I have a master's in behavioral science and I feel exactly the same way. We have all spent too many hours studying and working on projects based on literature that doesn't replicate. Half the stuff I learned in school was proven false by the time I graduated!
I think an issue with behavioral science is a lot of reputable findings take time. Like the marshmallow test. It wasn't that children who ate the marshmallow were more prone to a worse quality of life afterwards because they were more impulsive (shown by eating the marshmallow) it is because they tended to come from worse economic situations anyway, which is still related to why they ate the marshmallow, but was not considered in the initial experiment.
This is the same in medical school. Half the stuff you learn will become false after you finished education due to new breakthroughs. The field of science and social science requires a strong growth mindset and it is a path of continuous learning. It does not end when you finish your education, you have to commit hard to keep learning.
Funnily, the reason I subscribed in the first place was not because of explainer videos. In fact, I hadn’t even seen any until last week. I thought that was a nice change. But I subscribed because I liked that you had a niche subject, exposing dodgy researchers.. You do what you do best
understandable but one should focus on the whole academic system not on the single cases like the fake peer review system and its impact on experimental sciences
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.
I feel this so much. I got my Masters degree in computer science specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning and that field has a lot of the exact same problems. While in grad school the research lab I worked in was doing a research study on replicability. We found that roughly 75% of AI research did not release source code. When source code wasn't released, 90% of research papers did not describe the methods well enough to reproduce the algorithms. When it did describe the methods well enough, about 50% of the time the results didn't match. The original study was trying to show that we could replicate experiments, they essentially proved the experiments couldn't even be rerun much less the results replicated. A huge problem in the field of research is replication studies are harder to get funding for and harder to publish. Institutions prefer "novel" over "confirmed". To get confirmation you need to go to industry, but capitalism leads to secrecy.
As someone working on the industrial side of the wider ML field, replication is hugely frustrating. I scan papers looking for something that could be of value. But often performance is measured in weird metrics and code is not available. It's difficult to request a couple grand in time and compute in something you don't trust. At this point, I usually don't bother anymore. Is it simple and/or does it have some sort of performance proof or is there some good track record? Then it maybe makes sense. Otherwise there's no need to waste time and money.
I would really enjoy a deep dive into the Alzheimer's disease field. It is rife with fraud and academic dishonesty. Millions of dollars spent on preserving scientists' egos despite plenty of conflicting papers. A coffeezille style documentary on the field would be an amazing video for your channel... And hopefully shed some light on the incredibly depressing state of affairs.
The history of medicine is really interesting. So many of the breakthroughs were due to serendipity. Who knows where the breakthrough on Alzheimer's will come from. It could come from a kid who has pet lizards. Who knows?
@@geralvon Thanks for your input. But I don't see how that's relevant here. We are talking about scientists blatantly falsifying data. Copy and pasting lanes in western blot images to get published, leading to other scientists and institutions spending millions of dollars pursuing an idea that was fake from the start. Yes a treatment for Alzheimer's could come from anywhere. But if we spend all our funding on fraudulent ideas that lead to dead ends...we will miss them.
As a physicist, it's really comforting to hearing that. I moved to Asia and I started to notice in many countries students are struggling with dyslexia, so I started to dive in together with friends, what is the cause and why. However, it's absolutely frustrating the papers. As a person with strong mathematical skill, I read and I found soooo many flaws, poor design studies, and statistical lies. As an example: I was reading a paper where the author said his study confront another study, his study found around 40%, where another study he also cited found just around 15%. However his study was with just 22 students, when the other on was more than 1600 participants. Is it not obvious? Like, my man, of course this will go bad. Not even started to commenting how most of the studies are American/European centric. I had this discussion with a behaviorist where he said his intervention in a company here in Japan made employees 95% more happier. When I started to add most of Japanese in an work environment is non confrontational and asked how he treats this on his study, he didn't have answers. Unfortunately, most of areas outside of mathematical field use statistics in a very poor manners, doesn't understand bias, homogeneous and heterogeneous group, and underestimate culturally responsive. So I understand you, a lot
> Unfortunately, most of areas outside of mathematical field use statistics in a very poor manners, doesn't understand bias, homogeneous and heterogeneous group, and underestimate culturally responsive. I was a M1 pharma student and doing an internship, and did a Tukey test. Then the lab researcher that asked me to do the "stats" asked me why I did the Tukey test. I answered I didn't know, I did what was asked of me. I just clicked on the first button and it was "recommended" Tukey test in Graph Pad. That's the level of stats we're dealing with.
@@planetary-rendez-vous thanks for sharing. I know admit you don't know is quite hard but I admire you came forward to say that. And unfortunately this is the true situation: we need more specialist in Al areas however by speeding up the process we left behind the fundamentals of science. It's sad and dangerous, because even pair review articles some of this problems can't be catch, and these mistakes can take lives.
@@TripImmigration Not knowing as a student is pretty normal, but why do I have to educate my own teachers or researchers about standard statistical practices? And now that I know better, did you know the elephant in the room about pvalue? Yeah that's funny. It just proves nobody understands pvalue, not even statisticians. There are papers talking about this issue all the time for more than 20 years since the issue of reproducibility in psychology. Issues of bad methodology, inherent science randomness, bad faith, bad statistical practices, lead to at least half of the papers being false and unreproducible lead to a scientific crisis. If this isn't alarming,I don't know what is. I'm aiming to become a researcher. But this is what I'm getting into? Suffice to say my motivation has already dried up. Not even worth the money, and not even worth the science (because you know you'll just do garbage science anyway) and not worth getting in a competitive elitist academic field to get shouted over in your expensive, stressful PhD. So what, where? And despite this, it seems throwing myself into this PhD career is the only option. Oh, the irony, slave to my ideals of science.
@@planetary-rendez-vous oh dear, welcome to my crises from 8 years ago. I can go an entire day of nonsense as example: entropy or density of entropy? Whata heck? Messiness as density? 😂 I suffered the same agony: Continue in academia and need to fall for drama, SH and bunch of narcissist spoiled brat professors who use their position of power to harass and humiliated you while you make some small progress in science, or take my life in another direction. I chose the second. As most I love science and research I can't deal with the environment. I just can't. Science has a lot bad science, since straight bad experiment, poor knowledge to the most outrageous faking data. And this happen with physics too: salami science.... where instead you publish 1 good article every 3 years, you need to split this in small 6 months Frankstein article to meet the criteria for continue researching And more often than that, professor with PhD are forced to do classes where the vastly majority never were training to teach before. It's wild and horrifying. As Higgs said: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system.
I worked as a mental health clinician alongside therapists, psychologists, and PhD's. I even participated in a study which was funded by a NIH grant, I was on the ground recording data. In the social sciences, many people interested in these topics want to be therapists. And, they are great therapists. But they don't have strong skills in statistics... or research. The social sciences magnify all the problems with the research industry today (publish or perish). A lot of course material in psychology is not dependent on earlier material, so you can sometimes get through a course without really learning anything, and it won't hurt. It's totally different from Physics, where you won't get out of your freshman year if you don't know the material. The standards are different. Many bachelor's programs, psychology students can take "statistics for psychology", which only teaches the students to read/interpret statistics. So they don't really work problems. Not good.
Pfft! It's not only behavioral research. When I was in medical school, I got conned into participating in a research project where the Lead doc made it clear that he WOULD make my life hell IF I didn't come up with "good" results -- "good" being results that confirmed HIS ideas. Hey, I admit it, I wimped out and now there's literature published in respectable journals that's totally bogus.
@@fragslap5229Why wouldn't they?! They're a for profit system that gets nothing but money for that bad data. If you build a system that rewards all data, especially unusual or fraudulent data, you'll get a lot of it.
I’m glad to hear that your income isn’t dependent on playing nice with academia. It reminded me of this quote: “It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It”.
Thanks for your candor, hard work, and great videos. The way I view the academic literature is this: 1. Findings result in hypotheses to consider testing. Not an absolute to make a decision on. All behavior is context dependent. 2. There's a reason academic journals are so hard to read.
Peter, fellow behavioral scientist here. Wanted to say to not give up on these explainer videos. Growing up as a behavioral scientist involves realizing how many findings are on shaky ground. As you mention, you only realize this by conducting your own research.. books will always lead people astray. Keep running those studies. They will make you wiser but also more optimistic, I promise. For the future of the behavioral science content of this channel, may I suggest that you, yes, abandon explainer videos of (in)famous effects and instead focus on explaining good methodology. The issue with all these famous effects is that they really sit on terrible theoretical grounds by having extremely poor syntax and semantics (Kahneman is an exception). This is where the real gold mine of behavioral science is but it’s so much less sexy because it’s not what directly drives sales and invites to Wall Street talks. It’s also largely forgotten within the researcher communities because the best work on this was done in the 50-60s. Some examples are classic Pavlovian studies that are super robust and have led to models such as Rescorla-Wagner and the model-free/model-based framework. Vision science is extremely robust as well and translates to insights we make in industry. We have very cool reinforcement learning approaches that give direct insight into human behavior and led to the advancement of AI (see Deep Mind and Vicarious). I come from this tradition which makes me an unconventional Behavioral Scientist in industry, but I (immodestly) believe it makes me a better scientist because I question everything. Happy to chat more about this. You can find me on Linkedin- Mouslim Cherkaoui - Let’s connect!
Very happy to see this shift! You could reach out to James Heathers and Nick Brown about the test (GRIM) that they published in '16 to detect inconsistencies between research datasets and published results. From the wikipedia page: "Brown and Heathers applied the test to 260 articles published in Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Of these articles, 71 were amenable to GRIM test analysis; 36 of these contained at least one impossible value and 16 contained multiple impossible values."
The candor of your message is refreshing. When reading about bias I've often wondered: did the author invent the bias first, and then go in search of a use case to prove it? Regardless, you know I'm a huge fan of yours and will eagerly anticipate what your future holds in store!
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.
I completely understand you!!!!! I've started studying psychology in the hopes of understanding peoples minds and behaviors in a scientific way. But for me my "trust" in the literature has declined a lot because of one professor I had who was EXTREMELY critical and ALWAYS explained the limitations of every study he showed. So that made me become way more apprehensive of the validity of a lot of things... On top of that, I was participating in a lot of experimental/behavioral/cognitive researches. And I as a participant experienced extreme fatigue SO OFTEN during all these experiments!!! I had to repeat the inherently boring tasks so so so many times in a row. I'm not sure why that was necessary, I suppose it will have had a reason. But I experienced how fatigue made me care way less about the experiment I was doing 40 minutes or so into it. I was really questioning the validity of my own responses... And not that I didn't want to be a very rigorous participant, I just physically couldn't, because of the long duration of repetition of boring tasks... My eyes were dropping and I'm a person who actually has issues falling asleep, I normally never ever fall asleep out of the blue, during the day, during courses,... + I found the tasks to be so far off from the real world, that it also made me question the conclusions/assumptions that were made from these very very basic cognitive tasks. I'm currently getting way more scientific satisfaction in biochemistry. It's also an important part of how our minds work, but less for behaviors maybe. More the cognitive/emotional/mental health part. I feel like I can trust the validity more of biochemistry. Thanks for being so honest and also showing the frauds in the scientific field! It just shows that science most definitely also can become a dogma and that the possibility that things get refuted is the true basis of science.
I think you have made the right decision. This is very important, needed and there is a big demand for it. You are going to rock it. Soon you will hit 100k and slowly become an authority in the topic! best of lucks
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
Creating this video took a lot of bravery and introspection. I have mad respect for the vulnerability and candor of your video. I'm excited to see where you go with your channel.
Hello, I am very happy that you decided to take this new direction! I am a psychology student and I have seen my times how the failures of the social and human sciences can be covered by the academic system. I think that this new direction is fundamental and could create a more positive wave than to simply explain the literature already present. Good job and good luck
Been feeling similar frustrations about academia / behav sci lately as well. Glad to know I’m not alone and that there’s someone willing to speak up about it!
I think you're one of the most inspiring scientists I've ever seen (and hope to meet in the future!) I'm going for my genetics degree soon and you've ironically given me so much hope for the future as someone like you providing facts, being honest and truthful is something I respect so much. I wish I had more professors as dedicated as you are to the truth through my Bachelors.
I really, really appreciate your commitment to academic integrity, and it means a lot that you would do this. Thank you. And I look forward to watching your new videos!
I understand your frustration. I also applaud your decission. Honesty in academia, and a good researcher to talk and expose about it is a part that we need in the system. Checks and balances are important, and I congratulate you for teh bold step you are taking.
Thank you for speaking up! This was the exact reason why I decided to leave the PhD program that I spent 4 years of my life trying to make myself a “good fit”. I almost lost myself, forgetting my passion for research and my desire to extend human knowledge in order to help others. And totally went through an identity crisis after deciding to leave academia. Been enjoying your videos and will continue supporting them! ❤
Hi Pete, I’ve been following your channel for two years and what to thank you for sharing this brave video. I’m currently a behavioural economics student at City and share your thoughts regarding the validity of what we are learning. In light of the fake data and publication biases, it leaves you wondering that if these effects were really so powerful why are they are so hard to replicate? Another elephant in the room regarding behavioural science is that its focus on changing individual behaviour allows responsibility for change to put on consumers/citizens rather than institutions and businesses. You may have already covered it in your channel but a 2023 paper by Loewenstein and Chater shines a light on how ‘individually framed solutions’ have been enthusiastically supported by corporates, which is intended to distract us from identifying systemic solutions - for which they would be responsible for bearing the cost of implementing. We are currently going through a watershed moment, as we are waking up to the reality of broken academia and the perverted research agenda. I went to an industry BeSci conference yesterday and could see that most of the panel were in a state of denial about this uncomfortable truth. Thank you for your honesty and integrity. Very interested to see what you uncover regarding the state of academia.
Thank you for putting the failure of the academic canon in terms of student loans & personal investment. It was eye-opening for me. Very insightful work, as usual. I started watching your videos on academic fraud, and I'm glad to see you take a more macro approach to that.
Wow, I am so impressed that you could call out the inconsistencies within your field. This is true intellectual honesty; we need more people like you. I'm not sure if I would not have the strength to make a video like this if it was my field being called into question. Well done.
Loving it. I had a similar moment back in 2016 after I read more and more about the replication crisis. I was just starting my PhD back then. It's hard to not be cynical nowadays, but I can see why such things happen. Man, I used to attend meetings where people decided about which journal they want the study to be published in even before the data was looked at, obviously putting pressure on the people involved - "You just need to use the right analyses". I really respect your decision and hope you find a broad audience. :)
6 месяцев назад+6
Gracias por la honestidad intelectual y por aportar a la discusión sobre la crisis de (verificabilidad en) la ciencia.
Been there. In a completely different area. But the same idea -- my identity was wound up in an area, completely. Then I lost confidence in the reality of it. Took a few years to make the transition. Love your science ethics videos! Will continue watching.
Thank you for your honesty, mad respect. It shows lots maturity, humbleness and objectivity to actually take a step back and consider things then present them in an honest manner. Stay true to yourself. Best of luck in your journey.
Thank you for your honesty about this Pete! But I do have a question: do you think that maybe our lack of certainty about behavioral science principles investigated by academic research might come less so from dishonesty in academia, but rather, due to less universality in behavioral science than we had assumed? Embedding loss aversion framing in one context might even be well replicable if one uses the exact same context again. But when you go into the field, the framing choice is embedded in a web of meaning particular to this context. For example, if people already think about their losses before they get a message, then maybe loss framing does nothing, and the gain frame changes their perspective slightly. One of the important paradigms in behavioral science is precisely that 'context matters', so how can we assume universality in the way that context itself (such as loss framing) affects behavior? I'm curious what you think.
So happy I've found this channel. I started to look into scientific research a couple of years ago, mostly to make sure that the things relayed in the media actually held up to what was stated in the research. To my surprise, not only was the conclusions often really not supported by data, but a lot of the time basic scientific principles were completely absent. To say it mildly, my trust in academia has all but evaporated. It's no wonder conspiracy theories are rampant.
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
👋Science is for the strong, for those who can withstand uncertainty, ups and downs and preserve critical sense and the frustrations of the incessant search for truth and knowledge. It's sad that you're leaving the area at exactly the time when we most need people willing to fix the flaws, correct the mistakes and move forward. As the saying goes: Change, but change slowly, because direction is more important than speed. Success for you!
Well done, Pete 👏 I echo many other people here when I say that I appreciate this stance. I look forward to your future content. Thank you for being a shining example of academic integrity 🙏
This was heartbreaking to see. Your disappoinment feels so honest I can almost hear those young 9-years-ago dreams breaking into the floor. I hope this new path makes you happier!
That's some refreshing amount of intellectual honesty. I really appreciate it. I have had the Same. I schooled myself and trained for becoming a nonverbal consultant a few years ago. And I wanted to be on that was science based. So at first it seemed there was enough reliable science out there to be science based and informed for that field. But it did not take long before I found out that the big names in social science surrounding nonverbal communication where not producing reliable and reproducible science. Even those who came after and professed to be critical of that field and gave it their own spin based on some philosophical and theoretical beliefs they themselves did not held their own work at the same standards as they did those of which they where critical. Now that field is limbo and no actual reliable efforts have gone in creating a better theory or even in improving the science that is done. So I have had similar dissapointments and don't trust those sciences to create much of reliable use for the coming years.
Una decisión ética muy admirable en estos tiempos. Aunque sientas frustración, de seguro muchas personas estamos de acuerdo contigo y este ejercicio de sinceridad es un ejemplo para quienes creemos que se deben mantener valores esenciales para realizar un trabajo integral. Éxito en lo que hagas.
I think you are doing a great job and look forward to your new videos. It is good that you are independent and not dependent on approval from peers or on a university that won't like your work.
I relate so much to this and I'm so sorry you are going through this. I recently left my phd in neurobiology, in part, because I honestly don't trust the scientific system anymore. I really hope that someday these things change.
You are the only person on RUclips that I know (in the field of behavioral science ) that when he discovers that something he previously shared with the content consumers is wrong, says about it. We need more people like you on this platform. Thanks to you I improved a lot. Besides that I become interested in this field and learned a lot from you, I began to check the facts on the internet more vogurously and think more critical. And yes, I very, very rarely write comments, especially this long
That feels like the trajectory of a lot of industries. The reality is always so complex, and there are so many externalities, egos, incentives, and other things that end up obstructing the work. It's unfortunate.
I feel indebted to those who value their integrity enough to confront hard truths and say something. It's not easy to do. I made a career change this year and hit a rock bottom moment where I grappled with similar realizations like the years and money/education spent on this career path and identifying with this career. Content from my field's insiders and ex-insiders who were brave enough to speak up helped to validate my criticisms and doubts and gave me the extra confidence to make a change, and a big change it was. The utter shift in perspective I experienced cost me a lot of the idealism I had when I started down that career path, but I would never give up the maturity and clarity I gained in exchange. When I asked myself why I hadn't drawn these conclusions sooner, and the pivotal influential content I came across was years and years old, I decided I hadn't been ready to accept it; I still thought there was a chance that my field made the impacts it claimed to make. I have observed that the people who have spoken up and pointed out the flaws are subtly leading the way, despite the staggering opposition. I respect your choice and am excited for your next chapter. Sorry for the long post; I never comment on RUclips, but this resonated with me, and I wanted to show my support.
Pete, thank you so much for your dedication to the values of honesty and integrity which are foundational to a healthy and coherent society. I appreciate your personality's traits which shine unabashedly very much!
You are incredibly brave and a true scientist. I just started my PhD program, and I’m already seeing things that are making me feel that the prestige and pressure to succeed is promoting bad science. Keep up the good work!
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.
I'm excited to hear about the new direction. As you said, behavioral sciences, and in particular behavioral psychology are a complete joke. The fundamental problem with these fields, is that they think you can learn about human behavior by putting graduate students into a lab and having them perform obscure, unnatural activities. In truth, these researchers are simply concocting scenarios to try to illicit some behavior that they consider "irrational". If you want to study human behavior, you have to observe real people in real situations making real decisions.
The fact that you are a practitioner grants your opinion even more value than those with published research. You tried to implement and found that theories did not carry into reality. Kudos on your intellectual honesty!
Thank you for your honesty! I’m also interested in the scientific research ecosystem so your insights will be valuable in whatever topic you choose to focus on.
Your content is great, Pete. And I will still be here following the new path of you channel. I just entered a MSC in administration that will start in 2024 just because of the behavioral science research track (because it is a subject that I have been studying non officially for a few years and I love it). All these shadows that are cast in the field are making me sad too, but I think I need to go there and understand all of this my self.
I have enjoyed your videos so far. Thanks. I hope that you continue to share what insights from behavior science you believe are true, with necessary caveats such as if they have not been independently confirmed. I would also like to see you address ideas outside academia such as popular books and trends that are based on misunderstandings of research or on fraudulent or deeply flawed research.
That’s really honest and thoughtful, Pete. I’m sure you’ll do great in the new direction you’re planning for your channel. I’ve worked in academia for more than 30 years and I do believe you’re right to expose its sheer immorality. Good luck to you!
Worth remembering how Freud's work has been viewed over time. As my therapist friend says: Freud made my job possible; Bandura, Rogers (et al) enabled me to be good at it. Very similar thing here - some of the BE material will come to be seen as wrong - either because of the fraud, or just because it will lead on to newer ways of thinking. Personally not too surprised that replication is an issue, and also think that it is to be expected - there's still so much we don't understand about the way we operate.
It's clear how hard this has been for you and how deeply you have been betrayed by the failures of the academic system. This new(ish!) direction for the channel is exciting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you uncover, but please take as much time as you need to process this and look after yourself.
Highly appreciate your stance! It’s people like you who should advance the field! And if there’s a temptation to become the Coffezilla of Behavioral Science, I’d feel blessed! But it would be sad if you give up science. Perhaps there’s a way to do both? Love!
Good luck, Pete, with new approach. I teach BE couple of years now and found my approach to the troubling news about fraud and failed replications - it normal, it's okay, because it's relatively new field and possibility to empirically test smth is curse and blessing the same time) i find much joy reading about new hypothesis and experiments and making some myself, so i don't really have high expectations that some research will stand test of time, it just joy in the process.
Heyo, im someone new that got here because of the Academia Fraud Videos, for many people this will read as you chasing the high from these videos, I myself would guess its a bit of both, frustration with your own field and seeing there is an audience for this topic. I also think thats a totally fine thing to do btw. no matter what reason. I would advise you, if you have not already, to do some critical introspection for what the reasoons for the change are, just to make sure you dont regret it later. The second thing i would say is, BE CAREFULL this topic can devolve into incedibly toxic discourse and attracts a certain conspiratorially anti scientific niche, i really liked how in the past you drew clear lines regarding these people and would like you to stay true to that in the future. Also you dont have to throw the towel compleatly, i think its totally fair to teach people things about your field by using these bad examples (as you kind of said yourself in the video already), science is unfortunatly, as shown in your past videos, not immune the problem of greed and fame hungry actors and I think we who particepate in it, often think we are immune to it, because of our edjucation, while by doing so, leave people to fly under the rader sometimes. I wish all the best for you and this chanel!
Your work has been important and your insights are valuable. These may not be the findings that you want but these are the findings that you’ve got. It’s What you do next with what you know.
Excited to see your new videos exposing academia! Would be awesome if you dipped your toes into theory / philosophy in the future. While they have a lot of academics vying for tenure they also have a lots of people outside the system who are exhausted of fraud and the quantification of everything. Looking forward to your new content
Very nice commentary! I became so disappointed with the field of Anthropology that I left it altogether and became an English teacher. My professors in Anthropology all wanted me to do topics of their choice, and when I saw what my fellow students were researching, I had a great laugh and said goodbye to my PhD program.
So, I did a small research on/in education. I gave my students task to solve a problem that is easily solved if you use distribution property. The numbers were huge. They all started multiplication without use of the property. Almost all of them failed to produce correct result of spent too much time on it. Then I explained them how this property can make this task easy. Next week I repeated the test with other numbers. All but one used the method. The only guy who didn't use the method was absent last week during the first test. So, I showed that this approach is indeed very effective for reenforcing some knowledge
Good for you. Growing interest in the subject and Retraction Watch becoming public means a step in the right direction against academic fraud. Very interested to see your future videos.
Hey Pete. Here's my perspective as a Physicist. Papers, academia, research, etc. are only one part of the story with any science. As you cited, when theoretical concepts get scrutinized and put to the test, they often fall short. Wild theories don't stack up to experimentation. Every so often, there will be a big experiment proving or disproving certain concepts in physics, such as last year's Nobel prize. To me, whenever the system gets knocked down, whenever things are shaken up and when long established rules, norms and widely accepted "truths" are proven incorrect, that is the most exciting time to be a professional in any field. It seems to me as an outsider that the behavioral sciences are going through a period of radical change. Maybe this could be an opportunity for radical change within the field? Maybe there are long accepted truths waiting to be disproved. Maybe this is a good thing. If negative framing is totally wrong, then it's awesome we finally found out. Yes, academia is absolutely broken and sucks and filled with the worst types of people, but don't let that discourage you from the thing you love. Remember that what you love is not the field, but the science, the concept. That's how I feel anyway, and how I rationalize it to myself. Being an experimentalist is great.
We need more people like you to make this decision. Science and engineering needs a lot more serious and capable critics, fewer cheerleaders, and fewer explainers.
A hard decision I'm sure, but one very well explained. Three additional topics which I think you could profitably explore: First, how to recognize sub-standard, bad, or bogus research. This would seem to be something that a behavioral researcher would have much to say about. Second, how to tweak academia -- while I left academia in mild disgust after pos-docing, I have followed things closely and still believe that there is more good than bad in it -- to replace the bad incentives which are ruining it. Third, it would be good to contrast and compare how other disciplines are dealing with the problem. The physical sciences, for example, have a degree of immunity because an important result nearly always *must* be replicated to make use of it. (For example, it is just a curiosity that a particular chemical reaction occurs unless it can be built upon to make something new.) If no one tries to replicate a result it usually means it's of little or no consequence. (E.g., the recent mess with room temperature superconductors. Claim made: many groups immediately try to replicate.) I could also recommend looking at the immense lengths big physics projects go to to make this sort of thing difficult, though they are mostly focused on researchers letting their expectations influence their analysis. The Fermilab muon g-2 experiment forced everyone to work with the master oscillator frequency a closely-guarded secret revealed only after all the analysis was done. There's a great discussion of this in the excellent book "Gravity's Ghost" about how LIGO made it hard for people's preconceptions to influence the result. Obviously none of this applies directly to behavioral science, but there might be some useful cross-fertilization to be found. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing your future work.
All those resources and time you've spent has definitely made you into a really good scientist, the only ones that can even hope to fix it! So money and time well spent! I'm excited about everything you summarised in this video, because even within science we need proper skeptics with critical thinking skills, especially as science these days is lucrative enough to eskew its original goal of knowledge for selfish monetary gains. As with all things, the reality of this is always, always, always more devastating to that small minority of people like us who truly believe in the ideals. A side story; I quit being a software developer to become a UX consultant where I thought I could get closer to fixing real problems of integration and HCI, and I did it for about 7 years until a few years ago when I went back into software, now knowing that anything you slap an "industry" around is ripe with postering and deceit and monetary drivers that weren't the reason I ventured into it to begin with. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it does require you to actually do it. I'm now in my 50's, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up ...
If I see an ad telling me that I will lose Y if I don't buy X, then that negative message which tries to scare me into buying X just creates an aversion against X.
I have a master's in behavioral science and I feel exactly the same way. We have all spent too many hours studying and working on projects based on literature that doesn't replicate. Half the stuff I learned in school was proven false by the time I graduated!
I think an issue with behavioral science is a lot of reputable findings take time. Like the marshmallow test. It wasn't that children who ate the marshmallow were more prone to a worse quality of life afterwards because they were more impulsive (shown by eating the marshmallow) it is because they tended to come from worse economic situations anyway, which is still related to why they ate the marshmallow, but was not considered in the initial experiment.
This is the same in medical school. Half the stuff you learn will become false after you finished education due to new breakthroughs. The field of science and social science requires a strong growth mindset and it is a path of continuous learning. It does not end when you finish your education, you have to commit hard to keep learning.
same here with psychology
Funnily, the reason I subscribed in the first place was not because of explainer videos. In fact, I hadn’t even seen any until last week. I thought that was a nice change. But I subscribed because I liked that you had a niche subject, exposing dodgy researchers..
You do what you do best
understandable but one should focus on the whole academic system not on the single cases like the fake peer review system and its impact on experimental sciences
Spoken like a true scientist. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know.
good point, the fake peer review system and its impact on experimental sciences is incredible
Dunning kruger effect at play!
I disagree the Dunning Kruger effect assumes good faith. Here it is a case of bad faith and power grabbing
@@flypinkswimmeltedkat4469 just a instrument of academic power
Pete Judo is a case of bad faith and power grabbing? lolwut @@2021philyou
Intellectual honesty. We need more of it. Good on you Pete
More on academic fraud, if it’s not trustworthy we should learn why! Thank you u got this
Yes 💯.
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.
I feel this so much. I got my Masters degree in computer science specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning and that field has a lot of the exact same problems. While in grad school the research lab I worked in was doing a research study on replicability. We found that roughly 75% of AI research did not release source code. When source code wasn't released, 90% of research papers did not describe the methods well enough to reproduce the algorithms. When it did describe the methods well enough, about 50% of the time the results didn't match. The original study was trying to show that we could replicate experiments, they essentially proved the experiments couldn't even be rerun much less the results replicated.
A huge problem in the field of research is replication studies are harder to get funding for and harder to publish. Institutions prefer "novel" over "confirmed". To get confirmation you need to go to industry, but capitalism leads to secrecy.
As someone working on the industrial side of the wider ML field, replication is hugely frustrating. I scan papers looking for something that could be of value. But often performance is measured in weird metrics and code is not available. It's difficult to request a couple grand in time and compute in something you don't trust. At this point, I usually don't bother anymore. Is it simple and/or does it have some sort of performance proof or is there some good track record? Then it maybe makes sense. Otherwise there's no need to waste time and money.
I would really enjoy a deep dive into the Alzheimer's disease field. It is rife with fraud and academic dishonesty. Millions of dollars spent on preserving scientists' egos despite plenty of conflicting papers.
A coffeezille style documentary on the field would be an amazing video for your channel... And hopefully shed some light on the incredibly depressing state of affairs.
The history of medicine is really interesting. So many of the breakthroughs were due to serendipity. Who knows where the breakthrough on Alzheimer's will come from. It could come from a kid who has pet lizards. Who knows?
@@geralvon Thanks for your input. But I don't see how that's relevant here. We are talking about scientists blatantly falsifying data. Copy and pasting lanes in western blot images to get published, leading to other scientists and institutions spending millions of dollars pursuing an idea that was fake from the start. Yes a treatment for Alzheimer's could come from anywhere. But if we spend all our funding on fraudulent ideas that lead to dead ends...we will miss them.
😊
As a physicist, it's really comforting to hearing that.
I moved to Asia and I started to notice in many countries students are struggling with dyslexia, so I started to dive in together with friends, what is the cause and why.
However, it's absolutely frustrating the papers. As a person with strong mathematical skill, I read and I found soooo many flaws, poor design studies, and statistical lies.
As an example: I was reading a paper where the author said his study confront another study, his study found around 40%, where another study he also cited found just around 15%. However his study was with just 22 students, when the other on was more than 1600 participants.
Is it not obvious? Like, my man, of course this will go bad.
Not even started to commenting how most of the studies are American/European centric.
I had this discussion with a behaviorist where he said his intervention in a company here in Japan made employees 95% more happier. When I started to add most of Japanese in an work environment is non confrontational and asked how he treats this on his study, he didn't have answers.
Unfortunately, most of areas outside of mathematical field use statistics in a very poor manners, doesn't understand bias, homogeneous and heterogeneous group, and underestimate culturally responsive.
So I understand you, a lot
> Unfortunately, most of areas outside of mathematical field use statistics in a very poor manners, doesn't understand bias, homogeneous and heterogeneous group, and underestimate culturally responsive.
I was a M1 pharma student and doing an internship, and did a Tukey test. Then the lab researcher that asked me to do the "stats" asked me why I did the Tukey test. I answered I didn't know, I did what was asked of me. I just clicked on the first button and it was "recommended" Tukey test in Graph Pad.
That's the level of stats we're dealing with.
@@planetary-rendez-vous thanks for sharing. I know admit you don't know is quite hard but I admire you came forward to say that.
And unfortunately this is the true situation: we need more specialist in Al areas however by speeding up the process we left behind the fundamentals of science.
It's sad and dangerous, because even pair review articles some of this problems can't be catch, and these mistakes can take lives.
@@TripImmigration Not knowing as a student is pretty normal, but why do I have to educate my own teachers or researchers about standard statistical practices?
And now that I know better, did you know the elephant in the room about pvalue? Yeah that's funny. It just proves nobody understands pvalue, not even statisticians. There are papers talking about this issue all the time for more than 20 years since the issue of reproducibility in psychology.
Issues of bad methodology, inherent science randomness, bad faith, bad statistical practices, lead to at least half of the papers being false and unreproducible lead to a scientific crisis.
If this isn't alarming,I don't know what is.
I'm aiming to become a researcher. But this is what I'm getting into? Suffice to say my motivation has already dried up. Not even worth the money, and not even worth the science (because you know you'll just do garbage science anyway) and not worth getting in a competitive elitist academic field to get shouted over in your expensive, stressful PhD. So what, where? And despite this, it seems throwing myself into this PhD career is the only option. Oh, the irony, slave to my ideals of science.
@@planetary-rendez-vous
oh dear, welcome to my crises from 8 years ago.
I can go an entire day of nonsense as example: entropy or density of entropy? Whata heck? Messiness as density? 😂
I suffered the same agony:
Continue in academia and need to fall for drama, SH and bunch of narcissist spoiled brat professors who use their position of power to harass and humiliated you while you make some small progress in science, or take my life in another direction.
I chose the second.
As most I love science and research I can't deal with the environment.
I just can't.
Science has a lot bad science, since straight bad experiment, poor knowledge to the most outrageous faking data.
And this happen with physics too: salami science.... where instead you publish 1 good article every 3 years, you need to split this in small 6 months Frankstein article to meet the criteria for continue researching
And more often than that, professor with PhD are forced to do classes where the vastly majority never were training to teach before.
It's wild and horrifying.
As Higgs said: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system.
I worked as a mental health clinician alongside therapists, psychologists, and PhD's. I even participated in a study which was funded by a NIH grant, I was on the ground recording data.
In the social sciences, many people interested in these topics want to be therapists. And, they are great therapists. But they don't have strong skills in statistics... or research. The social sciences magnify all the problems with the research industry today (publish or perish).
A lot of course material in psychology is not dependent on earlier material, so you can sometimes get through a course without really learning anything, and it won't hurt. It's totally different from Physics, where you won't get out of your freshman year if you don't know the material. The standards are different. Many bachelor's programs, psychology students can take "statistics for psychology", which only teaches the students to read/interpret statistics. So they don't really work problems. Not good.
Pfft! It's not only behavioral research. When I was in medical school, I got conned into participating in a research project where the Lead doc made it clear that he WOULD make my life hell IF I didn't come up with "good" results -- "good" being results that confirmed HIS ideas. Hey, I admit it, I wimped out and now there's literature published in respectable journals that's totally bogus.
you should probably tell someone who can do something about it then?
@@daltonbedore8396 Hey, I TRIED reaching out to the journal YEARS later to point out the data was spurious but they simply ignored me.
@@fragslap5229 damn! well at least you did try to correct it. it seems the age of information continues to be one of increased doubt as well
Please, keep speaking up.
@@fragslap5229Why wouldn't they?! They're a for profit system that gets nothing but money for that bad data.
If you build a system that rewards all data, especially unusual or fraudulent data, you'll get a lot of it.
Honesty is *fundamental* for true scientific research. You have it.
It's great to see people being as responsible as you are when disseminating information to the masses! You have my wholehearted support!
I’m glad to hear that your income isn’t dependent on playing nice with academia. It reminded me of this quote: “It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It”.
Pete, this type of humility is precisely why we NEED you here!
Thanks for your candor, hard work, and great videos. The way I view the academic literature is this:
1. Findings result in hypotheses to consider testing. Not an absolute to make a decision on. All behavior is context dependent.
2. There's a reason academic journals are so hard to read.
Peter, fellow behavioral scientist here. Wanted to say to not give up on these explainer videos. Growing up as a behavioral scientist involves realizing how many findings are on shaky ground.
As you mention, you only realize this by conducting your own research.. books will always lead people astray. Keep running those studies. They will make you wiser but also more optimistic, I promise.
For the future of the behavioral science content of this channel, may I suggest that you, yes, abandon explainer videos of (in)famous effects and instead focus on explaining good methodology. The issue with all these famous effects is that they really sit on terrible theoretical grounds by having extremely poor syntax and semantics (Kahneman is an exception).
This is where the real gold mine of behavioral science is but it’s so much less sexy because it’s not what directly drives sales and invites to Wall Street talks. It’s also largely forgotten within the researcher communities because the best work on this was done in the 50-60s. Some examples are classic Pavlovian studies that are super robust and have led to models such as Rescorla-Wagner and the model-free/model-based framework. Vision science is extremely robust as well and translates to insights we make in industry. We have very cool reinforcement learning approaches that give direct insight into human behavior and led to the advancement of AI (see Deep Mind and Vicarious). I come from this tradition which makes me an unconventional Behavioral Scientist in industry, but I (immodestly) believe it makes me a better scientist because I question everything.
Happy to chat more about this. You can find me on Linkedin- Mouslim Cherkaoui - Let’s connect!
Very happy to see this shift! You could reach out to James Heathers and Nick Brown about the test (GRIM) that they published in '16 to detect inconsistencies between research datasets and published results. From the wikipedia page: "Brown and Heathers applied the test to 260 articles published in Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Of these articles, 71 were amenable to GRIM test analysis; 36 of these contained at least one impossible value and 16 contained multiple impossible values."
The candor of your message is refreshing. When reading about bias I've often wondered: did the author invent the bias first, and then go in search of a use case to prove it? Regardless, you know I'm a huge fan of yours and will eagerly anticipate what your future holds in store!
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.
I completely understand you!!!!! I've started studying psychology in the hopes of understanding peoples minds and behaviors in a scientific way. But for me my "trust" in the literature has declined a lot because of one professor I had who was EXTREMELY critical and ALWAYS explained the limitations of every study he showed. So that made me become way more apprehensive of the validity of a lot of things... On top of that, I was participating in a lot of experimental/behavioral/cognitive researches. And I as a participant experienced extreme fatigue SO OFTEN during all these experiments!!! I had to repeat the inherently boring tasks so so so many times in a row. I'm not sure why that was necessary, I suppose it will have had a reason. But I experienced how fatigue made me care way less about the experiment I was doing 40 minutes or so into it. I was really questioning the validity of my own responses... And not that I didn't want to be a very rigorous participant, I just physically couldn't, because of the long duration of repetition of boring tasks... My eyes were dropping and I'm a person who actually has issues falling asleep, I normally never ever fall asleep out of the blue, during the day, during courses,... + I found the tasks to be so far off from the real world, that it also made me question the conclusions/assumptions that were made from these very very basic cognitive tasks.
I'm currently getting way more scientific satisfaction in biochemistry. It's also an important part of how our minds work, but less for behaviors maybe. More the cognitive/emotional/mental health part. I feel like I can trust the validity more of biochemistry.
Thanks for being so honest and also showing the frauds in the scientific field!
It just shows that science most definitely also can become a dogma and that the possibility that things get refuted is the true basis of science.
I think you have made the right decision. This is very important, needed and there is a big demand for it. You are going to rock it. Soon you will hit 100k and slowly become an authority in the topic! best of lucks
Thank you for being honest and getting these ideas out in the open. You're awesome!
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
Creating this video took a lot of bravery and introspection. I have mad respect for the vulnerability and candor of your video. I'm excited to see where you go with your channel.
Hello, I am very happy that you decided to take this new direction! I am a psychology student and I have seen my times how the failures of the social and human sciences can be covered by the academic system. I think that this new direction is fundamental and could create a more positive wave than to simply explain the literature already present. Good job and good luck
Been feeling similar frustrations about academia / behav sci lately as well. Glad to know I’m not alone and that there’s someone willing to speak up about it!
I think you're one of the most inspiring scientists I've ever seen (and hope to meet in the future!) I'm going for my genetics degree soon and you've ironically given me so much hope for the future as someone like you providing facts, being honest and truthful is something I respect so much. I wish I had more professors as dedicated as you are to the truth through my Bachelors.
I respect the integrity commitment and think you will do a lot of good by exposing the problems.
I really, really appreciate your commitment to academic integrity, and it means a lot that you would do this. Thank you. And I look forward to watching your new videos!
Your integrity is appreciated! IMO you’re choosing an excellent new direction for your channel. I look forward to your future videos!
I understand your frustration. I also applaud your decission. Honesty in academia, and a good researcher to talk and expose about it is a part that we need in the system. Checks and balances are important, and I congratulate you for teh bold step you are taking.
Thank you for speaking up! This was the exact reason why I decided to leave the PhD program that I spent 4 years of my life trying to make myself a “good fit”. I almost lost myself, forgetting my passion for research and my desire to extend human knowledge in order to help others. And totally went through an identity crisis after deciding to leave academia. Been enjoying your videos and will continue supporting them! ❤
Hi Pete, I’ve been following your channel for two years and what to thank you for sharing this brave video.
I’m currently a behavioural economics student at City and share your thoughts regarding the validity of what we are learning. In light of the fake data and publication biases, it leaves you wondering that if these effects were really so powerful why are they are so hard to replicate?
Another elephant in the room regarding behavioural science is that its focus on changing individual behaviour allows responsibility for change to put on consumers/citizens rather than institutions and businesses. You may have already covered it in your channel but a 2023 paper by Loewenstein and Chater shines a light on how ‘individually framed solutions’ have been enthusiastically supported by corporates, which is intended to distract us from identifying systemic solutions - for which they would be responsible for bearing the cost of implementing.
We are currently going through a watershed moment, as we are waking up to the reality of broken academia and the perverted research agenda. I went to an industry BeSci conference yesterday and could see that most of the panel were in a state of denial about this uncomfortable truth.
Thank you for your honesty and integrity. Very interested to see what you uncover regarding the state of academia.
Thank you for putting the failure of the academic canon in terms of student loans & personal investment. It was eye-opening for me. Very insightful work, as usual. I started watching your videos on academic fraud, and I'm glad to see you take a more macro approach to that.
Wow, I am so impressed that you could call out the inconsistencies within your field. This is true intellectual honesty; we need more people like you. I'm not sure if I would not have the strength to make a video like this if it was my field being called into question. Well done.
Loving it. I had a similar moment back in 2016 after I read more and more about the replication crisis. I was just starting my PhD back then. It's hard to not be cynical nowadays, but I can see why such things happen. Man, I used to attend meetings where people decided about which journal they want the study to be published in even before the data was looked at, obviously putting pressure on the people involved - "You just need to use the right analyses". I really respect your decision and hope you find a broad audience. :)
Gracias por la honestidad intelectual y por aportar a la discusión sobre la crisis de (verificabilidad en) la ciencia.
I'm sorry to hear you're stopping and discouraged. I enjoy your talks, and I hope you discover another thread to follow. Best of luck.
Been there. In a completely different area. But the same idea -- my identity was wound up in an area, completely. Then I lost confidence in the reality of it. Took a few years to make the transition. Love your science ethics videos! Will continue watching.
Your honesty is greatly appreciated!
Thank you for your honesty, mad respect. It shows lots maturity, humbleness and objectivity to actually take a step back and consider things then present them in an honest manner. Stay true to yourself. Best of luck in your journey.
Thanks for your honesty.
Thank you for your honesty about this Pete! But I do have a question: do you think that maybe our lack of certainty about behavioral science principles investigated by academic research might come less so from dishonesty in academia, but rather, due to less universality in behavioral science than we had assumed? Embedding loss aversion framing in one context might even be well replicable if one uses the exact same context again. But when you go into the field, the framing choice is embedded in a web of meaning particular to this context. For example, if people already think about their losses before they get a message, then maybe loss framing does nothing, and the gain frame changes their perspective slightly.
One of the important paradigms in behavioral science is precisely that 'context matters', so how can we assume universality in the way that context itself (such as loss framing) affects behavior? I'm curious what you think.
So happy I've found this channel. I started to look into scientific research a couple of years ago, mostly to make sure that the things relayed in the media actually held up to what was stated in the research. To my surprise, not only was the conclusions often really not supported by data, but a lot of the time basic scientific principles were completely absent. To say it mildly, my trust in academia has all but evaporated.
It's no wonder conspiracy theories are rampant.
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
I feel for you.
I also look forward to following you on this next leg of your journey.
👋Science is for the strong, for those who can withstand uncertainty, ups and downs and preserve critical sense and the frustrations of the incessant search for truth and knowledge. It's sad that you're leaving the area at exactly the time when we most need people willing to fix the flaws, correct the mistakes and move forward.
As the saying goes: Change, but change slowly, because direction is more important than speed.
Success for you!
Bravo. Nothing to add here. Best wishes on this new path, Pete!
Thank you for making this video. I love people who are able to be honest with themselves, despite what other people may want from them.
Well done, Pete 👏 I echo many other people here when I say that I appreciate this stance. I look forward to your future content. Thank you for being a shining example of academic integrity 🙏
This was heartbreaking to see. Your disappoinment feels so honest I can almost hear those young 9-years-ago dreams breaking into the floor. I hope this new path makes you happier!
That's some refreshing amount of intellectual honesty. I really appreciate it. I have had the Same. I schooled myself and trained for becoming a nonverbal consultant a few years ago. And I wanted to be on that was science based. So at first it seemed there was enough reliable science out there to be science based and informed for that field. But it did not take long before I found out that the big names in social science surrounding nonverbal communication where not producing reliable and reproducible science. Even those who came after and professed to be critical of that field and gave it their own spin based on some philosophical and theoretical beliefs they themselves did not held their own work at the same standards as they did those of which they where critical. Now that field is limbo and no actual reliable efforts have gone in creating a better theory or even in improving the science that is done. So I have had similar dissapointments and don't trust those sciences to create much of reliable use for the coming years.
Una decisión ética muy admirable en estos tiempos. Aunque sientas frustración, de seguro muchas personas estamos de acuerdo contigo y este ejercicio de sinceridad es un ejemplo para quienes creemos que se deben mantener valores esenciales para realizar un trabajo integral. Éxito en lo que hagas.
I think you are doing a great job and look forward to your new videos. It is good that you are independent and not dependent on approval from peers or on a university that won't like your work.
Congratulations Pete, I discovered your channel with the Gino case and I am going to continue here in this new journey, wish you sucess.
thanks for maintaining integrity, I deeply respect that. Much love ❤
I relate so much to this and I'm so sorry you are going through this. I recently left my phd in neurobiology, in part, because I honestly don't trust the scientific system anymore. I really hope that someday these things change.
You are the only person on RUclips that I know (in the field of behavioral science ) that when he discovers that something he previously shared with the content consumers is wrong, says about it. We need more people like you on this platform. Thanks to you I improved a lot. Besides that I become interested in this field and learned a lot from you, I began to check the facts on the internet more vogurously and think more critical.
And yes, I very, very rarely write comments, especially this long
aaaand the subscription stays
That feels like the trajectory of a lot of industries. The reality is always so complex, and there are so many externalities, egos, incentives, and other things that end up obstructing the work. It's unfortunate.
You have real integrity and courage, well done! 👏
I feel indebted to those who value their integrity enough to confront hard truths and say something. It's not easy to do. I made a career change this year and hit a rock bottom moment where I grappled with similar realizations like the years and money/education spent on this career path and identifying with this career. Content from my field's insiders and ex-insiders who were brave enough to speak up helped to validate my criticisms and doubts and gave me the extra confidence to make a change, and a big change it was. The utter shift in perspective I experienced cost me a lot of the idealism I had when I started down that career path, but I would never give up the maturity and clarity I gained in exchange. When I asked myself why I hadn't drawn these conclusions sooner, and the pivotal influential content I came across was years and years old, I decided I hadn't been ready to accept it; I still thought there was a chance that my field made the impacts it claimed to make. I have observed that the people who have spoken up and pointed out the flaws are subtly leading the way, despite the staggering opposition. I respect your choice and am excited for your next chapter. Sorry for the long post; I never comment on RUclips, but this resonated with me, and I wanted to show my support.
I appreciate your openness and honesty.
Good on you! Looking forward to your videos.
it's funny, i subscribed last week because i like your academic fraud videos. it's great news to me that you're commiting to that direction!
Pete, thank you so much for your dedication to the values of honesty and integrity which are foundational to a healthy and coherent society. I appreciate your personality's traits which shine unabashedly very much!
Thank you Pete. I always enjoy your video. I'm a lecturer from Indonesia, teaching psychology. I get you frustration. It's about responsibility
You are incredibly brave and a true scientist. I just started my PhD program, and I’m already seeing things that are making me feel that the prestige and pressure to succeed is promoting bad science. Keep up the good work!
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.
I'm excited to hear about the new direction.
As you said, behavioral sciences, and in particular behavioral psychology are a complete joke. The fundamental problem with these fields, is that they think you can learn about human behavior by putting graduate students into a lab and having them perform obscure, unnatural activities. In truth, these researchers are simply concocting scenarios to try to illicit some behavior that they consider "irrational".
If you want to study human behavior, you have to observe real people in real situations making real decisions.
The fact that you are a practitioner grants your opinion even more value than those with published research. You tried to implement and found that theories did not carry into reality. Kudos on your intellectual honesty!
Thank you for your honesty! I’m also interested in the scientific research ecosystem so your insights will be valuable in whatever topic you choose to focus on.
The freedom you have is enviable. Thank you so much for your time and teaching us about behavioral science 💗
Your content is great, Pete. And I will still be here following the new path of you channel.
I just entered a MSC in administration that will start in 2024 just because of the behavioral science research track (because it is a subject that I have been studying non officially for a few years and I love it). All these shadows that are cast in the field are making me sad too, but I think I need to go there and understand all of this my self.
I was already subscribed, but now I have turned on notifications.
I have enjoyed your videos so far. Thanks. I hope that you continue to share what insights from behavior science you believe are true, with necessary caveats such as if they have not been independently confirmed. I would also like to see you address ideas outside academia such as popular books and trends that are based on misunderstandings of research or on fraudulent or deeply flawed research.
That’s really honest and thoughtful, Pete. I’m sure you’ll do great in the new direction you’re planning for your channel. I’ve worked in academia for more than 30 years and I do believe you’re right to expose its sheer immorality. Good luck to you!
Worth remembering how Freud's work has been viewed over time. As my therapist friend says: Freud made my job possible; Bandura, Rogers (et al) enabled me to be good at it. Very similar thing here - some of the BE material will come to be seen as wrong - either because of the fraud, or just because it will lead on to newer ways of thinking. Personally not too surprised that replication is an issue, and also think that it is to be expected - there's still so much we don't understand about the way we operate.
It's so brave of you .. thank you so much !
It takes a great deal of bravery to say something like this. You have my undying respect. Keep up the good work.
looking forward to it!
It's clear how hard this has been for you and how deeply you have been betrayed by the failures of the academic system. This new(ish!) direction for the channel is exciting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you uncover, but please take as much time as you need to process this and look after yourself.
Good work! Looking forward to it!
Highly appreciate your stance! It’s people like you who should advance the field! And if there’s a temptation to become the Coffezilla of Behavioral Science, I’d feel blessed! But it would be sad if you give up science. Perhaps there’s a way to do both? Love!
I ended up on your channel BECAUSE of your academic investigation / analysis. I'm super happy, personally, to hear this news.
Good luck, Pete, with new approach. I teach BE couple of years now and found my approach to the troubling news about fraud and failed replications - it normal, it's okay, because it's relatively new field and possibility to empirically test smth is curse and blessing the same time) i find much joy reading about new hypothesis and experiments and making some myself, so i don't really have high expectations that some research will stand test of time, it just joy in the process.
Heyo, im someone new that got here because of the Academia Fraud Videos, for many people this will read as you chasing the high from these videos, I myself would guess its a bit of both, frustration with your own field and seeing there is an audience for this topic. I also think thats a totally fine thing to do btw. no matter what reason. I would advise you, if you have not already, to do some critical introspection for what the reasoons for the change are, just to make sure you dont regret it later. The second thing i would say is, BE CAREFULL this topic can devolve into incedibly toxic discourse and attracts a certain conspiratorially anti scientific niche, i really liked how in the past you drew clear lines regarding these people and would like you to stay true to that in the future. Also you dont have to throw the towel compleatly, i think its totally fair to teach people things about your field by using these bad examples (as you kind of said yourself in the video already), science is unfortunatly, as shown in your past videos, not immune the problem of greed and fame hungry actors and I think we who particepate in it, often think we are immune to it, because of our edjucation, while by doing so, leave people to fly under the rader sometimes. I wish all the best for you and this chanel!
Your work has been important and your insights are valuable. These may not be the findings that you want but these are the findings that you’ve got. It’s What you do next with what you know.
Excited to see your new videos exposing academia! Would be awesome if you dipped your toes into theory / philosophy in the future. While they have a lot of academics vying for tenure they also have a lots of people outside the system who are exhausted of fraud and the quantification of everything. Looking forward to your new content
Very nice commentary!
I became so disappointed with the field of Anthropology that I left it altogether and became an English teacher.
My professors in Anthropology all wanted me to do topics of their choice, and when I saw what my fellow students were researching, I had a great laugh and said goodbye to my PhD program.
Can you provide any other examples of why you left Anthropology? I am really curious since i love Anthropology.
Thank you so much for this!!
So, I did a small research on/in education.
I gave my students task to solve a problem that is easily solved if you use distribution property. The numbers were huge. They all started multiplication without use of the property. Almost all of them failed to produce correct result of spent too much time on it.
Then I explained them how this property can make this task easy. Next week I repeated the test with other numbers. All but one used the method. The only guy who didn't use the method was absent last week during the first test.
So, I showed that this approach is indeed very effective for reenforcing some knowledge
Good for you. Growing interest in the subject and Retraction Watch becoming public means a step in the right direction against academic fraud. Very interested to see your future videos.
Also PubPeer offers the ability to publicly criticism published research (including anonymously)
Hey Pete. Here's my perspective as a Physicist. Papers, academia, research, etc. are only one part of the story with any science. As you cited, when theoretical concepts get scrutinized and put to the test, they often fall short. Wild theories don't stack up to experimentation. Every so often, there will be a big experiment proving or disproving certain concepts in physics, such as last year's Nobel prize.
To me, whenever the system gets knocked down, whenever things are shaken up and when long established rules, norms and widely accepted "truths" are proven incorrect, that is the most exciting time to be a professional in any field. It seems to me as an outsider that the behavioral sciences are going through a period of radical change. Maybe this could be an opportunity for radical change within the field? Maybe there are long accepted truths waiting to be disproved. Maybe this is a good thing. If negative framing is totally wrong, then it's awesome we finally found out.
Yes, academia is absolutely broken and sucks and filled with the worst types of people, but don't let that discourage you from the thing you love. Remember that what you love is not the field, but the science, the concept. That's how I feel anyway, and how I rationalize it to myself. Being an experimentalist is great.
Doctor here. “Science” and “Academia” need a HUGE correction. Too much corruption and lies. Love what you’re doing
We need more people like you to make this decision. Science and engineering needs a lot more serious and capable critics, fewer cheerleaders, and fewer explainers.
thank you for keeping it real! this is the true scientific approach!
Please keep including us on your journey.
A hard decision I'm sure, but one very well explained.
Three additional topics which I think you could profitably explore: First, how to recognize sub-standard, bad, or bogus research. This would seem to be something that a behavioral researcher would have much to say about. Second, how to tweak academia -- while I left academia in mild disgust after pos-docing, I have followed things closely and still believe that there is more good than bad in it -- to replace the bad incentives which are ruining it. Third, it would be good to contrast and compare how other disciplines are dealing with the problem.
The physical sciences, for example, have a degree of immunity because an important result nearly always *must* be replicated to make use of it. (For example, it is just a curiosity that a particular chemical reaction occurs unless it can be built upon to make something new.) If no one tries to replicate a result it usually means it's of little or no consequence. (E.g., the recent mess with room temperature superconductors. Claim made: many groups immediately try to replicate.)
I could also recommend looking at the immense lengths big physics projects go to to make this sort of thing difficult, though they are mostly focused on researchers letting their expectations influence their analysis. The Fermilab muon g-2 experiment forced everyone to work with the master oscillator frequency a closely-guarded secret revealed only after all the analysis was done. There's a great discussion of this in the excellent book "Gravity's Ghost" about how LIGO made it hard for people's preconceptions to influence the result. Obviously none of this applies directly to behavioral science, but there might be some useful cross-fertilization to be found.
Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing your future work.
All those resources and time you've spent has definitely made you into a really good scientist, the only ones that can even hope to fix it! So money and time well spent! I'm excited about everything you summarised in this video, because even within science we need proper skeptics with critical thinking skills, especially as science these days is lucrative enough to eskew its original goal of knowledge for selfish monetary gains. As with all things, the reality of this is always, always, always more devastating to that small minority of people like us who truly believe in the ideals.
A side story; I quit being a software developer to become a UX consultant where I thought I could get closer to fixing real problems of integration and HCI, and I did it for about 7 years until a few years ago when I went back into software, now knowing that anything you slap an "industry" around is ripe with postering and deceit and monetary drivers that weren't the reason I ventured into it to begin with. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it does require you to actually do it. I'm now in my 50's, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up ...
If I see an ad telling me that I will lose Y if I don't buy X, then that negative message which tries to scare me into buying X just creates an aversion against X.