The Black Goat

You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth

In 2012, Rink Hoekstra received two emails on the same day. One was from a journal editor, telling him that a manuscript was being rejected based on the recommendations o

They Give You This, But You Pay For That

Academics are under enormous stress right now, raising the possibility of a rising rate of burnout. Longtime structural trends in higher education have increased pressure

An Award-Winning Episode

Academics love awards. We give out career awards, mid-career awards, early-career awards. We give out awards for the best paper, the best theory, the best teaching, the b

Contact Sport

The contact hypothesis is an old idea in social psychology. It posits that under the right circumstances, bringing people from different groups together can reduce prejud

Does Not Compute

Scientific journal articles have a lot of numbers. Scientists are smart people with even smarter computers, so an outsider might think that, if nothing else, you can coun

Objective Unknown

How does psychology's response to the replication crisis fit into a broader history of science? In this episode we discuss a paper by sociologists Jeremy Freese and David

The Impending Fall of Academia

The upcoming academic term will be unusual, to say the least. The global pandemic led to emergency shutdowns in March, and it is likely that many colleges and universitie

Inexact Science

Scientific knowledge is always contingent and uncertain, even when it's the best we have. Should that factor into how we communicate science to the public, and if so, how

COVID Operations

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating major and serious disruptions to just about everything, and higher education is no exception. In this episode we talk about how our work

Joe Public, Will You Marry Me?

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about public trust in science - how much there is, in what ways, whether we deserve it or not. In this episode, we discuss an

Just Be Cause

Many important questions about cause and effect are impractical to answer with a randomized experiment. What should we do instead? In this episode we talk about doing cau

Auxiliary Turtles All the Way Down

The path from theory to study consists of a thousand decisions, big and small. How and how much do these decisions matter? We discuss a recent crowdsourced meta-study tha

The Expertise of Death

How important is expertise in conducting replications? Many Labs 4 was a large, multi-lab effort that brought together 21 labs, running 2,220 subjects, to study that ques

Going Off the Record

The Graduate Record Exam - the GRE - is widely used in graduate school admissions. In recent years however, a number of graduate programs, including a few in psychology,

The Year 2019 in Review

In our annual end-of-year episode, we talk about noteworthy reflections and events from the year that just passed. Alexa reflects on breakups, and wonders why we don't ta

Letting Loose Your Inner Reviewer Two

Peer review is a major part of how science works today. In this episode we talk about how we approach doing peer reviews. How do you distinguish between differences in ap

Doctorpiece Theater

To get your PhD you have to do a dissertation. For some this is an important product that demonstrates your ability to produce original research. To others, it's a vestig

The Last Straw

Speaking up about injustice and bad behavior in a professional setting - as a witness, or as the target of it - is hard. It's uncomfortable, it's difficult, and it can ge

Talk the Talk

Academics give a lot of talks. Job talks, conference talks, colloquium talks, brownbag talks, pub talks. In this episode we talk about talks. How do you approach differen

Everybody Act Normal

Scientists have to follow a lot of rules. We have IRB rules, journal submission rules, university rules - lots of rules. But some of the most important rules in science a