You might have already encountered the popular Freakonomics book series, it was a big pop-psychology read of the 2010’s that you’d find on the ‘Smart Thinking’ shelves of Waterstones. If you haven’t kept up with the book’s prolific co-author, Stephen J. Dubner it’s worth checking out the archives of the long-running Freakonomics radio podcast series for some well-researched dispatches from the annals of behavioral psychology.

The latest episodes are of particular interest for anyone working in research, not least in the aftermath of Harvard president Claudine Gay being ousted on the basis of plagiarism charges.

The first episode in this two-parter, ‘Why is there so much fraud in Academia?’ looks into the behavioral psychology behind academic misconduct with candid interviews from exasperated academics. The second episode, ‘Can Academic Fraud be Stopped?’, focuses largely on ‘Publish or Perish’ culture with reformers of academic culture proposing new ways of challenging the existing structures set up by the $28 billion publishing industry.

Naturally, the second episode takes a brief look at Open Access as one of the proposed solutions (mostly from the publisher’s point of view). But there’s productive discussion around increasing transparency in research and other open practices that will help to change research culture for the better. Give it a listen!