Why Preregistration Makes Me Nervous

Abstract

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 a moment of panic. It seemed, on the surface, entirely too regulated for my tastes. I have since calmed down and now see the usefulness of preregistration — indeed, APS has been at the forefront of encouraging preregistration to make our science more transparent and reliable.