Andrew Devendorf joins Alexa and Yoel to discuss his work on "me-search" (or self-relevant research) within clinical psychology. He talks about the prevalence of mental health difficulties within the field, and the harmful taboos against speaking openly about them. And, he shares his own reasons for studying depression and suicide, and how he has been discouraged from citing personal experience as a motivation for his work. Their conversation also explores common misconceptions about mental illness, strengths of self-relevant research, and ways to be more supportive to those facing mental heal ..read more

Yoel and Alexa are joined by Joe Simmons to talk about fraud. We go in-depth on a recent high-profile fraud case, but we also talk about scientific fraud more generally: how common is it, how do you detect it, and what can we do to prevent it? This is a re-release of Episode 73, originally released on September 29, 2021. Special Guest: Joe Simmons. Links: Beers - Drav Milkshake IPA - Microbrasserie Vox Populi - Untappd A-OK IPA - Avondale Brewing Co. - Untappd L'Espace Public – Brasseurs de quartier » L’attaque galactique False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection a ..read more

Jennifer Gutsell joins Alexa to discuss the controversy surrounding Yoel's experience interviewing at UCLA. They focus on a post, written by Alexa, in which she pushes back against defenses of "viewpoint diversity" and argues that the graduate petition advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was a brave effort that should be taken seriously. Jennifer elaborates on these ideas, suggesting that there are some views that are not up for debate, and emphasizing the care that is required when having theoretical discussions without a personal stake in the matter. Alexa and Jennifer go o ..read more

Harkening back to episode 73, Alexa and Yoel discuss recent evidence of fraud documented in the Data Colada blog post "Clusterfake." The post is the first in a series of four, which will collectively detail evidence of fraud in four papers co-authored by Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino. First, the co-hosts dive into the details, with Alexa soberly (in both senses of the word) explaining the revelations of calcChain. They go on to discuss the potential impact of these findings for collaborators, some of whom have begun conducting audits of work co-authored with Gino. In additio ..read more

In heated political debates, people are often accused of being hypocrites, lacking consistent foundational values. Today, Yoel and Alexa discuss a recent paper by David Pinsof, David Sears, and Martie Haselton, that challenges the commonsense notion that political belief systems stem from our core values. Instead, the authors propose that people form alliances with others, and develop political beliefs that serve to maintain those alliances. The cohosts discuss how these alliances might form, the various biases used to defend them, and whether values are truly absent from the process. They als ..read more

Yoel and Alexa discuss a recent paper that takes a machine learning approach to estimating the replicability of psychology as a discipline. The researchers' investigation begins with a training process, in which an artificial intelligence model identifies ways that textual descriptions differ for studies that pass versus fail manual replication tests. This model is then applied to a set of 14,126 papers published in six well-known psychology journals over the past 20 years, picking up on the textual markers that it now recognizes as signals of replicable findings. In a mysterious twist, these ..read more

Alexa and Yoel chat with Paul Bloom about his newest book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind. The book, built from Paul's popular Introduction to Psychology course, is an opinionated overview of the field of psychology but also a window into his deep fascination with the mind. Yoel and Alexa spend some time picking Paul's brain, inquiring about writing, and teaching, and how to avoid boredom. But Paul has a few questions of his own, challenging the cohosts to consider what their own version of Psych would look like. In the process, their conversation ranges from Freudian dream content, to the ..read more

Andrew Devendorf joins Alexa and Yoel to discuss his work on "me-search" (or self-relevant research) within clinical psychology. He talks about the prevalence of mental health difficulties within the field, and the harmful taboos against speaking openly about them. And, he shares his own reasons for studying depression and suicide, and how he has been discouraged from citing personal experience as a motivation for his work. Their conversation also explores common misconceptions about mental illness, strengths of self-relevant research, and ways to be more supportive to those facing mental heal ..read more

Alexa and Yoel discuss the much trodden topic of implicit bias from a less trodden perspective: that of the general public. Offering insight into the public's views is a paper by Jeffrey Yen, Kevin Durrheim, and Romin Tafarodi, which explores public thinking about the implicit association test (IAT) through an examination of the New York Times comments section. These comments demonstrate varying reactions to the idea that negative associations with some identities - racial and otherwise - can bubble beneath the surface of our explicit attitudes. Some dismiss the IAT as "academic abstraction ..read more

Yoel and special guest Rachel Hartman discuss the recent ouster of Klaus Fiedler, the former Editor in Chief of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, over allegations of racism and abuse of power. They try to untangle a complicated story of peer review gone awry, explain the dueling open letters condemning and supporting Fiedler, and critically evaluate the allegations against him as well as the process that led to his dismissal as EIC. Along the way, they also talk about wine spritzers and journal prestige. Special Guest: Rachel Hartman. Links: Two Psychologists Four Beers on Un ..read more