May 2019 – The Black Goat

Who’s Down With OPG

Most doctoral training in psychology follows an apprentice model: Grad students affiliate with a primary advisor and lab, and do most of their training under that one person. But what happens when grad students and professors develop professional relationships outside of that traditional model? In this episode we discuss the politics and etiquette of students and faculty interacting and working together outside of the advisor-advisee model. How much control do – and should – advisors have over their advisees? How should faculty go about supporting and criticizing the work of students from other labs? What are the issues involved when faculty intervene (or don’t) in other advisor-advisee relationships? Plus: We answer a letter from an early-career researcher wondering if they should withdraw from a paper that is less rigorous and less open than they would like it to be.

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, on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/, and on instagram at @blackgoatpod. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes or Stitcher.

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

This is episode 59. It was recorded on May 17, 2019.

library(blackgoatpod)

To users of R, it is more than just another way to analyze data – it goes along with a different mindset about the centrality of coding in doing science, a way of thinking about openness and reproducibility, an intersecting set of tools, and a community of users with its own culture and mindset. In this episode we talk about the rise of R within the psychology research community. How has the importance of statistical software changed over time? Should we be teaching R to grads and undergrads? What have our own experiences learning new software been, and can you teach an old goat new tricks? Plus: We answer a letter about how to address ageism on the academic job market.

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

This is episode 58. It was recorded on May 2, 2019.

Don’t Be Told What You Want, Don’t Be Told What You Need

What if there were no journals? Would academic life be barren and empty, noisy and chaotic, happy and egalitarian, or something else entirely? In this episode we conduct an extended thought experiment about life without journals, in order to probe questions about what journals actually do for us anyway, what are other ways to achieve those things, and how we might overcome the downsides of the current scientific publishing ecosystem. How else could peer review work? How would researchers find information and know what to read? Would we just replace our current heuristics and biases with new ones? Plus: We answer a letter about whether to slow down to do higher-quality research or to focus on flashy results at top journals.

Links:

Scientific Utopia: I. Opening scientific communication, by Brian Nosek and Yoav Bar-Anan
Mike Frank’s Twitter thread on an ethical framework for open science

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

This is episode 57. It was recorded on April 17, 2019.