Metascience Matters

Samuel Westwood is Senior Lecturer in Psychology (Education) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London.

Samuel joined King’s College London in 2023. He specialises in neuromodulation, neurodevelopmental disorders, and open and reproducible research practices. His work focuses on providing best practice guidance in translational cognitive neuroscience and psychiatric research. 

Samuel earned a degree in BSc Psychology at the University of Birmingham, then went on to achieve a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at Aston University, after which he was a post-doc at King’s in the Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Before joining King’s, Samuel was a lecturer at the University of Westminster and the University of Wolverhampton.

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Highlights

2:06 - Intro

3:01 - How Sam got interested in brain stimulation

5:25 - Publishing null results from transcranial direct current stimulation

10:49 - Conducting a systematic review of the field

13:31 - Methodological issues across types of brain stimulation

16:11 - Which brain stimulation/clinical indication combination are most promising?

24:05 - Clinical trial of transcranial direct current stimulation and cognitive training for ADHD in adolescent boys

31:51 - Personalized approaches to brain stimulation and cognitive training

37:23 - Pursuing metascience more broadly

42:34 - Founding the RIOT Science Club

48:07 - Most desired structural changes to science over the next 5-10 years

51:15 - Dealing with scientific fraud, incentives

57:11 - Advice for young scientists

59:25 - Forthcoming developments and where Sam's work can be found online

1:00:58 - Outro

Chris Chambers is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cardiff University who focuses on the promotion and effectiveness of open research practices. He co-founded Registered Reports, Exploratory Reports, Verification Reports, the Transparency and Openness Promotion guidelines, the Royal Society Replications initiative, the UK network of open research working groups, the Peer Reviewers' Openness Initiative, the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), the GW4 Undergraduate Psychology Consortium programme for promoting reproducible science, the Royal Society Rapid Review Network for COVID-19 Registered Reports, and the Peer Community in Registered Reports. He currently chairs the Registered Reports committee supported by the Center for Open Science, serve on the UKRN steering committee and sits on the Advisory Board of Nature Human Behaviour.

He is the author of the Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology: A Manifesto for Reforming the Culture of Scientific Practice, which won the 2018 British Psychological Society Book Award (Best Academic Monograph) and the 2018 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers.

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Highlights

2:19 - Intro

3:06 - Starting registered reports

5:44 - Blogosphere conversations that spawned registered reports

7:26 - Pre-registration vs. Registered reports

10:39 - Precursors to registered reports

17:10 - Reviewing the first registered reports at Cortex

21:25 - Initial reactions from neuroscience and psychology to RRs

25:26 - The growth of RRs across journals

27:54 - Peer Community In Registered Reports (Registered Reports 2.0)

33:30 - Stage 1 RR triage/snapshot solution to the wait time problem

36:57 - New challenges with Registered Reports 2.0

39:53 - Programmatic research at Peer Community In Registered Reports

43:26 - Clinical trials and registered reports

47:47 - Current conversations around registered reports

50:39 - Researcher evaluation in a hypothetical world where null data are embraced

56:01 - Forthcoming developments related to registered reports

59:49 - Advice for young scientists

1:03:32 - Outro

Beth Clarke is an incoming Junior Professor of Psychological Metascience at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). Her work examines how research methods and practices have been changing in psychology (especially social and personality psychology) over the replication crisis.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KTF_Du0AAAAJ&hl=en

Looking our limitations in the eye: A call for more thorough and honest reporting of study limitations:

https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spc3.12979

The prevalence of direct replication articles in top-ranking psychology journals:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39418470/

P-curving social and personality psychology experiments: Changes from 2006 to 2019:

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/txzeu_v1

RegCheck:

https://regcheck.app/

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Highlights2:34 - Intro3:29 - What Beth's professorship in metascience says about the maturity of the field7:10 - Initial interest in metascience10:54 - Hopefulness for the future of psychology, metascience, and science in general13:16 - Study of how researchers ignore the limitations of their work21:20 - Thoughts on registered reports 22:56 - Are certain subfields of psychology better at acknowledging limitations? 24:52 - Should limitations be acknowledged in abstracts, titles, and elsewhere in papers?25:55 - Study of the prevalence of direct replication articles in top psychology journals34:42 - How do you choose what studies to replicate?36:06 - P-curving social and personality psychology experiments45:34 - Developing RegCheck, an AI tool to compare preregistrations and their associated papers50:30 - What systemic interventions would you most like to see in the next 5-10 years that would most benefit the scientific community?54:37 - Directions for Beth's future lab55:51 - Advice for undergraduates59:16 - Outro

Lukas Röseler is the Managing Director at the Center for Open Science at the University of Münster. He is the Editor-in-Chief at the journal Replication Research, part of the Replication Journal Federation, is an active member of the Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) community, and developed a video game called Guess the Replication, where players guess whether studies successfully replicated. 

Replication Research:

http://replicationresearch.org/

Replication Journal Federation:

https://forrt.org/rjf/

Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) community:

https://forrt.org/

Guess The Replication:

https://lukasroeseler.github.io/GuessTheReplication/

Dominance and Prestige: Meta-Analytic Review of Experimentally Induced Body Position Effects on Behavioral, Self-Report, and Physiological Dependent Variables:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Koerner/publication/360577810_Dominance_and_prestige_Meta-analytic_review_of_experimentally_induced_body_position_effects_on_behavioral_self-report_and_physiological_dependent_variables/links/62823b133a23744a728598c2/Dominance-and-Prestige-Meta-Analytic-Review-of-Experimentally-Induced-Body-Position-Effects-on-Behavioral-Self-Report-and-Physiological-Dependent-Variables.pdf

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Intro

2:10 - Leading the Münster Center for Open Science

6:17 - How Lukas became interested in metascience

10:53 - Cultural change in science

13:43 - Being Editor-in-Chief of Replication Research

20:00 - Funding the journal, diamond open access

24:55 - Prestigious journals' money extraction scheme

28:17 - Distributed institutional support for diamond OA journals

31:50 - The Replication Journal Federation

39:24 - Journals for replication, or replications for journals?

44:34 - Guess The Replication

50:57 - Prediction markets for replication

54:32 - Meta-analysis of body positioning effects/power posing

1:02:46 - If science were aligned to truth, how would researchers be evaluated?

1:14:36 - Advice for young people

Alexander Gibson is a PhD student at the Queensland University of Technology and the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation studying the intersection of metascience and clinical machine learning. One of his focus areas is data provenance, the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of datasets, and how neglecting this can lead to bad outcomes in medical machine learning not only in research, but also for clinical practice and medical device approval. 

CONTACT RANDY:

Feedback: [email protected]

EPISODE LINKS:

Alex's preprint on unreliable diabetes and stroke datasets:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.24.26347028v2

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

3:14 - The beginning of Alex's interest in clinical predictive modeling

5:05 - Alex's interest in metascience

6:42 - Choosing a dissertation topic/metrics hacking in machine learning

9:49 - Preprint on data provenance in medical datasets

12:33 - The diabetes and stroke datasets Alex investigated

16:46 - Major irregularities in the data

23:29 - TRIPOD+AI guidelines for auditing machine learning studies

25:26 - How unreliable studies can impact clinical practice and medical device patents

26:42 - Citation networks

27:37 - AI-generated formulaic medical machine learning studies

31:50 - Strategies for high-quality data provenance

33:53 - Patents citing unreliable studies, and how to integrate data provenance into peer review

35:23 - The biggest problems for clinical predictive modeling studies

37:02 - Resources and tools for improving rigor in machine learning

38:45 - Metrics reporting

40:45 - Choosing decision thresholds in predictive models

42:59 - The importance of clinical context in metrics reporting

45:21 - The unreasonable effectiveness of age and sex as predictors

47:53 - The roles of academia and industry in improving clinical machine learning studies

50:07 - Explanation versus prediction

52:51 - Advice and resources for students

54:27 - Outro

Charles Piller, an Investigative Correspondent for Science Magazine, is the author of the 2025 book Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's. He has received more than 40 honors or awards from American Association for the Advancement of Science/Kavli Foundation, National Institute of Health Care Management, Society of Professional Journalists, National Academies/Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Los Angeles Press Club, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Gerald Loeb Foundation and UCLA, Western Publications Association, First Amendment Coalition, California State University, Computer Press Association, American Society of Business Press Editors, California Newspaper Publishers Association, National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and other organizations. His work has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize nine times by STAT, the Los Angeles Times and The Sacramento Bee.

CONTACT RANDY:

Feedback: [email protected]

EPISODE LINK:

Blots on a field? 

https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease

Picture imperfect

https://www.science.org/content/article/research-misconduct-finding-neuroscientist-eliezer-masliah-papers-under-suspicion

Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's

https://www.amazon.com/Doctored-Fraud-Arrogance-Tragedy-Alzheimers/dp/1668031248

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

6:05 - How Charles became a science journalist

7:58 - Charles' 2022 piece, "Blots on a field?"

14:39 - Responses from scientists to this piece

22:22 - Charles' 2024 piece, "Picture imperfect"

30:29 - How Charles began working on his book "Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's"

33:15 - Charles' experience working with scientific sleuths

36:45 - The incentive for positive data in science

46:09 - Charles' NYT op-ed about how to combat fraud in Alzheimer's research; attacks from the Trump administration on science

53:22 - Charles' thoughts on registered reports and other ways to improve scientific incentives

58:34 - Upcoming work

59:22 - Advice for listeners

1:02:20 - Outro

Tim Errington is the Senior Director of Research at the Center for Open Science. He led the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE), as well as the implementation and evaluation of initiatives such as Registered Reports, Registered Revisions, responsible conduct of research trainings, and open science badges.

CONTACT RANDY:

Feedback:

[email protected]

EPISODE LINKS:

Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology (Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology led by Tim Errington):

https://elifesciences.org/articles/71601

Bayer replication study:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3439-c1

Amgen replication study:

https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a

Reproducibility in Cancer Biology: Challenges for assessing replicability in preclinical cancer biology (Companion paper to Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology):

https://elifesciences.org/articles/67995

What is replication?:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000691

Study comparing standard reports and registered reports in psychology:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25152459211007467

Blog post on the seemingly magical success of revision experiments:

https://rajlaboratory.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-magical-results-of-reviewer.html

Google's AI co-scientist paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18864

Machine-readable documents:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2515245920970949

How open science helps researchers succeed:

https://elifesciences.org/articles/16800

ZBW's Expedition to Open Science Land:

https://expedition-open-science.org/

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

4:47 - Tim's origin story as a cancer biologist

6:38 - Initial interest in metascience

9:24 - Starting the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology

12:07 - How were the studies that were replicated chosen?

14:41 - Publishing the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology as a registered report

17:26 - Results from the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology

20:28 - Tim's experience throughout the years running the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology

25:21 - The difficulty of running cancer biology studies

27:54 - Judging whether a replication is successful

31:23 - What has the response to the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology been?

37:52 - Why aren't replication rates higher?

40:26 - Challenges of running cancer biology replication studies

45:43 - Caveats of preclinical disease models

49:13 - The incentive for positive data in science

57:05 - Systemic intervention vs. Individual policing

1:01:04 - The value of registered reports

1:07:38 - Registered revisions

1:10:48 - Falsifying theories early at the preclinical stage

1:15:21 - Different institutions (e.g., academic, industry) conducting different studies (e.g., preclinical, clinical)

1:17:34 - New initiatives at the Center for Open Science (Replication project of social/behavioral sciences, automated tools for predicting replication success, LifeCycle journal)

1:23:02 - AI scientists are trained on biased literature; distrust of academic literature in drug discovery

1:28:46 - Peer review

1:32:51 - Narrative in science

1:35:06 - 100-200 years into the future

1:40:29 - Advice for high school/undergraduate listeners

1:42:51 - Metascience manifests in every field

1:44:46 - Philosophy of science

1:47:49 - Outro

Brian Nosek is the cofounder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. He co-developed the Implicit Association Test, a method that advanced the study of implicit bias. He then co-founded three non-profit organizations: Project Implicit to advance research about implicit bias, the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science to improve the research culture in his home discipline, and the Center for Open Science (COS) to improve rigor, transparency, integrity, and reproducibility across research disciplines. He led the Reproducibility Project in Psychology, a replication of 100 studies from psychology, as well as multiple other replication projects, along with policy reforms such as open science badges, and the investigation of prediction markets for study replication.

CONTACT RANDY:

Feedback: [email protected]

EPISODE LINKS:

Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science (Reproducibility Project in Psychology led by Brian Nosek):

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4716

False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797611417632

What is replication?:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000691

Metascience conference:

https://metascience.info/

International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation:

https://icssi.org/

International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication:

https://peerreviewcongress.org/

MetaROR:

https://metaror.org/

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

2:56 - Brian's origin story as a psychologist

6:35 - Initial interest in metascience 

10:57 - "Scientific Utopia," starting the Reproducibility Project in Psychology, and major fraud cases

17:57 - How did the Reproducibility Project in Psychology come together?

23:40 - Results of the Reproducibility Project in Psychology

27:03 - Response from the field, institutional changes

30:39 - Advice for high school/undergrad listeners

34:03 - Outro

Eugenie Reich is an attorney committed to taking on scientific fraud, understanding the incentives that drive it, and recovering misdirected research funding. She is also a former investigative science journalist committed to correcting the scientific record. Her 2009 book Plastic Fantastic, details a major fraud cause in physics at Bell Labs. Two of the cases she has litigated cases were against Biogen ($900 million settlement), and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($15 million settlement).

CONTACT RANDY:

[email protected]

EPISODE LINKS:

Cargo Cult Science:

https://calteches.library.caltech.edu...

The PubPeer Conundrum:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/...

New Scientist:

https://www.newscientist.com/

Skeptical Inquirer:

https://skepticalinquirer.org/

Special thanks to Dylan Bouscher

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

4:20 - How Eugenie became interested in science

6:25 - Interest in scientific fraud

7:38 - Deciding to become a science journalist

8:58 - Fraud in physics at Bell Labs (the subject of her 2009 book Plastic Fantastic)

20:15 - Bell Labs coming under private ownership

22:53 - Interviewing scientists for her book

26:50 - The response from the physics community

31:10 - Deciding to become a lawyer

33:28 - The False Claims Act

36:29 - The qui tam provision of the False Claims Act

37:46 - The $900M case against Biogen

44:02 - The day-to-day of working on this case

46:30 - Impact of the case on biotech and pharma

48:40 - The $15M case against Dana-Farber

50:42 - Do universities have an incentive to protect accused researchers?

54:15 - Is the scale of fraud too large to be fixed?

57:56 - Does fraud damage public trust in science?

1:00:44 - Tools/solutions to combat these problems

1:04:32 - Advice to practicing scientists

1:05:55 - Advice and resources for listeners

1:08:28 - Outro

James Heathers is the Founder and Director of the Medical Evidence Project, a venture of The Center for Scientific Integrity. He aims to reduce medical harm and improve patient outcomes by identifying and publicizing errors and miscondcut in the medical literature. He uses forensic meta-analytical techniques to detect and deconstruct errors arising from low-quality science and fraudulent work in areas that involve large numbers of patients.

CONTACT RANDY:

[email protected]

EPISODE LINKS:

The original GRIM test paper:

http://www1.psych.purdue.edu/~gfranci...

Machine-readable documents:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...

Chaos in the Brickyard: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...

Books:

The Man Who Only Loved Numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man...

The Emperor of All Maladies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emp...

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

5:27 - How James has been the last couple days, and his radio voice

6:40 - Writing the first book on Forensic Metascience

10:47 - James' PhD work on heart rate variability

14:12 - Starting to work on metascience

18:40 - The GRIM test

26:40 - Programmatically scaling statistical checks

33:25 - Centering quantitative results and peripheralizing narrative in scientific papers

39:36 - AI for metascience, unearthing data underneath narrative

48:11 - Pursuing cases of misconduct

52:45 - Founding and Directing the Medical Evidence Project

56:10 - Incentives for positive data, post-publication review, challenging the binary of positive and negative data

1:05:41 - Advice and resources for listeners

1:12:40 - Optimism over pessimism

1:16:58 - Outro