Everything Hertz

Twitter account

https://www.twitter.com/robinnkok

34: E-health (with Robin Kok) Dec 22, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James have their very first guest! For this episode they're joined by Robin Kok (University of Southern Denmark) to talk e-health. They also cover a recent blog post that inadvertently highlighted questionable research practices in psychology.

Some of the topics covered:

The grad student who never said no
Postdoc work/life balance
Questionable research practices
Torturing data (with rattan sticks)
Using the GRIM test to assess data accuracy
Unpaid internships
Saying 'yes' to opportunities that come your way
The Myers-Briggs test is rubbish
What is e-health?
Are e-health interventions efficacious?
e-health intervention implementation issues
The poor quality of psych intervention smartphone apps
Using "Facebook Live" to broadcast conference presentations
The future of e-health

Links

Robin's twitter account

"The grad student who never said no" blog post

http://www.brianwansink.com/phd-types-only/the-grad-student-who-never-said-no

The Buzzfeed quiz on 'Which Disney princess are you?' (James is Belle)

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mccarricksean/which-disney-princes-are-you?utm_term=.riNJn5DbW#.ci9gL3Xq8

XKXD TornadoGuard comic

https://xkcd.com/937/

The efficacy of e-health interventions

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20151/abstract

Wild West eHealth: Time to Hold our Horses?

www.ehps.net/ehp/index.php/contents/article/download/765/pdf_44

Smartphone app interventions

http://www.jmir.org/2013/11/e247/

Facebook page

Twitter account

Special Guest: Robin Kok.

33: Zombie theories Dec 16, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James discuss Zombie theories, which are scientific ideas that continue to live on in the absence of evidence. Why do these ideas persist and how do we kill them for good?

Some of the topics covered:

Why do some ideas live on?
Zombie theories in heart rate variability research
Reasons why zombie theories proliferate more in the social sciences
Attractiveness and simplicity
Theories become brands
Oxytocin zombie theories
The power of shaming
Ideas are corrected more quickly in smaller fields
James' new interest in Cow ECG
People using science as a weapon to open up hip pockets
How do we kill these zombies for good?
Manual vs. automated PubMed comments
What's the impact of paper retraction on future citations?
How do you correct the scientific record?

Links

Facebook page

Twitter account

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/11/e012914.full

32: Can worrying about getting sick make you sicker? Dec 01, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James discuss a new population study that linked health anxiety data with future heart disease.

Some of the topics covered:

Web MD and health anxiety
How would healthy anxiety contribute to heart disease?
A summary of the study
Ischemic heart disease = coronary artery disease
Do people with healthy anxiety take better care of thier health?
Don't be fooled by percentage increase of risk for something that's rare
There are some things you can't just randomize
The pros and cons of big data collection

Links

The paper

Facebook page

Twitter account

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2569454

31: Discover your psychiatric risk with this one weird trick Nov 16, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James discuss a recent study of over one million Swedish men that found that higher resting heart rate late adolescence was associated with an increased risk for subsequent psychiatric illness.

Some of the topics covered:

How did these authors get such an enormous dataset?
The benefits of testing so many people
What we liked about the study (hint: lots of things)
Measuring cardiovascular efficiency using a cycle ergometer
The pitfalls of self-reported physical activity
How the media covered this study
Contextual factors - does the testing environment induce anxiety?
Co-morbidity in psychiatry
What would James do with 200,000 ECGs strips?

Links

The paper

The Daily Mail story

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3875062/Why-heartbeat-teenager-affect-later-life-Boys-high-blood-pressure-risk-mental-health-problems-adults.html?linkId=30382089

Facebook page

Twitter account

https://www.twitter.com

30: Authorship Nov 02, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James discuss authorship in the biomedical sciences

29: Learning new skills Oct 16, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James talk about how they learn new things.

Some of the topics discussed:

Internet memes
Consolidating old ideas rather than learning new ones
Why learn a new skill when you just get someone else to do it?
A lesson of not having a good understanding statistical software...
James and Dan butt heads about meta-analysis (again)
Learning new things is interesting
How did people learn things before the internet?
How to follow things on Twitter without being on Twitter

Links

Bayes factor paper with 'primer' paper matrix

https://alexanderetz.com/2016/02/07/understanding-bayes-how-to-become-a-bayesian-in-eight-easy-steps/

Facebook page

Twitter account

28: Positive developments in biomedical science Sep 30, 2016

Show notes

Pre-registration, p-hacking, power, protocols. All these concepts are pretty mainstream in 2016 but hardly discussed 5 years ago. In this episode, James and Dan talk about these ideas and other developments in biomedical science.

Some of the topics discussed:

James loves blinded reviews, scihub
Dan loves protocols, learning stats through social media, reproducible science

Links

The COMPARE initiative

http://compare-trials.org

"Give me the F-ing PDF" Chrome extension

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/give-me-the-f-ing-pdf/iekjpaipocoglamgpjoehfdemffdmami/related

Facebook page

Twitter account

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJuXIq7OazQ

27: Complaints and grievances Sep 23, 2016

Show notes

Dan and James discuss complaints and grievances. Stay tuned for part 2 where things get positive.

Some of the topics discussed:

Conflicts of interest
Criticism in psychology
Why does there seem to be so much bad blood in psychology?
Retracted papers: fraud or sloppiness?
Authors not acknowledging your peer-review remarks
The short-term nature of research
The benefits of 'centers of excellence'

Links

The 'vibe of the thing' scene from 'The Castle' (Great Aussie film)

Facebook page

Twitter account

https://www.twitter.com