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Mu Yang is a behavioral neuroscientist at Columbia University, and a scientific sleuth responsible for more than 300 retractions. She led an effort that discovered more than 130 fraudulent papers in the publication record of Eliezer Masliah, former head of the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. Her sleuthing work has been documented in the book "Doctored" by Charles Piller, Science Magazine, and other outlets, and is unpaid.
CONTACT RANDY:
metasciencematters@gmail.com
EPISODE LINKS:
Books:
Doctored by Charles Piller: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Doctored/Charles-Piller/9781668031254
Unreliable by Csaba Szabo: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/unreliable/9780231216241/
Scientific integrity blogs:
Dorothy Bishop: https://deevybee.blogspot.com/
Leonid Schneider: https://forbetterscience.com/
Podcasts for critical thinking
Plain English by Derek Thompson: https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/plain-english-with-derek-thompson
The Gray Area by Sean Illing: https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area
The Ezra Klein show (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast
OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:58 - Mu's origin story
4:35 - Moving to Columbia
6:15 - How Mu became a sleuth
8:13 - Reporting her first case
13:09 - Red flags Mu looks for in papers
17:30 - Reductionism in behavioral neuroscience
18:04 - Standardization vs. Generalizability
19:58 - Data sharing standards across fields
21:09 - Difficulties of reporting irregularities in papers, university incentives
23:54 - Allocating time between images, numerical, other kinds of data
24:37 - How she searches through papers
25:45 - Examining the chemistry literature
31:10 - Types of misconduct vary by field, risks of reporting
35:43 - The case of Eliezer Masliah
40:31 - Why demonizing individual scientists isn't productive; the system isn't working
56:59 - Academic incentives for positive data
1:07:31 - Hard to publish null data; "unhealthy codependence" between academia and publishing
1:13:08 - Changing incentives
1:21:42 - Are we even making a dent in the scale of scientific misconduct?
1:27:35 - Mu's toolkit
1:29:38 - Mu does this work because it's fun!
1:34:38 - Protecting students; telling them that null data is ok
1:37:52 - Evaluating researchers
1:43:15 - Is peer review still relevant?
1:51:38 - How much better could science be?
1:55:14 - What will science look like in a century?
1:58:13 - Advice and resources for listeners
2:00:54 - Online presence
2:01:35 - Outro
