Decoding The Gurus patreon

Unedited Interview with Daniël Lakens and Smriti Mehta

🕑 Added 2023-10-13 21:58:13 +0000 UTC

Comments

Kerena

Very enjoyable. I've listened to the other podcast as well ever since Chris recommended it. I must point out that Daniël, while erudite, thoughtful, and worldly, is unaware of the legal and political environment in United States. It would be unlawful here in the US to open a job posting to women only. A university doing that would be sued so quickly, in fact, that they would simply never have such a hiring scheme in the first place. The Supreme Court here has effectively banned almost all forms of affirmative action, such that the limited programs that he describes as surviving the human rights suit in the Netherlands would not be possible here. In fact the increased reliance on DEI statements that is also discussed in this episode, may largely be a response to the inability to actually consider race and gender in hiring. I was a bit shocked to hear Daniël theorize that no one would challenge a women-only job posting in the US, presumably because of the feminist backlash against such a suit, when this is de facto illegal here. Daniël is not a US legal scholar so I don't expect him to be familiar with the law here. I just wanted to point out that the circles where affirmative action is seen as beyond challenge are tiny, insular, and hardly in the policy-making seat. Thanks for another awesome interview, I could have listened for three more hours :)

Jørgen

Interesting points about mental illness and revolutionary theories. Having written a lot about this (privatdozent.co) it is still unclear to me whether this emphasis is a bias or an actual effect. There are hundreds of Nobel laureates, most of them rather boring people. We (I) write about the interesting ones, so they rise to the surface

Linda Sears

I really liked when Smriti said that scholars can get attached to their research so that it becomes like a brand, yet they have the right to change their minds.

Linda Sears

I thought it was interesting when Smriti appeared to be saying that many post-replication crisis researchers have shied away from doing research that could be construed as too counterintuitive or “sexy” to be rigorous. It seems that the publications that got attention for those earlier “sexy” papers can lose out on the eyeballs they need to remain relevant. One point of blame I can think of for why the replication crisis existed is the “publish or perish” regime that pushes academics to publish in order to get promotions and tenure. And even the top tier academics often have to fight to get grants, which can promote the motivation to prove their theories true or even to pursue research that granting institutions will find worthy.