P-hacking, the selective reporting of statistically significant analyses, continues to threaten the integrity of our discipline. P-hacking is inevitable whenever (1) a researcher hopes to find evidence for a particular result, (2) there is ambiguity about how exactly to analyze the data, and (3) the researcher does not perfectly plan out his/her analysis in advance….
Category: Preregistration
[55] The file-drawer problem is unfixable, and that’s OK
The “file-drawer problem” consists of researchers not publishing their p>.05 studies (Rosenthal 1979 .htm). P-hacking consist of researchers not reporting their p>.05 analyses for a given study. P-hacking is easy to stop. File-drawering nearly impossible. Fortunately, while p-hacking is a real problem, file-drawering is not. Consequences of p-hacking vs file-drawering With p-hacking it’s easy to…
[44] AsPredicted: Pre-registration Made Easy
Pre-registering a study consists of leaving a written record of how it will be conducted and analyzed. Very few researchers currently pre-register their studies. Maybe it’s because pre-registering is annoying. Maybe it's because researchers don't want to tie their own hands. Or maybe it's because researchers see no benefit to pre-registering. This post addresses these…
[12] Preregistration: Not just for the Empiro-zealots
I recently joined a large group of academics in co-authoring a paper looking at how political science, economics, and psychology are working to increase transparency in scientific publications. Psychology is leading, by the way. Working on that paper (and the figure below) actually changed my mind about something. A couple of years ago, when Joe,…