Nosek on Truth, Science, and Academic Incentives

Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how incentives in academic life create a tension between truth-seeking and professional advancement. Nosek argues that these incentives create a subconscious bias toward making research decisions in favor of novel results that may not be true, particularly in empirical and experimental work in the social sciences. In the second half of the conversation, Nosek details some practical innovations occurring in the field of psychology, to replicate established results and to publicize unpublished results that are not sufficiently exciting to merit publication but that nevertheless advance understanding and knowledge. These include the Open Science Framework and PsychFileDrawer.

You can listen to Nosek on Truth, Science, and Academic Incentives online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Nosek on Truth, Science, and Academic Incentives is an episode from EconTalk Archives, 2012 by Library of Economics and Liberty.

This episode is 56:28 long.

This episode was published on Sep 10, 2012.

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