9 July 2025
Which Kind of Science Reform
What hope is there for science reform, if we can’t agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices.
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9 February 2024
Two Zombie Papers in Human Behavioral Ecology
This is a box from a book chapter that I wrote with Jeremy Koster (volume). In it we comment on unscientific and counter-productive norms in our field. We also suggest constructive reforms. Since the chapter will be buried in a book, I’m reprinting the best bit here on my blog. You can download a PDF of the whole chapter.
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2 January 2024
The Third Edition, the Dotted Half Note of Editions
Franco of Cologne was a 13th century music theorist. He was also a head of the Catholic crusader order the Knights Hospitaller, the sister order of the better known Knights Templar favored in conspiracy theories. Franco himself held a conspiracy about threes.
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17 July 2023
None of the Above
Yeah p-values suck. But replacing them with another metric is no solution. The problem lies deeper.
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14 June 2023
Some Dumpster Fires for Your Consideration
One type of reaction to my post yesterday (here) was surprised disbelief.
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13 June 2023
Science and the Dumpster Fire
I’ve been in my current job since 2015. (previously) When I auditioned for this job, I said I would do it because it is a chance to work on research infrastructure and meta-science. I said the status quo is the biological and behavioral sciences is terrible. It makes little sense to invest in ambitious research projects when a typical researcher has no ability to define a non-null model of a phenomenon, to explore the implications of such a model, and to evaluate those implications with evidence. Success in the sciences does not, in the present day, depend upon those skills. But we should fix the foundations before wasting more public money.
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19 September 2022
The Problem With Cultural Evolution
I will now roast myself and my scientific field. This is therapy designed to elicit self-criticism in myself and in my colleagues. The themes are real though. I have heard variations of them from diverse colleagues. This post coincides with this year’s annual Cultural Evolution Society meeting in Aarhus. I hope it incites some animated discussions.
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13 September 2022
The Quality of Quantitative Analysis
I was asked by a colleague here in Leipzig to participate in a panel discussion of “What unites quantitative and qualitative research approaches?” I don’t have well-formed opinions on this topic, and I’ve never written about it. So naturally I immediately agreed to participate.
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2 September 2022
There Are No Magic Outcome Variables
I’m very sorry but I am going to write about statistics and causal inference again. I’d much rather be doing science. I’ll make it brief.
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6 January 2022
Never Too Early To Talk About Missing Data
This story starts on twitter, but it gets better.
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