I’ve thought about this for months, and gone back and forth multiple times. Now, I’m at peace with this change. I’m done making behavioral science videos.
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Maybe you should move on to String Theory or Dark Matter research.
bit of a dunkey reference
excellent decision. We had been sharing videos about the fake peer review system and its impact on experimental sciences for some times now
This is one of the things that makes me so frustrated about the tradition of shoddy research (questionable research practices, p-hacking, researcher degrees of freedom, etc.) in so much of academic psychology. It discourages and derails the careers of students and early career professionals. Producing a research literature of unreliable findings is fine for people who already have established careers (tenured professionals, think tank-ers, TED Talk-ers), but it's really hard for people who don't. I'm really sorry. It's not right.
Thank you for the excellent work that you have done so far. I am sorry to hear of what must certainly be emotionally painful for you, but look forward to seeing what you do next. Good luck
Bettering science and how we apply it has literally been my adult life's work – before, during and after my phd program. I'd love to talk to you more about this, Pete!
In my experience as a consultant post-phd, I've found that Kurt Lewin's approach (applied and theoretical science need each other) is our best defense against publishing bad science.
I've been involved with a number of orgs who feel the same way you do: the Center for Open Science, The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science, and others.
There are people who want things to get better, too: Brian Nosek, Simine Vazire, James Heathers, Nick Brown, the Data Colada guys and MANY more.
There are people who have done the right thing when their results don't replicate: Dana Carney came out and said her team unintentionally p-hacked the power posing work while Amy Cuddy chose to make a career on it.
It's easy to rail against academia; there's a lot wrong with it.
I also believe that even in a post-Bem (2013) world,
well-applied social science can ask and answer the most important questions facing individuals, societies, and businesses.
I've sent you an email via your contactpetejudo address; I hope we can talk more.
No matter what – thank you!
I used to be a physics student. It's a pretty safe place to avoid academic dishonesty, but I got very interested in the science of inference itself, and switched to mathematics. I have a strong interest in philosophy and mathematics, but I think a part of my decision had to do with institutional gatekeeping. See, competing for grant money seems to occupy so much of an academics time. I wanted to contribute in an impactful way without the exorbitant cost associated with research in most other fields. This way I could hope to minimise the institutional incentives' pressure on what I do, so I can actually have a bit more freedom to work on things I think are cool, to a standard that would let me sleep at night (even if those so happen to be in vogue atm). The only two fields you can actually do that in are math and philosophy, so that ended up being a big part of my choice to go into mathematics.
Like, if you want some advice, study some statistics at an advanced level. Learn some Bayesian techniques and some causal inference – like mutual information – and try start your own lab. So much SocSci can't get past Pearson Regression, so at least you'll be in a better position to say what a study should have done, instead of what it did.
Hell yeah, academia needs to change. So many people have discouraged me to abandon my dreams of becoming an academic researcher. Believe me when I say, I will give up my career in industry to move back to academia, but seeing how corrupted it is through your videos (not that industry is any better), I've been having doubts.
But now, I feel inspired by this video. I will come back and I will try to make a difference
It's awesome that you are making this change and I am grateful to see that not everyone prioritizes profit over honesty. I'm looking forward to your new content.
This video shows that Loss Aversion is at least true for you. Focus on what you've gained on this journey rather than what may have been wasted.
You're an inspiration to me as a scientist! I've given up on my PhD in the field of experimental physics and I have truly felt the pressure to shape my data to the publication system. I have read papers that proposed bullshit arguments just for the sake of filling up the theoretical part of a paper, rather than let the data tell its incomplete and confusing story. The academic system has left me deeply disappointed and only wanting to talk more about the problems with science that need fixing, rather than the subject I was trying to advance.
Thank you for this. The current state of research needs to be exposed if we're ever going to be able to correct it. Right now it's an industry based on lies, and humanity will never progress if it can't trust its main mechanism of diminishing its ignorance.Too much time is spent reading bogus papers, where it's impossible to tell if it's bogus or not. I've simply stopped reading.
Hi, my name is Lance Bush. I have a PhD in psychology and I share many of your concerns with academia and peer review, as well as your concerns about the state of psychological research. You have my support, and I hope we can find more behavioral scientists who are concerned about the state of the field and want to make it better. I'd be happy to speak with you, as well! I think you've made a reasonable decision here and I look forward to your future content.
By any chance you have a business email
I agree with Pete about loss aversion. Positive thoughts motivate us more than fear in our daily lives.
For his part, Pete has overcome a sense of loss for his behavior science channel focus. But he replaced the loss with a fundamental gain. He does more than continue posting… he dives into how the community can improve.
Keep up the good fight, Pete! We promise to stay tuned.
The problem with academia is to some extent the problem with society at large. The believe in individual merit makes academia impossible. It creates the "publish or perish" mentality, the obsession with individual laurels, undermines cooperation which is indeed the meat of modern complex science.
I'm a retired psychiatrist. You don't have to apologize to me as I never trusted the literature.
In fact all medical literature is pretty bad because so many of the conclusions are stating clinically insignificant differences. I believe Richard Feynman said all social sciences can say is sometimes this and sometimes that. That being said, I loved being a psychotherapist and although I couldn't come up with any real generalizations, helping people get over their self-destructive beliefs (I'm ugly; I'm a bad person; I don't deserve to live; etc.) was fascinating. Analyzing dreams was interesting. Explaining the meaning of a person's behavior (why they are always late; why they get involved with political demonstrations; why their stomach hurts when they ask their boss for a raise; why they can't find a good partner, etc.) was fascinating.
Don't give up on psychology.
So I literally just found your channel and this is really fascinating to see!
I really think this is a good thing, having scepticism for a current system that is flawed is the greatest gift you can bring to the future of that system and the world at large.
I actually find critique of academia incredibly important and also fascinating because it is a really powerful establishment with a very dodgy history. Some case studies that I really like are in the book Human Kind by Rutger Bregman, and his analysis of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment, and I'd love to see a video on the subject form your perspective.
You may also like the sociology paper titled "Fuck Nuance by Kieran Healy
Well said.
You were confronted between ignoring facts and pretending that (almost) everything is fine or acknowledging problems that are too important to be ignored to keep a consistent view on your field, and you chose the most honest one. My field is mostly political science and the assumptions on what is true, even before analyzing data, is so much against the idea of what science should be….Good luck for what's coming and I'll definitely keep following your channel!
Everything in behavioral science looks shady to me.
In school I gorged myself on Sadock & Kaplan, and research publications. I took whatever they said with a "truckload" of salt. Their conclusions always seemed unbelievable.
I must commend you for having the bravery to speak out.
Most people in your position would double down or even quadruple down. And act as if the materials they quote are on the up and up.