Dec 26, 2017
Welcome to Episode 8, where I talk to
SIMINE
VAZIRE, Associate Professor of Psychology at the
University of California at Davis, about the
stability of personality, our ability to know ourselves, and some
of the nuances within the prescriptive advice of the Open Science
Movement.
Interestingly, Simine has also been a part of the conversation
about the
process of criticism in science. As most
listeners well know, criticism is unquestionably essential if
science is going to be self-correcting (which is of course the
whole point!). One question the field has been grappling with is
the point at which criticism crosses over into harassment and
bullying—a question at the heart of
a recent op-ed Simine wrote for
Slate.
I have my own thoughts on this question, which I’ll save for
another time, but one of the reasons I was so keen to ask Simine to
be on Circle of Willis is that I find her approach to grappling
with such questions to be equal parts humble, charitable, and firm.
She isn’t likely to allow a legitimate criticism to be brushed
aside in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings, but neither is
she going to participate in (or for that matter tolerate) bullying.
I think that in our age of shoot-from-the-hip outrage, that can be
a hard path to find, let alone walk, and I genuinely admire her
efforts.
There are many other things I love about Simine, but as you’ll
hear in this episode, at or near the top of the list of her
agreeable traits is that she’ll be the first to tell any of you
that
sometimes she’s wrong.
We
try to be right while tolerating (and admitting
to) our mistakes.
Oh, and — seriously — keep a notepad handy for this episode.
Simine is unusually quotable!
* * *
AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and
performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band
THE NEW DRAKES. You can
purchase this music at
their Amazon page.