RIOT Science Club

How do I know what my theory predicts? by Prof Zoltan Dienes
2019-07-11 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), 16 De Crespigny Park, London, London, SE5 8AF, United Kingdom
About the speaker
Zoltan Dienes is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex. His research interests are in exploring ways of changing common practice in statistical inference by using Bayesian methods. He is also interested in the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states, as well as hypnosis, a way of acting which he argues is intentional but the person is strategically unaware of those intentions.
About the talk
To get evidence for or against one’s theory relative to the null hypothesis, one needs to know what it predicts. The amount of evidence can then be quantified by a Bayes factor. It is only when one has reasons for specifying a scale of the effect that the level of evidence can be specified for no effect. In many papers people declare the absence of an effect while having no rational grounds for doing so. So we need to specify what scale of the effect our theory predicts. Specifying what one’s theory predicts may not come naturally, but Prof Dienes shows ways of thinking about the problem, some simple heuristics that are often useful, including the room-to-move heuristic and the ratio-of-scales heuristic.

Lessons from Daryl Bem by Prof Chris French
2019-06-27 12:00 - 13:00
About the speaker
Professor Chris French is the Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Patron of the British Humanist Association. He has published over 150 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. His main current area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences.
About the talk
Prof Chris French gives us a talk on the lesson he learned from Daryl Bem and discusses issues with standard practice in psi psychology.

Brain stimulation & bayesian optimisation in fMRI by Dr Ines Violante
2019-06-06 12:00 - 13:00
About the speaker
Dr Ines Violante is a Lecturer in Psychological Neuroscience in the School of Psychology, at the University of Surrey. She received BSc in Biochemistry and PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Following her PhD, Dr Violante was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship to perform her research project at Imperial College London and University College London. Her research combines functional magnetic resonance imaging, spectroscopy and electroencephalography to understand how brain stimulation can be used to modulate brain dynamics and behavioural performance. She is interested in how brain oscillations mediate long-range connectivity and particularly how neurostimulation could be used to improve network communication following brain injury. She is also working in the development of new methods using real-time fMRI and machine learning to optimise stimulation protocols and tailor stimulation to an individual.
About the talk
Ines will be giving a talk on the use of Bayesian optimisation in neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation

Open science: Why, what, how... and some paranoia by Joe Barnby
2019-05-16 12:00 - 13:00
About the speaker
In his PhD, Joe is investigating the neural mechanisms underlying information salience and belief formation with psychopharmacological methods. Joe discusses his work, his experience with pre-registering (which is a gnarly business in neuroscience), and issues with reproducibility in his research field.
About the talk
Open Science is a progressive movement toward transparent predicting, testing, and reporting data. It overcomes problems recently highlighted in scientific discourse such as HARKing, reproducibility, and replication. There are a number of free and open access tools which can help us to achieve more transparency in the way we work. I will go over some of these tools, how to use them, with worked examples from my own research. At the end there is time for an open discussion and clinic where we can talk about how to implement Open Science in your own research.

Some attempts to correct bad science by Dr Stuart Ritchie
2019-04-18 12:00 - 13:00
About the speaker
Dr Stuart Ritchie is a psychologist and science communicator known for his research in human intelligence. He has served as a lecturer in the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London since 2018. His research interests include understanding how and why people’s intellectual abilities develop and change across their lives. His forthcoming book, Science Fictions, is about how fraud, bias, error, and hype undermine scientific research.
About the talk
Dr Stuart Ritchie gives us a tour through his successful (and often unsuccessful) attempts to correct bad science.

The renaissance of EEG by Dr Grainne McLoughlin
2019-04-11 12:00 - 13:00
About the speaker
Dr Grainne McLoughlin received her PhD training and initial postdoctoral fellowship in quantitative genetics and EEG at the Social, Developmental and Genetic Psychiatry Centre. Her further postdoctoral training in computational neuroscience took place at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of California San Diego and the Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego. Dr. McLoughlin has a faculty position at King’s College London since 2013 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017. Her main research interests include investigation of abnormal brain function in multiple psychiatric disorders, with a particular interest in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorders using mobile EEG.
About the talk
Dr McLoughlin talks about the new developments in EEG and their uses in psychiatric research.

Research Integrity at King's College London by Dr Natasha Awais-Dean & Annah Whyton
2019-04-04 12:00 - 13:00
About the speakers
Dr Natasha Awais-Dean and Annah Whyton are members of the Research Integrity Office at King’s College London, which supports the promotion of good conduct in research within the King’s community.
About the talk
King’s College London is committed to excellence in research and is a signatory to the Universities UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity, to ensure that we meet required national standards. The Research Integrity Team promotes good conduct in research among all those engaged in research in the College, through policies and procedures, training, support, and guidance. The Research Governance Office (RGO) provides high-level support to researchers with particular focus on data protection requirements under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (2018). The RGO also supports researchers in determining the research governance requirements for research projects.
