How to Crack Pre-registration: Toward Transparent and Open Science

Abstract

The reproducibility problem that exists in various academic fields has been discussed in recent years, and it has been revealed that scientists discreetly engage in several questionable research practices (QRPs). For example, the practice of hypothesizing after the results are known (HARKing) involves the reconstruction of hypotheses and stories after results have been obtained (Kerr, 1998) and thereby promotes the retrospective fabrication of favorable hypotheses (cf. Bem, 2004). P-hacking encompasses various untruthful manipulations for obtaining p-values less than 0.05 (Simmons et al., 2011). Such unethical practices dramatically increase the number of false positive findings and thereby encourage the intentional fabrication of evidence as the basis of scientific knowledge and theory, which leads to individual profits for researchers.