Two Psychologists Four Beers

University of British Columbia professor and ADHD expert Amori Mikami joins the show to talk attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). What is it, how has our understanding of it changed over the years, and how accurate is the public discourse about it?

Plus, some more on Yoel's own ADHD journey and a quiz where we establish how many of Yoel's annoying behaviors are ADHD-related.

Special Guest: Amori Mikami.

Links:

• Amori Mikami - UBC Department of Psychology
• Why'd I take speed for twenty years?
• Lita Ford - Kiss Me Deadly - YouTube

Mickey joins Yoel for the first new episode in nearly a year. We talk what's been up with the show, plans for the future, and what it feels like to briefly be (almost) internet-famous.

In the second half of the show, we talk about expertise and prediction. When social scientists make predictions about the future, should we listen? How much should failures of prediction make us distrust expert advice more generally, and if so, how skeptical should we be?

Links:

• D.E.I. Statements Spark Debate at UCalifornia and Other Universities - The New York Times
• Americans harbor much less favorable explicit sentiments toward young adults than toward older adults | PNAS
• On the accuracy, media representation, and public perception of psychological scientists' judgments of societal change - PubMed
• When expert predictions fail - ScienceDirect
• Amyl and The Sniffers - "U Should Not Be Doing That" (Official Music Video) - YouTube

Andrew Devendorf joins Alexa and Yoel to discuss his work on "me-search" (or self-relevant research) within clinical psychology. He talks about the prevalence of mental health difficulties within the field, and the harmful taboos against speaking openly about them. And, he shares his own reasons for studying depression and suicide, and how he has been discouraged from citing personal experience as a motivation for his work. Their conversation also explores common misconceptions about mental illness, strengths of self-relevant research, and ways to be more supportive to those facing mental health challenges. In the end, Yoel and Alexa fail to resolve their debate about the existence of the "unbiased researcher."

Special Guest: Andrew Devendorf.

Links:

• Andrew Devendorf, M.A.
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Stigmatizing our own: Self-relevant research (Me-search) is common but frowned upon in clinical psychological science
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Is "me-search" a Kiss of Death in mental health research
• Only Human: Mental-Health Difficulties Among Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology Faculty and Trainees - Sarah E. Victor, Andrew R. Devendorf, Stephen P. Lewis, Jonathan Rottenberg, Jennifer J. Muehlenkamp, Dese’Rae L. Stage, Rose H. Miller, 2022
• My Brother Went Missing, And The Search For Him Turned My World Upside Down | HuffPost HuffPost Personal
• NADA SURF - where is my mind? (Official Video) - YouTube

Playing devil's advocate, Yoel and Mickey mount a criticism against the scientific study of mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Can we measure it? Is mindfulness-based therapy effective? Can mindfulness improve the quality of attention beyond the meditation cushion? Are effects of mindfulness mostly placebo effects produced by motivated practitioners and adherents? Should we be impressed by mindfulness meditation’s supposed effects on conceptions of the self? Is mindfulness, in all its complexity, amenable to scientific study?

Bonus: Is the value of diversity and inclusivity a core part of open science?

This is a re-release of an episode first released on August 7, 2019.

Links:

• Burdock Brewery
• Lunch Money | Collective Arts Brewing
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Will this time be different?
• Opinion | Can We End the Meditation Madness? - The New York Times
• The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being - PubMed
• Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation - PubMed
• Argentine tango dance compared to mindfulness meditation and a waiting-list control: a randomised trial for treating depression - PubMed
• Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis | Complementary and Alternative Medicine | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network
• Mindfulness training affects attention--or is it attentional effort? - PubMed
• Meditation, mindfulness and executive control: the importance of emotional acceptance and brain-based performance monitoring - PubMed
• Cognitive effects of MBSR/MBCT: A systematic review of neuropsychological outcomes - PubMed
• Mindfulness training as cognitive training in high-demand cohorts: An initial study in elite military servicemembers - PubMed
• A randomised active-controlled trial to examine the effects of an online mindfulness intervention on executive control, critical thinking and key thinking dispositions in a university student sample | BMC Psychology | Full Text

Yoel and Alexa are joined by Joe Simmons to talk about fraud. We go in-depth on a recent high-profile fraud case, but we also talk about scientific fraud more generally: how common is it, how do you detect it, and what can we do to prevent it?

This is a re-release of Episode 73, originally released on September 29, 2021.

Special Guest: Joe Simmons.

Links:

• Beers - Drav
• Milkshake IPA - Microbrasserie Vox Populi - Untappd
• A-OK IPA - Avondale Brewing Co. - Untappd
• L'Espace Public – Brasseurs de quartier » L’attaque galactique
• False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant - Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson, Uri Simonsohn, 2011
• [98] Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty - Data Colada
• Dan Ariely Retracts Honesty Study Based On Fake Data
• [85] Data Replicada #4: The Problem of Hidden Confounds - Data Colada
• [40] Reducing Fraud in Science - Data Colada
• The Clash - Police & Thieves (Official Audio) - YouTube

Jennifer Gutsell joins Alexa to discuss the controversy surrounding Yoel's experience interviewing at UCLA. They focus on a post, written by Alexa, in which she pushes back against defenses of "viewpoint diversity" and argues that the graduate petition advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was a brave effort that should be taken seriously. Jennifer elaborates on these ideas, suggesting that there are some views that are not up for debate, and emphasizing the care that is required when having theoretical discussions without a personal stake in the matter. Alexa and Jennifer go on to connect these ideas to a paper written by Kevin Durrheim in which he proposes that psychology's emphasis on our progressive accomplishments silences the deeper reality of racism within our field.

Special Guest: Jennifer Gutsell.

Links:

• Two Psychologists Four Beers on Untappd
• Against Anti-DEI Rhetoric (Alexa's Post)
• Conversational Silencing of Racism in Psychological Science: Toward Decolonization in Practice - Kevin Durrheim, 2023
• Episode 263: Free Yoel | Very Bad Wizards podcast
• A Political 'Dress' and Test - by Matthew Lieberman
• A review of White‐centering practices in multiracial research in social psychology - Garay - 2021 - Social and Personality Psychology Compass - Wiley Online Library

Harkening back to episode 73, Alexa and Yoel discuss recent evidence of fraud documented in the Data Colada blog post "Clusterfake." The post is the first in a series of four, which will collectively detail evidence of fraud in four papers co-authored by Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino. First, the co-hosts dive into the details, with Alexa soberly (in both senses of the word) explaining the revelations of calcChain. They go on to discuss the potential impact of these findings for collaborators, some of whom have begun conducting audits of work co-authored with Gino. In addition, they speculate about ways to reduce fraud that could relieve some of the burden from those who currently do this time-consuming and often thankless work. Finally, they consider what this means for a field still struggling to build a more trustworthy foundation.

Links:

• Two Psychologists Four Beers on Untappd
• [109] Data Falsificada (Part 1): "Clusterfake" - Data Colada
• Sci-Hub | Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(38), 15197–15200 | 10.1073/pnas.1209746109
• Two Psychologists Four Beers Episode 73: We Need to Talk About Fraud (with Joe Simmons)
• Juliana Schroeder on Twitter: "I am waiting to learn more about this case. It is extremely concerning. My coauthors and I are auditing our papers with Francesca, and identifying the raw data files. I think (hope) other co-authors are doing likewise. We will announce the results of the audit when they are ready" / Twitter
• Fleetwood Mac - Little Lies (Official Music Video) - YouTube

In heated political debates, people are often accused of being hypocrites, lacking consistent foundational values. Today, Yoel and Alexa discuss a recent paper by David Pinsof, David Sears, and Martie Haselton, that challenges the commonsense notion that political belief systems stem from our core values. Instead, the authors propose that people form alliances with others, and develop political beliefs that serve to maintain those alliances. The cohosts discuss how these alliances might form, the various biases used to defend them, and whether values are truly absent from the process. They also tackle the deeper question of whether the alliance model means that neither side is right or wrong.

Links:

• Two Psychologists Four Beers on Untappd
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems
• R. Ring - "Hug" | Music Video - YouTube

Yoel and Alexa discuss a recent paper that takes a machine learning approach to estimating the replicability of psychology as a discipline. The researchers' investigation begins with a training process, in which an artificial intelligence model identifies ways that textual descriptions differ for studies that pass versus fail manual replication tests. This model is then applied to a set of 14,126 papers published in six well-known psychology journals over the past 20 years, picking up on the textual markers that it now recognizes as signals of replicable findings. In a mysterious twist, these markers remain hidden in the black box of the algorithm. However, the researchers hand-examine a few markers of their own, testing whether things like subfield, author expertise, and media interest are associated with the replicability of findings. And, as if machine learning models weren't juicy enough, Yoel trolls Alexa with an intro topic hand-selected to infuriate her.

Links:

• Two Psychologists Four Beers on Untappd
• A discipline-wide investigation of the replicability of Psychology papers over the past two decades | PNAS
• Best-Selling Author & Harvard Professor Steven Pinker Will Transform His Ideas into NFTs | Blockster
• Are NFTs a Good Investment? | MoneyUnder30
• Miss Grit - Like You (Lyric Video) - YouTube

Alexa and Yoel chat with Paul Bloom about his newest book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind. The book, built from Paul's popular Introduction to Psychology course, is an opinionated overview of the field of psychology but also a window into his deep fascination with the mind. Yoel and Alexa spend some time picking Paul's brain, inquiring about writing, and teaching, and how to avoid boredom. But Paul has a few questions of his own, challenging the cohosts to consider what their own version of Psych would look like. In the process, their conversation ranges from Freudian dream content, to the limitations of psychology, to the (glaring omission of) the anatomy of the inner ear.

Special Guest: Paul Bloom.

Links:

• Two Psychologists Four Beers on Untappd
• Paul Bloom
• Psych: The Story of the Human Mind
• How To Be Good | The New Yorker
• Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help: MacFarquhar, Larissa: 9780143109785: Amazon.com: Books
• Future Home of the Living God: A Novel: Erdrich, Louise: 9780062694065: Amazon.com: Books