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How can we make science more trustworthy? When scientists break into factions around a particular topic, whom should we trust, and why? Why did trust in science as an institution plummet drastically during COVID? What is the state of the evidence for the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, or vitamin D against COVID? Why is controlling for variables so difficult? What evidence is there for how well IQ represents intelligence and predicts useful things about people's lives? There's the famous quip that "IQ tests only measure how well people do on IQ tests", but we also all seem to know that some people are smarter than others; so can't that disparity be captured in a single number, or even in a small set of numbers?

Stuart Ritchie is a Lecturer at the Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King's College London. He received his PhD in psychology from The University of Edinburgh in 2014. Since then, he's been researching human cognitive abilities like how our mental abilities age and how education can improve intelligence. His other interests are in the subject of Science Fictions: the problems with the scientific system and how we might fix them to improve the quality of research. Learn more about him at sciencefictions.org or follow him on Twitter at @StuartJRitchie.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
Janaisa Baril — Transcriptionist
Miles Kestran — Marketing

Music

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How can we make science more trustworthy? (with Stuart Ritchie)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg