Disagreeing about Science

Science is in a period of especially pitched disagreement. Beyond the usual scientific disagreements about theories and studies, we are talking - and disagreeing - about deep questions about the nature and practice of science. In today's episode we talk about how to disagree with people about issues related to open science, replicability, and scientific reform. How do you decide when to pick an argument? How do you disagree constructively? Did the open science movement attract people in the early days who are comfortable with disagreement, and how has that changed? What do you do if you are the only "open science person" in your lab or department, and you have to work with people who are opposed to the way you see things? Plus: Our letter of the week is about being politically conservative in academia. And it was a big week for awards in psychology.

Discussed in this episode:

• The 2017 Leamer-Rosenthal Prizes for Open Social Science, awarded by BITSS
• Betsy Levy Paluck's website and an NPR article about her Macarthur Genius Award
• How to Disagree by Paul Graham

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/. You can email us at [email protected]. You can subscribe to us on iTunes.

Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This is episode 19. It was recorded October 13, 2017.