Fruit of Eden

This is the second of a series of essays focused on enhancing scientific progress by rethinking how we do academic science. Throughout my fellowship with the Roots of Progress Institute, I will be writing several more. Thank you to Michael Larabee for assistance editing this essay and to other RPI fellows for valuable feedback.Read the original essay at https://adam.rochussen.xyz/ Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

This is the first of a series of essays focused on enhancing scientific progress by rethinking how we do academic science. Throughout my fellowship with the Roots of Progress Institute, I will be writing several more. Thank you to Mike Riggs for assistance editing this essay and to other RPI fellows for valuable feedback.The essay is best experienced when read, as you will be able to see footnotes and images. https://adam.rochussen.xyz/ Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

This is the voiceover of an opinion piece penned and read by Adam Rochussen. You can find the essay with graphs and footnotes at the Fruit of Eden website. Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

This is the voiceover of an essay published on Fruit of Eden, read by the author. Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

This banger essay by Adam Rochussen can be read along with footnotes and figures on adam.rochussen.xyz Please enjoy this audio voiceover by the author. Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

This essay was written for the Astera Institute’s “Identifying Systemic Bottlenecks to Science” essay competition. Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

This is an article voiceover read by the author, Adam Rochussen. To read the essay and view footnotes, charts, and figures, go to adam.rochussen.xyz Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

In this audio essay, Adam discusses the many ways in which science gets biased. He then talks in detail about a recent study which claimed to show that vegetarian diets protected against cancer. The actual data tell a different story ...The original essay can be found at adam.rochussen.xyz Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe

I recently had the great pleasure of chatting with Dayne Rathbone, a product researcher at Substack, about issues in academia and academic publishing, and how Substack might be able to offer a solution.(As you’ll hear, we originally wanted to tackle the topic of free will too, prompted by an essay I wrote a while ago now, but time got the better of us…)We begin by discussing how PhDs are actually rather easy unless the student or supervisor makes it otherwise. Universities are financially incentivised to expand the number of students ad infinitum, leading to a lowering of standards at both admission and completion of degrees—including the supposedly elite PhD degree.Our conversation then turns from skewed financial incentives at universities to skewed financial incentives at academic journals. We discuss what journals get right and wrong, and how they exploit scientists and, ultimately, rip off tax payers.Finally, we touch on incentives that motivate scientists, and how Substack can leverage these to usurp traditional academic journals. Dayne has been working on a pilot at Substack to index scholarly Substack articles with digital object identifiers and to have them indexed with Europe PMC and, hopefully, Google Scholar. My scholarly review on protein intake is part of this initial pilot.If you find this discussion interesting and haven’t read my previous posts on these topics, you can find them here:If you enjoy the conversation, I would appreciate you letting me know by way of liking it or sharing it with friends. This livestream/podcast was Dayne’s idea, but Substack has extremely an frictionless livestreaming interface, so I wouldn’t be averse to recording more interesting conversations in future if there is appetite for it—of course in addition to my written content.If you are not subscribed, please do so below! (completely free, obviously) Get full access to Fruit of Eden at adam.rochussen.xyz/subscribe