6. Toby Wise: Risk perception about COVID-19, natural experiments, and open science

Toby Wise is a postdoc at UCL and Caltech. He uses computational modelling and neuroimaging to study the mechanisms underlying anxiety and depression. I first encountered Toby when he and I published separate preprints on PsyArXiv on the same topic (risk perception for COVID-19) within a few hours of each other.In this conversation, we talk about doing research about COVID-19: why we decided to do it, practical considerations, and differences and similarities between our studies. We also talk about open science practices.BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. New conversations every other Friday. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (Apple/Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc.).Timestamps0:00:11: The origin of Toby's research project on risk perception about COVID-190:13:18: What Toby would do differently if he could go back in time0:20:45: Criticism of COVID-19 research0:29:17: How to do good science during natural experiments0:44:09: Open Code, (Jupyter/RMarkdown) Notebooks, and Python1:07:43: Comparing COVID responses across and within countries1:27:36: Practicalities of doing research on COVID-191:34:19: External validity of psychological research1:48:30: Toby's acute awareness of how unimportant his research is2:06:32: Simulations to ensure your study actually does what you want it to do2:14:34: Comparing Toby and Ben's COVID studiesToby's linksWebsite: https://tobywise.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/toby_wiseGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=_PD-jwIAAAAJ&hl=enPodcast linksWebsite: https://bjks.buzzsprout.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/BjksPodcastBen's linksWebsite: www.bjks.blog/Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=-nWNfvcAAAAJReferences/papers mentionedCamerer, C. F., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Ho, T. H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., ... & Altmejd, A. (2018). Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015. Nature Human Behaviour.Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2007). What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world?. Journal of Economic perspectives.Korn, C. W., Sharot, T., Walter, H., Heekeren, H. R., & Dolan, R. J. (2014). Depression is related to an absence of optimistically biased belief updating about future life events. Psychological medicine.Kunz, L., Schröder, T. N., Lee, H., Montag, C., Lachmann, B., Sariyska, R., ... & Fell, J. (2015). Reduced grid-cell–like representations in adults at genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Science.Kuper-Smith, B. J., Doppelhofer, L. M., Oganian, Y., Rosenblau, G., & Korn, C. (2020). Optimistic beliefs about the personal impact of COVID-19. PsyArXiv.Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). Some consequences of having too little. Science.Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2019). An exercise in self-replication: Replicating Shah, Mullainathan, and Shafir (2012). Journal of Economic Psychology.Wise, T., Zbozinek, T. D., Michelini, G., Hagan, C. C., & Mobbs, D. (2020). Changes in risk perception and self-reported protective behaviour during the first week of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Royal Society Open Science.