Around Academia

Around Academia

The first in a roundup series that I've decided to call "Around Academia."

Is 'self-care' just another way of policing people's thoughts, by compelling them to feel happy? Or might it be a cynical marketing ploy to sell products? https://www.coyneoftherealm.com/blogs/news/the-tyranny-of-self-care-this-year-s-model-of-compulsive-happiness

Are early-career female researchers getting due credit for their work? https://www.coyneoftherealm.com/blogs/news/rising-early-career-female-academics-and-second-to-last-authorship

• Some advice, whether the assertion linked above is true or not: Don't be a jerk. Give people due credit!

On a related note: should we publish fewer papers? Nelson, Simmons, and Simonsohn make a compelling case: http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/DPlab/papers/publishedPapers/Simmons_2013_Lets%20Publish%20Fewer%20Papers.pdf

• I can't resist including this quote from page 292: "Under the current system, researchers are heavily rewarded for having new and exciting ideas and only vaguely rewarded for being accurate. Researchers are trained to defeat the review process and conquer the publisher. Uncovering a new and true insight is quite helpful in that process, but it is hardly necessary."
  
  Yikes. An savage indictment of the current state of the publication process (rather than in its theoretical/ideal form)!

Are yoga and mindfulness simply fads with more hype than substance? http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2017/07/19/creating-illusions-of-wondrous-effects-of-yoga-and-meditation-on-health-a-skeptic-exposes-tricks/

Interesting links about stats

Interesting links about stats

I've compiled a few links regarding interesting (advanced, but interesting) statistical topics. Here they are:

http://www.nicebread.de/interactive-exploration-of-a-priors-impact/
http://www.nicebread.de/whats-the-probability-that-a-significant-p-value-indicates-a-true-effect/
https://medium.com/@richarddmorey/new-paper-why-most-of-psychology-is-statistically-unfalsifiable-4c3b6126365a#.maizqdsok
http://www.dgpskongress.de/frontend/index.php?page_id=154
http://www.researchtransparency.org/
http://andrewgelman.com/2016/08/22/bayesian-inference-completely-solves-the-multiple-comparisons-problem/
http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/2012/01/30/all-bad-statistics-are-persuasive-errors/

A simulation of wealth inequality through a truly random procedure [clickbait title aside, it IS interesting]: http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2017/06/19/counterintuitive-problem-everyone-room-keeps-giving-dollars-random-others-youll-never-guess-happens-next/

Stat-ception II: How to fix statistics in psychology

Stat-ception Part II

I'm a star!

OK, my public speaking skills may not exactly have made me a star (yet!), but I AM on YouTube! I've included a link to my recent (Feb 2017) Cognition Forum presentations, as well as my current thinking about easily--and immediately implementable--solutions to ameliorate those weaknesses.

The first video goes into depth about the issues; the second describes my proposed solutions to those problems.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvPJKAgYsyoKcGOCKEYT2GyzK0yLVXvzN

For your viewing pleasure, I've also embedded the videos here:

 

Any feedback or advice is welcome!

I've also made the slideshows available on Google Drive. Here's the link to the first slideshow, so you can follow along: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4ZtXTwxIPrjTktiMGdoQ3JBSHM/view. And here's the link to the slideshow for the second video as well: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4ZtXTwxIPrjalZxdFJfUWNKTVU/view?usp=sharing

A draft of my manuscript on the topic (intended for eventual publication) is freely available for download at https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/hp53k/. Since I'm an advocate of the open science movement, it's only right that I make my own work publicly available--hence why I uploaded these videos (and my manuscript) to public repositories.

You may not trust my own take on these issues, in which case I commend you for your skepticism! In the videos, I made numerous references to Ziliak & McCloskey (2009), Gigerenzer (2004), and Open Science Collaboration (2015)--all are worth reading, for anyone who cares about scientific integrity and the research process. All three works were highly influential in my thinking on this topic, though I cited a variety of other papers as well in my aforementioned manuscript.

You may disagree with my recommendations in the second video, and if so, that's okay! How to address the limitations of NHST and fix science is absolutely a discussion worth having; I advance my own ideas in the spirit of jump-starting such a discussion.

So, please put your thoughts in the comments, and share my work with colleagues who may be interested in the topic!