Everything Hertz

195: Living meta-analysis

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss how living meta‑analyses—meta‑analyses that are continuously updated as new studies appear—can cut research waste and keep evidence...

194: Author verification

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss whether preprint servers and journals should require author identity verification for submitting manuscripts. This would probably speed up ...

193: The pop-up journal

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about a a new 'pop-up journal' concept for addressing specific research questions. They also answer a listener question from a jour...

192: Outsourcing in academia

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James answer listener questions on outsourcing in academia and differences in research culture between academic institutions and commercial in...

191: Cleaning up contaminated medical treatment guidelines

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

James and Dan discuss James' newly funded 'Medical Evidence Project', whose goal is to find questionable medical evidence that is contaminating treatm...

190: What happens when you pay reviewers?

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about two new studies that took different approaches for evaluating the impact of paying reviewers on peer review speed and quality. Links * J...

189: Crit me baby, one more time

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a recent piece that proposes a post-publication review process, which is triggered by citation counts. They also cover how an al...

188: Double-blind peer review vs. scientific integrity

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a recent editorial which argues that double-blind peer review is detrimental to scientific integrity. Links * The editorial from...

187: What started the replication crisis era?

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about the events that started the replication crisis in psychology and Dorothy Bishop's recent resignation from the Royal Society Links * The ...

186: Evaluating journal quality

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we chat about a Nordic approach for evaluating the journal quality and how we should be teaching undergraduates to evaluate journal an...

185: The Retraction

04 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the recent retraction of a paper that reported the effects of rigour-enhancing practices on replicability. We also cover James' new estimat...

184: A race to the bottom

05 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Open access articles have democratized the availability of scientific research, but are author-paid publication fees undermining the quality of scienc...

183: Too beautiful to be true

03 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a paper describing a journal editor's efforts to receive data from authors who submitted papers with results that seemed a littl...

182: What practices should the behavioural sciences borrow (and ignore) from other research fields?

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James answer a listener question on what practices should the behavioural sciences borrow (and ignore) from other research fields. Here are th...

181: Down the rabbit hole

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss how following citation chains in psychology can often lead to unexpected places, and how this can contribute to unreplicable findings. We a...

180: Consortium peer reviews

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss why innovation in scientific publishing is so hard, an emerging consortium peer review model, and a recent replication of the 'r...

179: Discovery vs. maintenance

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss how scientific research often neglects the importance of maintenance and long-term access for scientific tools and resources. Ot...

178: Alerting researchers about retractions

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the Retractobot service, which emails authors about papers they've cited that have been retracted. What should authors do if the...

177: Plagiarism

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss two recent plagiarism cases, one you've probably heard about and another that you probably haven't heard about if you're outside Norway. We...

176: Tracking academic workloads

29 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about a paper on the invisible workload of open science and why academics are so bad at tracking their workloads. This episode was originally ...

175: Defending against the scientific dark arts

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about a recent blogpost from Dorothy Bishop, in which she proposes a Master course that will provide training in fraud detection—what should...

174: Smug missionaries with test tubes

01 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

James proposes proposes a new type of consortium paper that could provide collaborative opportunities for researchers from countries that are underrep...

173: How do science journalists evaluate psychology papers?

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a recent paper that investigated how science journalists evaluate psychology papers. To answer this question, the researchers pr...

172: In defence of the discussion section

31 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a recent proposal to do away with discussion sections and suggest other stuff they'd like to get rid of from academic publishing...

171: The easiest person to fool is yourself (with Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris)

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris about the science of cons and how we can we can avoid being taken in. We also cover the fate of the...

170: Holy sheet

23 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss evidence of data tampering in a series of experiments investigating dishonesty revealed via excel spreadsheet metadata and how traditional ...

169: Using big data to understand behavior (Live episode with Sandra Matz)

31 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In our first ever live and in-person episode, we chat with Sandra Matz about the opportunities and challenges for using big data to understand human b...

168: Meta-meta-science

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a new paper that reviews potential issues in metascience practices. They also talk about their upcoming live show in May in Fran...

167: Diluted effect sizes

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about a new study that uses homeopathy studies to evaluate bias in biomedical research, a new-ish type of authorship fraud, and the...

166: Is science becoming less disruptive over time?

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a recent paper that claims that science is becoming less disruptive over time and the suggested causes for this decline. Links *...

165: Self-promotion

30 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about self-promotion in academia, how they both wish they had doctoral defences (these aren't a thing in Australia), and replacing ...

164: The great migration

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

James and Dan discuss the recent migration of scientists from Twitter to Mastodon and the pros and cons of sharing the prior submission history of man...

163: eLife's new peer review model

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss eLife's new peer review model, in which they no longer make accept/reject decisions at the end of the peer-review process. Inste...

162: Status bias in peer review

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about a recent preprint describing an experiment on the role of author status in peer-review, dodgy conference proceedings journals, and autho...

161: The memo (with Brian Nosek)

12 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James are joined by Brian Nosek (Co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science) to discuss the recent White House Office of...

160: Whistleblowing

31 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James share ten rules for whistleblowing academic misconduct. The Safe Faculty Project (https://www.safefacultyproject.org/) website SLAPP st...

159: Peer review isn't working (with Saloni Dattani)

15 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James are joined by Saloni Dattani for a chat about the history of peer review, a reimagination of what peer review could look like, what happ...

158: Word limits

01 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

By popular demand, Dan and James chat about journal word and page limits.They also the debate around a recent meta-analysis on nudge interventions. Li...

157: Limitations

11 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a new preprint that examined the types of limitations authors discuss in their published articles and whether these limitation t...

156: Looking for seeders

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a recent paper that concluded (again) that most researchers aren't compliant with their published data sharing statement and whe...

155: Don't you know who I am?

30 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about appeals to authority when responding to scientific critique, university ranking systems, Goodhart’s law (and its origin), and private ...

154: When the evidence is constructed around the narrative

09 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We chat about the Theranos story and the parallels with academic research, as well as Twitter's new owner and whether academics will actually leave th...

153: Shame shame shame

18 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss a journal's new "wall of shame" page, which details unethical behaviours in an effort to discourage future misconduct. We also cover scient...

152: Sorry Not Sorry

04 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

James and Dan chat about apologies vs. non-apologies, how to decide when to call it quits on a paper, and governments vetoing research proposals recom...

151: The dirty dozen

21 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss a new preprint that details twelve p-hacking strategies and simulates their impact on false-positive rates. They also discuss th...

150: Why can't you do nothing?

28 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the latest paper to seriously use the Kardashian index, which is the discrepancy between a scientist's publication record and social media ...

149: Medical misinformation (with Rohin Francis)

14 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat with cardiologist Rohin Francis about medical misinformation and how he uses YouTube for science communication via his 'Medlife Cri...

148: Academic reference letters

31 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about why academic reference letters are terrible, a recent position statement on preprints, and whether the "great resignation" is...

147: The $7000 golden ticket

17 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the $7000 'accelerated publication' option for some Taylor & Francis journals that promises 3-5 week publication and a novel type of resear...

146: Skills pay bills

27 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We answer a series of questions from a listener on whether to start a PhD, what to ask potential supervisors, the financial perils of being a PhD stud...

145: Our boat is sinking slightly slower

13 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the results from the cancer biology reproducibility project, the inevitable comparisons with reproducibility in psychology, and authorship ...

144: The role of luck in academia

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If your child asked you whether they should pursue a career in academia, what would you say? We discuss this question plus three more quick-fire topic...

143: A little less conversation, a little more action

01 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the differences between 'talk' and 'action' in scientific reform and why reforms are taking such a long time to be realised. The...

142: Red flags in academia [Live episode]

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this live episode, Dan and James discuss red flags in academia, in terms of research fields, papers, and individuals. Thanks to everyone that parti...

141: Why we should diversify study samples (with Sakshi Ghai)

04 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Sakshi Ghai (University of Cambridge) about why we should diversify sample diversity and retire the Western, educated, rich, industrializ...

140: You can’t buy cat biscuits with ‘thank you’ emails

20 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

James proposes that peer review reports should be published as their own citable objects, provided that the manuscript author thinks that the peer rev...

139: Open science from a funder's perspective (with Ashley Farley)

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Ashley Farley about her background as an academic librarian, the underrecognised importance of copyright in academic publishing, and her ...

138: Preprints in the time of coronavirus (with Michele Avissar-Whiting)

16 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Michele Avissar-Whiting about her role as the Editor-in-chief of the Research Square preprint platform and how she weighs up the benefits...

137: Ten rules for improving academic work-life balance

02 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James share their thoughts on a recent paper (https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009124) that proposes te...

136: Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewed journals?

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss Journal Reviewer (journalreviewer.org), which is a website that provides a forum for researchers to share and rate their experiences with j...

135: A loss of confidence

05 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan Quintana and James Heathers chat about well-known psychology studies that we've now lost confidence in due to replication failures and the role of...

134: Paywalled questionnaires

21 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss a recent retraction triggered by the authors not paying a copyright fee to use a questionnaire (that also happened to be critical of the or...

133: Manuscript submission fees

07 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Some journals use nominal manuscript submission fees to discourage frivolous submissions. However, it has been suggested that increasing submission fe...

132: Post-pandemic academia

17 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss how academia should operate in a post-pandemic world. What pandemic practices should we keep and what should we abandon? Links ...

131: Long live the overhead projector!

03 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James answer listener audio questions on indirect costs for research grants, the mind/body problem, and why many academics aren't trained to t...

130: Normalizing retractions (with Dorothy Bishop)

19 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat with Dorothy Bishop (University of Oxford) about the importance of normalizing the retraction of scientific papers, publication eth...

129: Transparency audits

05 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the recently proposed "transparency audit", why it received so much blowback, and the characteristics of successful reform schem...

128: How do you generate new research ideas?

15 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about how they come up with new ideas, why everyone seems to be trying to monetise their hobbies, and why it's so hard for most lab...

127: Speak up or shut up?

01 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss when is the right time in your academic career to begin speaking up to critique your research field or whether the risk of retaliation mean...

126: The division of scientific labor (with Saloni Dattani)

15 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We have a wide-ranging chat with Saloni Dattani (Kings College London and University of Hong Kong) about the benefits of dividing scientific labor, th...

125: Upon reasonable request

01 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dan has a blue-sky proposal to increase data sharing—that funders mandate scholars to store and analyse data on their servers for which the funder d...

124: From Ptolemy to Takeshi's Castle

18 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss under which circumstances retracting decades-old articles is worth the time. We also chat about why LinkenIn is underrated (yes, really) an...

123: Authenticated anonymity (with Michael Eisen)

04 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Part two of our chat with Michael Eisen (eLife Editor-in-Cheif), in which we discuss the pros and cons of collaborative peer review, journal submissio...

122: Reoptimizing scientific publishing for the internet age (with Michael Eisen)

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The internet should have transformed science publishing, but it didn't. We chat with Michael Eisen (Editor-in-Chief of eLife (https://elifesciences.or...

121: Transparent peer review

07 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the pros and cons of transparent peer-review, in which peer review reports are published alongside manuscripts, as a keynote fea...

120: How false beliefs spread in science (with Cailin O'Connor)

16 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat with Cailin O'Connor (University of California, Irvine) about the how false beliefs spread in science and remedies for this issue H...

119: Rules of thumb

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss how rules of thumbs in science, such as those often applied to sample sizes and effect sizes, lead to mindless research evaluati...

118: Evidence-free gatekeeping

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James answer audio listener questions on the worst review comments they've received (and how the responded), their thoughts on the current sta...

117: How we peer-review papers

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James choose a preprint and walk through how they would peer-review it. James also provides an update on his recent proposal that scientists s...

116: In my opinion

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about a recent twitter discussion on open science funding and the benefits of Editors sharing their opinions online. James also sha...

115: A modest proposal

07 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss James' recent proposal that scientists should be paid for performing peer review for journals published by for-profit companies—$450, to ...

114: Diversity in science (with Jess Wade)

17 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Jess Wade (Imperial College London) about diversity issues in science, including her work increasing the profile of underrepresented scie...

113: Citation needed

03 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss whether scientists should spend more time creating and editing Wikipedia articles. They also chat about how they read scientific...

112: Leaving academia

27 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James chat about James' new industry job, why he quit academia, the biggest differences between academia and industry, and why it's crucial fo...

111: The cumulative advantage of academic capital (with Chris Jackson)

06 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Chris Jackson (Imperial College, London) about the "Matthew Effect" in academia, how we can improve work/balance, and whether we should s...

110: Red flags for errors in papers

15 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We answer a listener question on identifying red flags for errors in papers. Is there a way to better equip peer-reviewers for spotting errors and sus...

109: Open scientific publishing [Live episode]

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James recorded a live episode on open publishing as part of the Open Publishing Fest. They also ran a survey (from start to finish) during the...

108: Requiem for a Screen

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the recent claim that screen time is more harmful than heroin and whether psychological science is a crisis-ready discipline Other stuff we...

107: Memes, TikTok, and science communication (with Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti)

04 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti (Chapman University, USA) about the role of memes and emerging social media in communicating science and statis...

106: Science on the run

20 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss whether getting rapid outcomes to address the pandemic is worth the increased risk of mistakes—how can researchers perform res...

105: Tell it like it is (with Marike Schiffer)

06 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Marike Schiffer, who is a Senior Editor at Nature Human Behavior, about her journal's push to increase reproducibility in the behavioral ...

104: Now we'll discover which meetings could've been emails

16 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and how it's impacting academia Other things they discuss: Roy and HG's gymnastics commentary (https://www...

103: Swiping right

02 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss rejection in academia and emerging science communication mediums. Here are a few links and other things they cover: The main un...

102: Master of none

17 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Should research scientists build their knowledge and skillset broadly at the risk of being a master of none? Dan and James discuss this, along with a ...

101: Punishing research misconduct

03 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James cover a new paper which discusses whether research misconduct should be criminalised. If so, where do we draw the line and who should in...

100: Hundredth episode live special (with Daniel Lakens, Amy Orben, and Chris Chambers)

27 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

To celebrate our 100th episode, which we video-streamed live, Dan and James were joined by three special guests: Daniel Lakens, Amy Orben, and Chris C...

99: Science advocacy

06 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James answer a listener question on science advocacy. Is this an activity that all scientists should do, and if so, how much advocacy work sho...

98: Episode titles are redundant, at best (with Sophia Crüwell)

16 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We chat with Sophia Crüwell (Meta-Research Innovation Center Berlin) about pre-registration and her recent work introducing pre-registration template...

97: Slow science

02 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the concept of "slow science", which has been proposed in order to improve the quality of scientific research and create a more ...

96: The chaotic state of doctoral research

18 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dan and James discuss the results of this year's Nature survey of PhD students. Despite a majority of students reporting general satisfaction with the...