#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals
80,000 Hours Podcast24 Mars 2023

#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals

Can you trust the things you read in published scientific research? Not really. About 40% of experiments in top social science journals don't get the same result if the experiments are repeated.

Two key reasons are 'p-hacking' and 'publication bias'. P-hacking is when researchers run a lot of slightly different statistical tests until they find a way to make findings appear statistically significant when they're actually not — a problem first discussed over 50 years ago. And because journals are more likely to publish positive than negative results, you might be reading about the one time an experiment worked, while the 10 times was run and got a 'null result' never saw the light of day. The resulting phenomenon of publication bias is one we've understood for 60 years.

Today's repeat guest, social scientist and entrepreneur Spencer Greenberg, has followed these issues closely for years.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

He recently checked whether p-values, an indicator of how likely a result was to occur by pure chance, could tell us how likely an outcome would be to recur if an experiment were repeated. From his sample of 325 replications of psychology studies, the answer seemed to be yes. According to Spencer, "when the original study's p-value was less than 0.01 about 72% replicated — not bad. On the other hand, when the p-value is greater than 0.01, only about 48% replicated. A pretty big difference."

To do his bit to help get these numbers up, Spencer has launched an effort to repeat almost every social science experiment published in the journals Nature and Science, and see if they find the same results.

But while progress is being made on some fronts, Spencer thinks there are other serious problems with published research that aren't yet fully appreciated. One of these Spencer calls 'importance hacking': passing off obvious or unimportant results as surprising and meaningful.

Spencer suspects that importance hacking of this kind causes a similar amount of damage to the issues mentioned above, like p-hacking and publication bias, but is much less discussed. His replication project tries to identify importance hacking by comparing how a paper’s findings are described in the abstract to what the experiment actually showed. But the cat-and-mouse game between academics and journal reviewers is fierce, and it's far from easy to stop people exaggerating the importance of their work.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Rob and Spencer discuss the above as well as:
• When you should and shouldn't use intuition to make decisions.
• How to properly model why some people succeed more than others.
• The difference between “Soldier Altruists” and “Scout Altruists.”
• A paper that tested dozens of methods for forming the habit of going to the gym, why Spencer thinks it was presented in a very misleading way, and what it really found.
• Whether a 15-minute intervention could make people more likely to sustain a new habit two months later.
• The most common way for groups with good intentions to turn bad and cause harm.
• And Spencer's approach to a fulfilling life and doing good, which he calls “Valuism.”

Here are two flashcard decks that might make it easier to fully integrate the most important ideas they talk about:
• The first covers 18 core concepts from the episode
• The second includes 16 definitions of unusual terms.

Chapters:

  • Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
  • The interview begins (00:02:16)
  • Social science reform (00:08:46)
  • Importance hacking (00:18:23)
  • How often papers replicate with different p-values (00:43:31)
  • The Transparent Replications project (00:48:17)
  • How do we predict high levels of success? (00:55:26)
  • Soldier Altruists vs. Scout Altruists (01:08:18)
  • The Clearer Thinking podcast (01:16:27)
  • Creating habits more reliably (01:18:16)
  • Behaviour change is incredibly hard (01:32:27)
  • The FIRE Framework (01:46:21)
  • How ideology eats itself (01:54:56)
  • Valuism (02:08:31)
  • “I dropped the whip” (02:35:06)
  • Rob’s outro (02:36:40)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell and Milo McGuire
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Avsnitt(299)

#2 - David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science

#2 - David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science

Recorded in 2015 by Robert Wiblin with colleague Jess Whittlestone at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and recovered from the dusty 80,000 Hours archives. David Spiegelhalter is a statistician at the University of Cambridge and something of an academic celebrity in the UK. Part of his role is to improve the public understanding of risk - especially everyday risks we face like getting cancer or dying in a car crash. As a result he’s regularly in the media explaining numbers in the news, trying to assist both ordinary people and politicians focus on the important risks we face, and avoid being distracted by flashy risks that don’t actually have much impact. Summary, full transcript and extra links to learn more. To help make sense of the uncertainties we face in life he has had to invent concepts like the microlife, or a 30-minute change in life expectancy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife) We wanted to learn whether he thought a lifetime of work communicating science had actually had much impact on the world, and what advice he might have for people planning their careers today.

21 Juni 201733min

#1 - Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts

#1 - Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts

Robert Wiblin, Director of Research at 80,000 Hours speaks with Miles Brundage, research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. Miles studies the social implications surrounding the development of new technologies and has a particular interest in artificial general intelligence, that is, an AI system that could do most or all of the tasks humans could do. This interview complements our profile of the importance of positively shaping artificial intelligence and our guide to careers in AI policy and strategy Full transcript, apply for personalised coaching to work on AI strategy, see what questions are asked when, and read extra resources to learn more.

5 Juni 201755min

#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast

#0 – Introducing the 80,000 Hours Podcast

80,000 Hours is a non-profit that provides research and other support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world's most pressing problems. This podcast is just one of many things we offer, the others of which you can find at 80000hours.org. Since 2017 this show has been putting out interviews about the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them — which some people enjoy because they love to learn about important things, and others are using to figure out what they want to do with their careers or with their charitable giving. If you haven't yet spent a lot of time with 80,000 Hours or our general style of thinking, called effective altruism, it's probably really helpful to first go through the episodes that set the scene, explain our overall perspective on things, and generally offer all the background information you need to get the most out of the episodes we're making now. That's why we've made a new feed with ten carefully selected episodes from the show's archives, called 'Effective Altruism: An Introduction'. You can find it by searching for 'Effective Altruism' in your podcasting app or at 80000hours.org/intro. Or, if you’d rather listen on this feed, here are the ten episodes we recommend you listen to first: • #21 – Holden Karnofsky on the world's most intellectual foundation and how philanthropy can have maximum impact by taking big risks • #6 – Toby Ord on why the long-term future of humanity matters more than anything else and what we should do about it • #17 – Will MacAskill on why our descendants might view us as moral monsters • #39 – Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to updating your beliefs when you get new evidence • #44 – Paul Christiano on developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem' • #60 – What Professor Tetlock learned from 40 years studying how to predict the future • #46 – Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics and tackling global issues in academia • #71 – Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours • #50 – Dave Denkenberger on how we might feed all 8 billion people through a nuclear winter • 80,000 Hours Team chat #3 – Koehler and Todd on the core idea of effective altruism and how to argue for it

1 Maj 20173min

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