Episode 49: Goodhart’s Law

It's really tempting to count things like credit hours, publications, or grants. Julia and Jonathan talk about some of the disadvantages of counting, including missing out on "hard-to-count" activities that may be important to us, and how to push the needle in our own thinking or evaluations to fight against easy answers. How do we consider the important aspects of helping students in our offices, deep thinking, or playing with Legos?

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• Goodhart's law - Wikipedia
• xkcd: Goodhart's Law
• Impact factor - Wikipedia
• Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research | The BMJ
• The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists | Nature Neuroscience
• Citation inequity and gendered citation practices in contemporary physics | Nature Physics