Shows
The Studies ShowEpisode 79: Cancer ratesAre cancer rates going up or down? It seems like depending on where you look, you’ll find different answers to the question. What’s going on here — have some writers just got it completely wrong? Is it something to do with different types of cancer? Are we being confused by some kind of weird statistical artefact? All of the above? In this episode of The Studies Show, we do our very best to find out.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, the ultimate place online to read about new and underr...
2025-07-2252 min
The Studies ShowEpisode 78: Worm wars and mouth bacteriaSeconds out! Round one! Ding ding! And other boxing terms. We’ve found a topic on which Tom and Stuart actually disagree. Kind of. In this episode of The Studies Show, they use the examples of “the worm wars” (does deworming kids in developing countries help them stay in school?) and a new craze for “tooth bacteria” (can colonizing your mouth with a genetically-modified bacterium stop you getting cavities?) to argue about how we should make our minds up about uncertain—but potentially promising—medical treatments.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. On t...
2025-07-151h 15
EA Forum Podcast (All audio)“AMA: Saloni Dattani” by Toby Tremlett🔹, salonium Saloni will answer the questions in this AMA between 6-8pm BST on July 8th. Leave your questions as comments, and upvote other questions you’d like to see answered. If you’ve been around EA for a while, and you’re interested in global health, you’ve probably read Saloni Dattani before. Saloni writes about global health at Our World In Data and is a co-founder and editor of Works in Progress magazine. She's also recently started a podcast, Hard Drugs, with Jacob Trefethen. She also (somehow) finds time to write a great blog, Scientif...
2025-07-0302 min
Outside/InVenom and the cureVenom is full of dualities. According to the UN’s World Health Organization, snakebite envenoming causes somewhere between 81,000 and 138,000 deaths per year, and even that is likely an undercount. Yet research into venom has yielded treatments for diabetes, cancer, erectile dysfunction, and even the celebrity favorite diabetes slash diet drug, Ozempic. In this episode, we explore the world of venom, where fear and fascination go hand-in-hand, and the potential for healing comes with deadly stakes. This is part II of our “Things That Can Kill You” miniseries, which also explores poison and allergies.Featurin...
2025-04-0326 min
The Studies ShowEpisode 60: Best and worst science of 2024In this final episode of 2024, Tom and Stuart talk about the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the year… but temper it with some of the worst episodes of scientific fraud and misconduct, too. Then, just as a bonus, they address some of the biggest errors made in episodes of The Studies Show in 2024, too.Thank you so much for listening in 2024. If you aren’t one already, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the podcast and get access to all the episodes. In any case, we’ll see you for more The Studies Show in the Ne...
2024-12-241h 05
Good on PaperWhat Do We Really Know About the Maternal-Mortality Crisis?From 1999 and 2019, researchers found that the maternal-mortality rate in the U.S. more than doubled. Over the years, these findings filtered their way through academic journals and the news media to the general public.But was there something more to this story? How had the U.S. become such a deadly place for pregnant women?In this episode of Good on Paper, host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data. Her work—built on the research of other skeptical scientists—found that the seem...
2024-08-0640 min
More or Less: Behind the StatsHow a tick box doubled the US maternal mortality rates.he US has been portrayed as in the grip of a maternal mortality crisis. In contrast to most other developed nations, the rate of maternal deaths in the US has been going up since the early 2000s. But why? With the help of Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data, Tim Harford explores how a gradual change in the way the data was gathered lies at the heart of the problem. Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Debbie Richford
Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
Series Producer: Tom Colls
Sound Mix: Emma Harth
Editor: Richard Vadon
2024-06-2909 min
Talking About the FutureSaloni Dattani on Life ExpectancyOur World in Data global health researcher Saloni Dattani talks about life expectancy and trends in global health. Get full access to Telling the Future at tellingthefuture.substack.com/subscribe
2024-03-2241 min
Hear This IdeaSaloni Dattani on Malaria Vaccines and Missing Data in Global HealthSaloni Dattani is a Researcher at Our World in Data, and a founder & editor at the online magazine Works in Progress. She holds a PhD in psychiatric genetics from King’s College London.
You can see more links and a full transcript at hearthisidea.com/episodes/dattani.
In this episode we talk about:
The history of malaria and attempts to eradicate it
The role of DDT and insecticide spraying campaigns — and why they were scaled down
Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine sooner
What comes after vaccine discovery — rolling out the RTS,S vaccin...
2023-10-192h 52
EAG TalksMissing Data In Global Health And Why It Matters | Saloni Dattani | EAGxCambridge 2023https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikx53I77NI8
2023-08-1922 min
The External Medicine PodcastSaloni Dattani: Peer Review, Division of Labor in Science, and the Genetics of Psychiatric DisordersIn this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Saloni Dattani about the genetics of psychiatric disorders and how to improve science. They discuss the lack of division of labor in academia, the history of peer review, ways to improve peer review, human challenge trials, and much more.Who is Saloni Dattani?Saloni Dattani is a PhD student at King’s College London. She is the founding editor of the online magazine Works in Progress. She is also an editor at Stripe Press and a researcher at Our World in Data.
2023-01-291h 11
Ben Yeoh ChatsSaloni Dattani: making science better, important questions in science, open science, reforming peer review, vaccines and optimism.Saloni Dattani is a founding editor at Works in Progress, a researcher at Our World in Data and a commissioning editor at Stripe Press. She has recently been profiled by Vox as part of the Future Perfect 50. Saloni is an excellent thinker on progress and science with recent articles for Wired (on making science better) and Guardian (on challenge trials).
Saloni tells me what are the most important questions in science that we should be working on.
We discuss making science better and thinking around challenge trials, making science more open source, r...
2022-11-081h 06
Everything Hertz159: Peer review isn't working (with Saloni Dattani)Dan and James are joined by Saloni Dattani for a chat about the history of peer review, a reimagination of what peer review could look like, what happens when you actually pay peer reviewers, peer reviewer specialisation, post publication peer review, annual paper limits for authors, automation in peer review, and Big Cheese.
Links
Works in Progress magazine
One of the many news stories about the Jarsberg cheese study
The actual study
Saloni's peer review piece
The F1000 format
Our episode with Elisabeth Bik
PCI registered reports
Saloni on Twitter
Other links
Everything Hertz...
2022-08-1551 min
The Rhys ShowHow to Make Crucial Knowledge Accessible & Understandable for Us All With Saloni DattaniIn this episode, researcher, writer, editor and PhD student in psychiatric genetics Saloni Dattani joins us to talk about her view of the world in different movements she tracks and how she does the research process.
It is possible to make progress against the huge problems we are all facing in the world by sharing new and underrated ideas of amazing thinkers. Why don’t we? Because research and data isn't accessible. Saloni works through different fields making that knowledge accessible and understandable for us all.
We dive deep into science communication and how to make it better, what brings Sa...
2022-07-1155 min
Narratives61: Steven Pinker, Progress, and Mental Health with Saloni DattaniSaloni Dattani is a PhD student in psychiatric genetics at King's College London. She has also created Works in Progress, an excellent online magazine. In this episode, we talk about Steven Pinker, technological progress, the state of science, and the genetics of mental health. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willjarvis.substack.com
2021-09-2731 min
Narratives w/Will Jarvis61: Steven Pinker, Progress, and Mental Health with Saloni DattaniSaloni Dattani is a PhD student in psychiatric genetics at King's College London. She has also created Works in Progress, an excellent online magazine. In this episode, we talk about Steven Pinker, technological progress, the state of science, and the genetics of mental health.
2021-09-2731 minEverything Hertz126: The division of scientific labor (with Saloni Dattani)We have a wide-ranging chat with Saloni Dattani (Kings College London and University of Hong Kong) about the benefits of dividing scientific labor, the magazine she co-founded (Works in Progress) that shares novel ideas and stories of progress, and fighting online misinformation
Here are some links and other stuff we cover
Follow Saloni on Twitter: https://twitter.com/salonium
Why Saloni started the Works in Progress magazine
[Overleaf](overleaf.com), for writing papers in LaTeX
How science will benefit from the division of labour
Public writing vs. scientific writing
Why has behavioral science not been very...
2021-02-1552 min
Rationally Speaking PodcastRationally Speaking #239 - Saloni Dattani on "The debate over whether male and female brains are different"Several recent books have argued there's no difference between male and female brains. Saloni Dattani, a PhD in psychiatric genetics, discusses some of the problems with the argument, and what we really know so far about gender and the brain.
2019-09-0348 min