The Black Goat

Big Time

It's job market season in the United States. What goes in an application? How should you practice and prepare for a job talk? The Q&A after the talk? What happens during the campus interview? How do you get ready for it? What should you wear? What do you do after it's all done? We share some of our experiences from both sides of the process, including a couple of disaster stories. Also, keeping with the theme, our letter of the week is about whether to apply narrowly or broadly. Plus, for the first time ever we are recording all together in the same place! - and Simine shares her discomfort at the furniture.

Discussed in the episode: "The academic job interview: a mishmash of small but important things" (Sanjay's blog post on the job market)

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 16. It was recorded August 15, 2017.

SIPSapalooza

The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science, or SIPS, held its second conference July 30 - August 1, 2017. SIPS is a new organization that works to improve methods and practices in psychology. The conference is unlike a typical academic meeting -- instead of symposia and keyones, the schedule is filled with hackathons, unconferences, and more. In the first part of this episode, we talk about where SIPS came from and what it is all about. Then we present conversations that we recorded with SIPS attendees.

Interviews:

1. Alexa talks to three SIPS veterans: Brett Mercier, Dylan Wiwad, and Alex Uzdavines.
2. Simine talks to Mike Frank and Brian Nosek about whether there is space for morality and politics in science.
3. Sanjay talks to Rich Lucas, Bill Chopik, and Katie Corker about unconferences, Spartans, and beer city USA.
4. Alexa talk to Danielle Young, Joanna Schug, and Leigh Wilton about whether you can be a productive researcher and keep up with Netflix.
5. Simine talks to Rodica Damian, Cory Costello, & Dan Morgan about the worst thing about SIPS.
6. Sanjay talks to Koji Takahashi, and Nick Mikulak about optimism vs. pessimism
7. Alexa talks to Melissa Kline about memorable SIPS moments.
8. Simine talks to Roger Giner-Sorolla, Michèle Nuijten, and Eric Vanman about interesting conversations, and a new goat mascot.
9. Sanjay talks to Ivy Onyeador, Alex Danvers, and Victor Keller about diversity, scientific self-correction, and their favorite member of The Black Goat.

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 15. It was recorded August 18, 2017, with interviews conducted August 1, 2017.

A Psychometrician's Guide to Popularity

 

When should you care what other people think of you, if ever? In academia other people's opinions of you sometimes matter in official ways, like hiring and student evaluations of teaching, as well as in lots informal ways. And in life, let's face it, we all care. Today we talk about the ways we have coped (or not) with caring what other people think of us. Also: In our letter of the week, we talk about an ambiguous case of who should be a first author. And we definitely do not talk about SIPS.

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 14. It was recorded August 7, 2017.

The Iron Psychologist (with Jamil Zaki)

Today we are delighted to be joined by guest Jamil Zaki. Jamil is an assistant professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory. We talk with Jamil about The People’s Science, a nonprofit he co-founded that promotes direct engagement between scientists and the public. Plus: In our letter of the week, we talk about when neuroscience adds value to psychological research (and maybe when we're not so sure). And we tell the story of where the name "The Black Goat" came from.

Discussed in this episode:

• Jamil Zaki’s lab
• The People’s Science
• Baby hippo Fiona video
• The Myth of Executive Stress by Keith Payne

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 13. It was recorded June 27, 2017.

'Cause You're There For Me Too

Friendships are an important part of life, but one that often gets left out of the conversation about having healthy relationships. Today we talk about maintaining friendships outside of academia - how important (or not?) is it to have those connections, and what role do they play in our lives. Also in this episode: A letter-writer is trying to decide whether to come clean about the p-hacked work that got them tenure. And Simine tells us why she hated getting her first pedicure.

Discussed in this episode:

• Check Yourself Again by Mickey Inzlicht
• My position on "power poses" by Dana Carney

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 12. It was recorded June 22, 2017.

It's So Complicated

All three of us were all around, at various career stages, before the "replicability crisis" became a thing. In today's episode we each share stories of our personal journeys with the larger replicability discussion in psychology, and how we went from clueless to naively optimistic to whatever we are today. Plus: A letter-writer asks how to respond to an advisor who asks you to p-hack. And Alexa tells how her students reacted to her telling them that she is an atheist.

Links:

• Do-Gooder Derogation: Disparaging Morally Motivated Minorities to Defuse Anticipated Reproach, by Julia Minson and Benoit Monin
• How Many Atheists Are There? by Will Gervais and Maxine Najle
• False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant, by Joe Simmons, Leif Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn
• The psychology of parapsychology, or why good researchers publishing good articles in good journals can still get it totally wrong, by Tal Yarkoni
• The Ironic Effect of Significant Results on the Credibility of Multiple Study Articles, by Uli Schimmack
• The N-Pact Factor: Evaluating the Quality of Empirical Journals with Respect to Sample Size and Statistical Power, by Chris Fraley and Simine Vazire

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 11. It was recorded June 21, 2017.

Nullius in verba

When a group of "natural philosophers" got together to found the Royal Society in 1660 - now the oldest scientific society in the world - they chose as their motto a Latin phrase meaning "Take nobody's word for it." In today's episode we talk about the role of trust in science. Trust can mean many things, and we talk about its tension with scientific verifiability, people's desire for trusting relationships and culture in their field, and the practical value of trust in doing our work. Plus: A letter about whether pressures to fit the mold of a job description or graduate program lead to impostor syndrome. Simine and Sanjay debrief on the ARP conference. And Alexa asks what's more intellectual, poker or chess?

Links:

• Association for Research in Personality (ARP) conference
• "What is the value of social science? Challenges for researchers and government funders" by Arthur Lupia
• Peer Reviewers' Openness (PRO) Initiative

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 10. It was recorded June 12, 2017.

I Felt Like a Real Scientist

As scientists we are accustomed to knowing the results when we evaluate the quality of research. But is that a good thing? How would it change the way we edit and review research if we had to make our evaluations without knowing the results? And beyond that, how would it change scientific practice itself - the ways we design, conduct, and report our work? We discuss the idea of separating evaluation from results and talk about some common concerns. Plus: Simine debriefs on the APS conference, and we talk about a recent Slate article on Daryl Bem's ESP research. And we discuss a letter about whether it's realistic to maintain a 9-to-5 work schedule as a graduate student.

Discussed in this episode:

• The APS 2017 conference program
• Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, a new APS journal
• Why the Resistance to Statistical Innovations? Bridging the Communication Gap by Donald Sharpe
• Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real, Which Means Science is Broken by Dan Engber
• History of Social Psychology: Insights, Challenges, and Contributions to Theory and Application by Lee Ross, Mark Lepper, and Andrew Ward
• Registered Reports information page at the Center for Open Science, including FAQs and a list of journals that have adopted the format
• How Cortex’s Registered Reports Initiative Is Making Reform a Reality, by Chris Chambers

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 9. It was recorded May 29, 2017.

Confessions of a Replicator (with Rich Lucas)

Rich Lucas has had an impressive career studying well-being: He holds an endowed professorship at Michigan State, he has won numerous awards, and his work is highly influential in psychology, economics, and other fields. So why does he dedicate a sizeable chunk of his time to running replications of other people's work? We have a conversation with Rich about doing replication research: why he does it, how others have received it, and what it's like when the replicator becomes the replicatee (is that even a word?). Plus: We answer a letter about whether we have ever considered non-academic careers. And we go off about two of the many things that afflict women in the academic job marketplace.

Discussed in this episode:

• Paul Litvak's FAQ for academic social scientists interested in tech
• Find out more about our guest Rich Lucas on his lab website
• And definitely check out Rich's new blog The Desk Reject

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 8. It was recorded May 10, 2017.

Dancing On Our Own

Rejection is an inescapable part of being an academic. How do you learn to cope? We share stories of our own professional rejections, talk about the unique joys of getting rejected for different things (grants, jobs, articles), and how our responses to rejection have changed over time. In our letters of the week, we tackle how to find diverse grad students for a lab, and deciding whether to collaborate with someone with a toxic reputation. Plus: Sanjay kind of regrets a joke he made, not for the first time in his life. And we are excited about the upcoming SIPS conference.

Discussed in this episode:

• The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) has an upcoming conference you should sign up for.

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at letters@theblackgoatpodcast.com.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 7. It was recorded April 27, 2017.