More of a Comment Than a Question

Rachel had a baby! Paul left academia! It is all happening and we have the world exclusive scoop for you dear listeners in this ultra special super secret extra extra final episode of MOACTAQ. 

Super top secret bonus episode because Paul misses Rachel and because we can do what we want you're not the boss of us.

Rachel is leaving academia, and Paul is moving on to a new career stage, so we've decided to put the pod to rest. In this, our last pod, we make some final comments and send out some final thankyous as we cast MOACTAQ gently down the river. Be well, everyone.

If you'd like to keep in touch you can contact us at:
[email protected], Twitter: @RachelXHartman
[email protected], Twitter: @paulrconnor

Like almost everyone else, we are impressed and a little freaked out by recent advances in AI, particularly in the context of large language models like ChatGPT, so we invited our most AI-obsessed friends and family members (Luke Hartman from Tumult Labs Alex Kogan of Scholar Exchange) on the pod to talk about it.

If you missed Alex's back story here's his wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Kogan_(scientist)

And here's a link to Luke's app top topic: https://www.toptopicapp.com/

We chatted with Professor Daniël Lakens from TU Eindhoven about his recent proposal for universities to require scientists to submit their proposed research to methodological review boards before data collection.

Read Daniël's proposal here

And check out the recent PNAS on the surprising generalizability of results from non-representative samples here

In this episode we were joined by Steve Rathje, a postdoc at NYU, to discuss his research on how intergroup animosity drives virality on social media.

Read Steve's work here, Facebook's response here, and Steve's response to the response here.

We were joined by Annalisa Myer, a grad student from CUNY graduate center, and Carlos Rebollar, lab manager of the Deepest Beliefs lab at UNC, to discuss mixing activism and science, and whether Carlos should go to grad school.

The 80,000 hours website Rachel mentioned is here

Jennifer Eberhart's book 'Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do' is here

We chatted with Professor Stuart Ritchie from Kings College London about the Queen's passing and the journal Nature Human Behaviour's plans to protect the world from harmful scientific findings. 

• Follow Stuart on his substack or twitter
• Read about Nature Human Behaviour's new ethical guidelines here

In this episode we discuss academic Twitter's enfant terrible Tim Gill, and wade into some complex questions considering the Safe Faculty Project and student loan forgiveness. 

Follow Professor Gill (at your own risk) here: https://twitter.com/timgill924
Check out the Safe Faculty Project here: https://www.safefacultyproject.org/about

We were joined by Professor Chris Ferguson of Stetson University to discuss his upcoming new book 'Catastrophe!: How Psychology Explains Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse'  and whether Paul can join his Dungeons and Dragons game. Thankfully we (mostly) avoided discussing *that* Qualitative Research paper.