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 http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384

Highlights

[1:00] “The natural selection of bad science” http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384

[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 https://mobile.twitter.com/aidybarnett/status/1036392482139865088

[37:00] Not enough detail in original papers to attempt to replicate in The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (https://osf.io/e81xl/wiki/home/), also a thread from @chrisdc77 https://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