Rationally Speaking #123 - Daniel Lakens on P-Hacking and Other Problems in Psychology Research

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2014

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

What's wrong with the social sciences? In this episode, Massimo and Julia are joined by Professor Daniel Lakens from the Eindhoven University of Technology, who studies psychology and blogs about research methods and open science. The three discuss why so many psychology papers can't be trusted, and what solutions might exist for the problem (including how to fix the skewed incentives in the field).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.4	For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org.
0:30.5	Welcome to rationally speaking in the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:40.3	I'm your host, Massimo Pilucci, and with me as always is my co-host, Julia Galev.
0:44.8	Julia, what are we going to talk about today?
0:47.4	Massimo, today we're going to talk about some of the problems with psychological research.
0:52.9	In particular, why is it that so much psych
0:56.2	research fails to replicate? That is, why can't we trust the results in so many psych studies?
1:02.2	And appearing on the show to help us tackle this complex topic is Professor Daniel Lockins,
1:09.0	who is a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology,
1:12.6	where he studies the interaction between psychology and technology.
1:16.6	And he also blogs on statistics, research methods, and open science,
1:21.2	including a lot of the problems that I just alluded to.
1:24.3	Daniel, welcome to the show.
1:26.1	Good evening. Hi.
1:30.9	So then my first question, by reading some of your stuff, especially on the blog, but also some of your technical papers, is you refer
1:36.7	more often than now to the reproducibility project in psychology or psychological research. What
1:42.0	the hell is that? And why do we need it?
1:45.5	Well, good question. Yes, yes. It's a very great, it's a very interesting project where
1:50.6	actually a huge number of labs all over the world are collaborating and they're all replicating
1:55.5	one study from one of three journals in 2008, all very well-known, well-read journals in psychology.
2:04.4	And there's a random pick of the study that a lab has to replicate.
	...

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