The Year 2017 in Review

For our last episode of 2017, we each look back on the year and what stood out for us – besides launching The Black Goat, of course. We talk about how the personal became political in a crazy year for U.S. politics; finding new connections through hobbies; the endings, beginnings, and deepenings of important relationships; and how peak experiences change as we get older. Plus: Our letter of the week is about how to get a toehold on professional networking. And a viral tweet of Sanjay’s leads into a discussion of implicit bias and strangers in your Twitter mentions.

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 24. It was recorded December 16, 2017.

Whodunnit

In a previous episode, we discussed whether and when you should draw inferences about a person based on their scientific work. Today we turn the question around: When should you judge a piece of scientific work based on what you know about the person who did it? We talk about the implications of masking authors’ identities from reviewers and editors, about judging the “pedigree” of what lab someone was trained in, and the tricky but sometimes important distinctions between fairness, validity, and bias. Also: This week’s letter is about what to do when your findings fail to replicate. 

Discussed in this episode:

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 23. It was recorded December 2, 2017.