7 - Natural Selection Of Bad Science

This week we talk about “The natural selection of bad science” from Paul Smaldino and Richard McElreath. We get bummed, but try to put a positive spin on things. You can find the paper here rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/16…

Highlights
[1:00] “The natural selection of bad science” rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/16…
[5:00] the need to distinguish yourself as a scientist - innovative and/or high output?
[6:45] Our next SpecialiTEA - we want to hear your experiences about leaving academia
[11:00] “when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure”
[13:30] could quality control help ‘fix’ metrics?
[15:00] Competition - how quickly can you move from open science topic A to B purely with ranting?
[18:00] I have the powerrrrrrrrr (I wish soundcloud would let me add gifs - millenial problems)
[26:00] We get a little confused about power in the simulations - we highly recommend reading the paper to get the details right :)
[29:00] Challenge to listeners - grab Smaldino & McElreath’s code and figure out how to create a scientific utopia!
[31:30] The simulation
[32:30] Watching out for forced retirements…
[35:00] Sam is super millenial and reads out this awesome tweet about terrible things in science mobile.twitter.com/aidybarnett/status/10363924…
[37:00] Not enough detail in original papers to attempt to replicate in The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (osf.io/e81xl/wiki/home), also a thread from @chrisdc77 twitter.com/chrisdc77/status/1024589364238667776
[42:00] “The continuous degradation of scientific process”
[44:00] Does promoting replication attempts solve the problem?
[48:30] So, what the hell can we do to stop the decline of science? Community, hiring and funding shifts, and more
[56:45] Observed power

Music credit: Kevin MacLeod - Funkeriffic
freepd.com/misc.php