Open Science

Meta-analyses are no substitute for registered replications: a skeptical perspective on religious priming

According to a recent meta-analysis, religious priming has a positive effect on prosocial behavior (Shariff et al., 2015). We first argue that this meta-analysis suffers from a number of methodological shortcomings that limit the conclusions that can …

Meta‐regression approximations to reduce publication selection bias.

Publication selection bias is a serious challenge to the integrity of all empirical sciences. We derive meta-regression approximations to reduce this bias. Our approach employs Taylor polynomial approximations tothe conditional mean of a truncated …

Methodological Advances in Behavioral Research: Crowdsourcing Science

The results of many published studies across many scientific domains are not easily reproduced by independent laboratories. For example, an initiative by Bayer Healthcare to replicate 67 pre-clinical studies led to a reproducibility rate of 20-25% …

Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries

Concerns that the growing competition for funding and citations might distort science are frequently discussed, but have not been verified directly. Of the hypothesized problems, perhaps the most worrying is a worsening of positive-outcome bias. A …

Negativity towards negative results: a discussion of the disconnect between scientific worth and scientific culture.

Science is often romanticised as a flawless system of knowledge building, where scientists work together to systematically find answers. In reality, this is not always the case. Dissemination of results are straightforward when the findings are …

New trends in science communication fostering evidence-informed policymaking

TRESCA – Trustworthy, Reliable and Engaging Scientific Communication Approaches – is a research project aimed at understanding how science communication can help re-build trust in science and scientists. The project wants to create positive changes …

Novel methods to deal with publication biases: secondary analysis of antidepressant trials in the FDA trial registry database and related journal publications.

Objective: To assess the performance of novel contour enhanced funnel plots and a regression based adjustment method to detect and adjust for publication biases. Design: Secondary analysis of a published systematic literature review. Data sources: …

On Not Confusing the Tree of Trustworthy Statistics with the Greater Forest of Good Science: A Comment on Simmons et al.’s Perspective on Pre-registration

In this commentary on Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn (this issue), we examine their rationale for pre-registration within the broader perspective of what good science is. We agree that there is potential benefit in a system of pre-registration if …

On the plurality of (methodological) worlds: estimating the analytic flexibility of fMRI experiments

How likely are published findings in the functional neuroimaging literature to be false? According to a recent mathematical model, the potential for false positives increases with the flexibility of analysis methods. Functional MRI (fMRI) experiments …

On the reproducibility of meta-analyses: six practical recommendations

Background: Meta-analyses play an important role in cumulative science by combining information across multiple studies and attempting to provide effect size estimates corrected for publication bias. Research on the reproducibility of meta-analyses …