Episode 182: The Paper That Launched a Thousand Twitter Wars (With Yoel Inbar)
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2020
⏱️ 118 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Podcasting legend Yoel Inbar (from Two Psychologists Four Beers) joins us to break down Tal Yarkoni's "The Generalizability Crisis," the paper that launched a thousand Twitter wars. Psychologists make verbal claims about the world, then conduct studies to test these claims - but are the studies actually providing evidence for those claims? Do psychological experiments generalize beyond the the strict confinments of the lab? Are psychologists even using the right statistical models to be able to claim that they do? Does this debate boil down to fundamental differences in the philosophy of science - induction, Popper, and hypothetico-deductive models and so forth? Will David and Tamler ever be able to talk about a psych study again without getting into a fight?
Plus ahead of tonight's New Hampshire primary, expert political analysis about what went down in Iowa.
Special Guest: Yoel Inbar.
Sponsored By:
- BetterHelp: You deserve to be happy. BetterHelp online counseling is there for you. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. Our listeners get 10% off the first month by visiting Betterhelp.com/vbw. Promo Code: VBW
- Prolific: Prolific is giving away $50 to VBW listeners who want to give online sampling a go! Whether you're a social scientist doing research, part of a marketing group, or even a high school student interested in doing a social science project, prolific can offer you fast, reliable, quality data to answer your research questions. Promo Code: verybadwizards
- GiveWell: Givewell searches for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar. Consider a donation this holiday season--your dollar goes a lot further than you might think! Promo Code: verybadwizards
Links:
- Yoel Inbar
- Two Psychologists Four Beers (Podcast)
- The app that broke the Iowa Caucuses was sent out through beta testing platforms - The Verge
- Yarkoni, T. (2019). The generalizability crisis.
- The 20% Statistician: Review of "The Generalizability Crisis" by Tal Yarkoni [Daniël Lakens' Blog]
- Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., Gilovich, T., & Ariely, D. (2013). Moral masochism: On the connection between guilt and self-punishment. Emotion, 13(1), 14.
- Mook, D. G. (1983). In defense of external invalidity. American psychologist, 38(4), 379.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro, |
| 0:05.9 | having an informal discussion about issues and signs and ethics. |
| 0:09.3 | Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm out of allow to say, |
| 0:13.6 | and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes. |
| 0:17.0 | Jesus Christ, who fucking gives a shit, okay? Is it selfish? Is it all trueist-ic, okay? |
| 0:20.7 | We'll fucking figure that out in the old folks' own later. Right now, we have a chance to |
| 0:24.5 | attach ourselves to a fucking moral cause, okay? We have to do this, we have to- |
| 0:54.5 | We're a very bad man. |
| 1:13.4 | That was a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. |
| 1:18.0 | Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. |
| 1:22.3 | Dave, despite the efforts of all you Democratic National Committee liberal elites, |
| 1:27.2 | Bernie Sanders won the Iowa caucuses and is now the favorite to win the whole goddamn thing. |
| 1:33.9 | Are you ready for the first Jewish president? |
| 1:37.3 | Wait, Bernie Sanders is a Jew. |
| 1:40.0 | It's surprising, yeah. I'm not even joking. Oh god, damn it. No wonder he's so good at fundraising. |
| 1:47.7 | He's like everybody, these are friend prices, a dollar each, I don't care. |
| 1:52.6 | You're not going to be able to get away with that in a few months. So enjoy it now. We're going |
| 1:58.0 | to crack down. We are definitely going to be cracking down on this shit. |
| 2:02.4 | Well, as long as we don't elect the gay fellow, it might come down to a Jew or a gay man. |
| 2:10.5 | And in all cases, I think that it's shameful that we haven't elected a woman first. |
| 2:17.3 | Latin America has been electing women for years. The most stereotypically misogynistic people |
| 2:23.7 | on the face of this planet are okay with women presidents and somehow, somehow, we're not as a nation. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

