More of a Comment Than a Question

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:
rachelxhartman@gmail.com, Twitter: @RachelXHartman
paulrobertconnor@gmail.com, 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.

We welcome University of Miami postdoc Shane Littrell on the pod to discuss his research on bullshitting, Paul's pretentious website, and Thomas Chatterton Williams' bad week online.

Find out more about Shane's research on his website here

In this episode we welcome marketing graduate student and TikTok celebrity Ethan Milne onto the podcast to talk about his social media fame, his research, an interesting incident at his Western University, the concept of 'elite capture,' and more.

Follow Ethan on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SEthanMilne and on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@tallpsychology?lang=en

The hijab kiss incident: https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/western-university-lgbtq-poster-sparks-muslim-community-backlash/wcm/c1b69e57-a678-45a4-be94-bab4044b46bf/amp/

We discuss gun violence and mass shootings in the USA, as well as the debate around 'Great Replacement Theory.'

Links:

Cloud Research's Innovations in Online Research Conference: link
Tweet thread from Professor Geoffrey Miller on gun control

We discuss the moral philosophy of abortion, and make a few comments about the public reaction to the leaked Supreme Court Roe v Wade decision.

Here's some data on the stability of public attitudes toward abortion since the 70s: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

And here's some data about the relative prevalence of bi-sexuality and homosexuality: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/how-many-people-lgbt/

In this episode we are joined by famous podcaster Yoel Inbar (who we also found out is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto) to discuss a recent controversy surrounding this paper in PNAS, and the ethics of training machine learning models to judge and modify facial images in ways consistent with the stereotypical impressions of humans.

We also briefly discussed the dumb stick-figure meme people have been talking about.

Here are just a few pieces of research on people's ability to judge personality from physical appearance:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.994.7&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/000712606X109648
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-20823-006

We were joined by Cory Clark, director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss her research on ideological bias in science, adversarial collaboration, cheerleading, powerpoint, and more.

Follow Cory on twitter here: https://twitter.com/ImHardcory

Check out the Adversarial Collaboration Project here: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/adcollabproject/

We chatted with Aaron Moss, senior researcher at Cloud Research, about his recent paper on the ethics of using MTurk for behavioral research, conflicts of interest, global capitalism, and Will Smith.

Read Aaron's paper here https://psyarxiv.com/jbc9d/

Check out Cloud Research here https://www.cloudresearch.com/

We were joined by journalist and podcaster Katie Herzog to discuss her recent piece about an academic #metoo scandal that was not what it seemed.

You can read Katie's piece here: https://reason.com/2022/03/14/how-an-academic-grudge-turned-into-a-metoo-panic/ and listen to the BARpod episode about it here: https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-106-possibly-the-craziest?s=r

Follow Katie on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/kittypurrzog

Pinned threads by the claimants:
Jessica Cantlon: https://twitter.com/CantlonLab/status/952644834229211136?s=20&t=S3eZiKta5LD7RVRH0LwJTA
Steven Piantadosi: https://twitter.com/spiantado/status/1167918514851610624?s=20&t=S3eZiKta5LD7RVRH0LwJTA

Weird website made by some unknown party concerning the case: https://thejaegercase.com/faq

In this episode we are joined by Sinan Alper, a professor of Psychology at Yaşar University in Turkey, to discuss psychological research in non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) contexts, and his work on the antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

Follow Sinan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SinanAlper_

Some references:

1. Paper showing people holding contradictory conspiracy beliefs (e.g. Princess Diana was assassinated but is nonetheless still alive): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550611434786

2. Civic honesty around the globe (Science paper testing frequency of returning lost wallets in different countries): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau8712

3. The backfire effect of debunking misinformation on Twitter: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445642

4. SInan's paper on the link between intuitive thinking and social conservativism in WEIRD/non-WEIRD contexts: http://journal.sjdm.org/18/181212/jdm181212.pdf

In this episode we respond to a disgruntled listener's critiques of our previous Rittenhouse-gate! episode, and discuss a controversial proposal on the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) listserv to form a group of non-oppressed oppression researchers.

Links:

Statement by graduate students of color at UNC concerning the pervasiveness of racism in the UNC psychology department: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L6J6Ee58JM338Fu89it_iKECeWdFWwSX60W6T3eC1r8/edit

A list of references we were pointed towards as additional evidence of racism within the UNC psychology department: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UmtHuW31UDoXfFe7LT26bnDVkGrB0DzpwroAD4QRW2U/edit

Statistics concerning the demographics of SPSP members: https://www.spsp.org/sites/default/files/Member-Diversity-Statistics-December-2019.pdf

Racial Equity Tools' explainer on the reasoning behind racial affinity groups https://www.racialequitytools.org/resources/act/strategies/caucus-and-affinity-groups

Showing Up For Racial Justice's (SURJ) list of past actions taken by SURJ affinity groups https://surj.org/category/past-actions/

Opinion piece: 'Please don't ask your Black friends to teach you about racism' https://theeverymom.com/dont-ask-your-black-friends-to-teach-you-about-racism/

In this episode we are joined by Paul Cernasov, a graduate student of clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina, to discuss a controversy within the UNC psychology department following an official email sent out to the department regarding the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Here is the study Paul mentioned with regard to anti-Asian racism: https://virulenthate.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Virulent-Hate-Anti-Asian-Racism-In-2020-5.17.21.pdf