66 - Stuart Ritchie - Hype, Bias & Fraud in Science

Stuart is the author of Intelligence: All that Matters (2015):
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/stuart-ritchie/intelligence-all-that-matters/9781444791808/
and Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science (2020):
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117290/science-fictions/9781847925657.html

You can find some of his academic publications listed here:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/stuart-ritchie

Follow Stuart on Twitter: @StuartJRitchie

Further References
Charles Murray, Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (2020)

My article on circumcision can be found here:
https://areomagazine.com/2019/09/24/a-wrong-against-boys-an-impossible-conversation-about-circumcision/

Brian Deer, The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield’s War on Vaccines (2020)

David Robert Grimes, The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World (2019)

Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams (2018)

Alexey Guzey, “Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors”:
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ (2019)

Andrew Gelman’s scientific blog can be found here:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/

Timestamps
2:09 Fraudster Paolo Macciarini and his tracheotomies
11:26 Bias towards positive results in scientific publications
15:56 Stuart and his colleagues’ failed attempt to replicate a startling psychology finding
20:03 P-values, p-hacking and the disgrace of Brian Wansink
39:17 Reproducibility failures
42:54 The relationship between power and effect size: Amy Cuddy & power posing; neuroscience; candidate genes; ethical questions in cancer research
01:00:55 Scientists’ own hype when they present their work; the scientific publication system; Andrew Wakefield
01:09:22 How has Stuart managed to avoid becoming disillusioned with all of science & with experts?
01:14:26 How has writing this book affected Stuart’s own practice as a scientist? The Mertonian principles.
01:19:51 How can laypeople do better at critically assessing a scientific finding?
01:24:20 Matthew Walker and his Why We Sleep book.