659. Science Journalism, Academic Silos, and the Cost of Being Right with Matt Kaplan

Episode notes

Matt Kaplan is the science correspondent at The Economist and also the author of a number of books. His latest work is I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right . Greg and Matt discuss how Matt chose science journalism over academia, the value of being a generalist, and how journalists can cross-pollinate ideas from others. They also discuss academic silos, pecking orders, and how fear, funding pressures, and ego create sticky consensuses that punish deviants, and linking historic cases to modern parallels. Matt argues that incremental NIH/NSF funding discourages bold leaps compared with HHMI-style risk-taking, calls for better incentives for peer review and career transitions for senior scientists, and recounts a case in which a dissenting scientist was attacked to the point that they left the field. *unSILOed Podcast is