Preregistration

What should a preregistration contain?

A large amount of variation exists in beliefs about the purpose and benefits of preregistration, making it difficult to implement and evaluate, and limiting its usefulness. Additionally, no single resource exists to describe what a preregistration …

When Does HARKing Hurt? Identifying When Different Types of Undisclosed Post Hoc Hypothesizing Harm Scientific Progress

Hypothesizing after the results are known, or HARKing, occurs when researchers check their research results and then add or remove hypotheses on the basis of those results without acknowledging this process in their research report (Kerr, 1998). In …

When is science (un)reliable?

In this course, we will explore the so‐called “reproducibility crisis” that has struck fields from psychology and economics to ecology and cancer biology. You will learn statistical principles at the heart of the reproducibility crisis, how disregard …

Why and How to Use Pre-Analysis Plans

We describe what is a pre-analysis plan (PAP) and why you should use one. We emphasize the potential political uses of PAPs and, in particular, how the PAP is in this respect a uniquely powerful tool for increasing the likelihood that evidence …

Why Preregistration Makes Me Nervous

I must admit that when I first heard of the effort to get psychological scientists to preregister their studies (that is, to submit to a journal a study’s hypotheses and a plan for how the data will be analyzed before that study has been run), I had …

Why Psychologists’ Food Fight Matters

“Important findings” haven’t been replicated, and science may have to change its ways.

You are not so smart

Psychology is working on the hardest problems in all of science. Physics, astronomy, geology — those are easy, by comparison. Understanding consciousness, willpower, ideology, social change – there’s a larger-than-Large-Hadron-Collider level of …