Brian Nosek on Truth, Science, and Academic Incentives

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2012

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how incentives in academic life create a tension between truth-seeking and professional advancement. Nosek argues that these incentives create a subconscious bias toward making research decisions in favor of novel results that may not be true, particularly in empirical and experimental work in the social sciences. In the second half of the conversation, Nosek details some practical innovations occurring in the field of psychology, to replicate established results and to publicize unpublished results that are not sufficiently exciting to merit publication but that nevertheless advance understanding and knowledge. These include the Open Science Framework and PsychFileDrawer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast and find links
0:16.3	and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done
0:23.1	going back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:27.9	We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.7	Today is September 4th, 2012, and my guest is Brian Nosek, Professor of Psychology at
0:39.3	the University of Virginia.
0:40.8	Brian, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:42.4	Thanks for having me.
0:44.7	Our topic today is the reliability of research findings in the social sciences, particularly
0:49.2	psychology, though I'm sure we'll be talking about economics as well.
0:53.4	And our discussion will be based on a recent paper you wrote with Jeff Respies and Mark
0:56.8	Motel, and the title is Scientific Utopia, part two, restructuring incentives and practices
1:04.0	to promote truth over publishability, and it's prepared for a special issue of perspectives
1:09.5	on psychological science.
1:11.1	I'd like you to start by telling the story, the way that you tell at the beginning of
1:15.8	your paper, on your research finding, where you looked at the ability of political extremists
1:22.2	on the left and the right to detect shades of gray, literal shades of gray using their
1:26.2	physical vision.
	...

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