Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Academic blogs

Author: Nate Breznau

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

The invisible hand in science: How ideological priors shape empirical outcomes

We found evidence that ideology impacts research results. What are the implications of this, and what should we do about it. Spoiler: not the least should we practice more open science! The Experiment and Our Findings In empirical social science, we are accustomed to substantial variation in reported outcomes. Research…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

What’s pop-music-in’? Thoughts on Post Malone’s “White Iverson”

Recently, I found myself listening to Post Malone’s album Stoney on repeat, captivated by one track in particular: “White Iverson.” Not the usual topic here, but it triggered something. This is my hot take on a catchy song that engages my sociological imagination. Pop music serves as a fascinating window…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Why we humans are not objective: English translation of the German National Radio show ‘Darum sind wir Menschen nicht Objektiv’.

German National Radio (Deutschlandfunk) produced a spot on objectivity and it included parts of an interview with me. The original German audio version is here: “Darum sind wir Menschen nicht Objektiv“, and this is a ChatGPT enhanced translation in English. Let’s imagine this for a moment: a crowd of people,…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

The path toward ethical science is paved with diamonds

I discuss why diamond open access is necessary to reduce perverse incentives in science, and to improve the outputs of Gen AI. Over the last two decades awareness of a Reproducibility Crisis penetrated all scientific disciplines. Studies recently showed that 90% in STEM and 95% in psychology were aware of…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Sociologists tend to be left politically. Is this a problem?

In the Tuskegee Experiment, the scientific method was followed carefully. But the scientific method alone does not guarantee that humans are safe from, and or have equal access to participate in, science. The participants were deceived and treatment for their disease was withheld. Unethical and abusive.

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Open science. Back to basics

Are we really sharing all steps in our research? And are we making clear which steps we cannot share and why? There are always hidden steps that influence our research design and reporting. Ask yourself this question: If someone else were to pick up one of your studies, most likely…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Questionable research practices from the practitioners’ perspectives

Discussions and narratives from four behavioral and social scientists about their experiences learning, observing, and doing things in the course of research, and communicating that research, that confound, and even contradict, the goals of science. With Monica Gonzales-Marquez, Priya Silverstein and Eike Mark Rinke. In preparation for Metascience 2025, I…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Science in survival mode

In this post I diagnose the symptoms of scientific malpractice as similar to those of trauma and emotional abuse.

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Amy Coney Barrett, Science and Democracy

Democracy is a system of governance that protects a society against tyranny. It prevents mob rule. It does so through rule of law. A democracy is only as strong as its legal enforcement mechanisms. Every democracy is imperfect, like the people living in it and governing it. But if laws…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Human Induced Climate Change

Show me the data Nate Breznau A quick guide to human impact on the environment Carbon Emissions The amount of Carbon we’ve released into the atmosphere is nearly perfectly collinear with the Industrial Revolution and subsequent industrial growth. This is easily estimated from ice samples. Carbon is unquestionably a result…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

ChatGPT teaches open science

I asked ChatGPT to talk about open science. This post is the full conversation.

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Meta-reproducibility crisis: Software edition

Its not just a ‘replication crisis‘, its a reproducibility crisis. Forget about falsification if one can’t even reproduce the workflow of another. Efforts are underway to improve transparency which allows reproduction, good. But what if even with the original data, researchers cannot reproduce numerical results simply because of where they…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Teaching to empower students as public, open and citizen scientists

Students pursuing a bachelor or master degree develop both labor market skills for a information and computer-based career, and learn to do science. Not all go on to be scientists. It would seem that those that do not, have no impact on scientific knowledge. They took tests and wrote papers…

Nate Breznau · Crowdid

Teaching to empower students as public, open and citizen scientists

In this blog post, Nate Breznau discusses his experience teaching courses to empower students by assigning them tasks of shaping public knowledge instead of traditional term papers. The student projects to impact public knowledge and/or open science are presented.