Metascience

Association between trial registration and treatment effect estimates: a meta-epidemiological study

To increase transparency in research, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors required, in 2005, prospective registration of clinical trials as a condition to publication. However, many trials remain unregistered or retrospectively …

Meta-assessment of bias in science

Numerous biases are believed to affect the scientific literature, but their actual prevalence across disciplines is unknown. To gain a comprehensive picture of the potential imprint of bias in science, we probed for the most commonly postulated …

Reproducibility in Cancer Biology: The challenges of replication

Interpreting the first results from the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology requires a highly nuanced approach. Reproducibility is a cornerstone of science, and the development of new drugs and medical treatments relies on the results of …

Science isn't Broken

If you follow the headlines, your confidence in science may have taken a hit lately. Peer review? More like self-review. An investigation in November uncovered a scam in which researchers were rubber-stamping their own work, circumventing peer review …

The Preregistration Prescriptiveness Trade-Off and Unknown Unknowns in Science: Comments on Van Drimmelen (2023)

I discuss Van Drimmelen’s (2023) Metascience2023 presentation on researchers’ decision making during the research process. In particular, I consider his evidence that researchers’ discretion over research decisions is unavoidable when they follow …

The replication crisis is less of a “crisis” in the Lakatosian approach than it is in the Popperian and naïve methodological falsificationism approaches

Popper’s (1983, 2002) philosophy of science has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the wake of the replication crisis, offering a philosophical basis for the ensuing science reform movement. However, adherence to Popper’s approach may also be at …

The value of preregistration for psychological science: A conceptual analysis

For over two centuries researchers have been criticized for using research practices that makes it easier to present data in line with what they wish to be true. With the rise of the internet it has become easier to preregister the theoretical and …

What is this thing called open science?

A general introduction to open scholarship.