It’s entertaining yet refreshingly skeptical of science (in a, you know, rather rational way) and the problems it has. Tears apart many papers, myths and misconceptions. Tom Chivers keeps mentioning Bayes and Scott Alexander. Has some episodes on general scientific & statistical concepts and the major problems in science, as well as many object-level ones on concrete research topics, such as growth mindset, autism, seed oil or IQ. I prefer the latter ones. Spoiler alert: the outcome of most episodes is “we know much less than people think”, about pretty much anything.
One weakness of the show may be that they’re possibly erring too much on the “there may be some evidence for X but can we really tell? Actually, nobody really knows and it’s all just guessing based on a bunch of very flawed studies” side. Occasionally the hosts seem a bit less well prepared than they could be. Still, on the majority of topics, I find their episodes rather enlightening. Another plus is that they have some episodes on their past mistakes on the podcast (of which there are indeed quite a few).
If you’re a bit cynical and enjoy two witty Brits making fun of bad science while learning a few things about the state of research, you might enjoy this one.
The Studies Show
It’s entertaining yet refreshingly skeptical of science (in a, you know, rather rational way) and the problems it has. Tears apart many papers, myths and misconceptions. Tom Chivers keeps mentioning Bayes and Scott Alexander. Has some episodes on general scientific & statistical concepts and the major problems in science, as well as many object-level ones on concrete research topics, such as growth mindset, autism, seed oil or IQ. I prefer the latter ones. Spoiler alert: the outcome of most episodes is “we know much less than people think”, about pretty much anything.
One weakness of the show may be that they’re possibly erring too much on the “there may be some evidence for X but can we really tell? Actually, nobody really knows and it’s all just guessing based on a bunch of very flawed studies” side. Occasionally the hosts seem a bit less well prepared than they could be. Still, on the majority of topics, I find their episodes rather enlightening. Another plus is that they have some episodes on their past mistakes on the podcast (of which there are indeed quite a few).
If you’re a bit cynical and enjoy two witty Brits making fun of bad science while learning a few things about the state of research, you might enjoy this one.