Mark Yarborough
Description: Professor Mark Yarborough began his career as an Instructor in the Philosophy Department at Auburn University and next went to the University of Colorado Denver before coming to UC Davis. He held the Dean’s Professorship in Bioethics, directed the Clinical Research Ethics Program of the Clinical and Translational Science Center. He investigates and publishes about various dimensions of trustworthy research practices, including under which circumstances the research community deserves the public’s trust and whether those circumstances routinely obtain.
Website Profile: Mark Yarborough
Resources Mentioned:
AI Institute for Food Systems (AIFS)
Publications:
Is Research Ethics Committee review of most clinical trials fundamentally broken?
Moving towards less biased research
Worthwhile Read: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Favorite Novels: The Plague by Albert Camus; As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
“A question that can be answered is a question that is not worth asking.”
Show Notes:
[01:40] Yarborough’s background, the first philosophical questions that fascinated him in biomedical research and how he got to UC Davis
[09: 20] Do we perform research that is deserving of the public’s trust?
[13:30] How does the academic research process work and where are its inefficiencies?
[16:30] Metrics used in academic research
[19:55] What metrics should we be using? (Covid-19 example)
[23:00] Are we able to assign causality and keep academic rigor when focusing on primary metrics versus secondary metrics?
[27:45] Could you speak to the tempo of academia in regards to the need to constantly be producing research?
[33:45] How can we counteract some of these biases?
[36:30] Do the interests of journals create echo chambers in academia?
[41:40] Separating yourself from your work
[44:10] The Covid-19 pandemic and the divide in society over the trustworthiness of the research around it and the vaccines
[52:45] The impact and transparency of the partnerships between public research and private companies
[1:00:00] Is there proper oversight over private companies?
[1:03:50] Focusing on creating health vs focusing on fix sick population
[1:06:00] Where do we go from here and how can people get involved?
[1:11:25] Defining meta research and an example of the medical school at the Utrecht University
[1:16:00] The project looking at beneficial contributions of AI in food systems at UC Davis
[1:20:00] Is there a role for ESG mandates in research
[1:24:20] Wrapping up and any advice about how to tackle these issues