Open Science

The relation between statistical power and inference in fMRI.

Statistically underpowered studies can result in experimental failure even when all other experimental considerations have been addressed impeccably. In fMRI the combination of a large number of dependent variables, a relatively small number of …

The Replication Crisis in Psychology

In science, replication is the process of repeating research to determine the extent to which findings generalize across time and across situations. Recently, the science of psychology has come under criticism because a number of research findings do …

The Replication Recipe: What makes for a convincing replication?

Psychological scientists have recently started to reconsider the importance of close replications in building a cumulative knowledge base; however, there is no consensus about what constitutes a convincing close replication study. To facilitate …

The Reputational Consequences of Failed Replications and Wrongness Admission among Scientists

Scientists are dedicating more attention to replication efforts. While the scientific utility of replications is unquestionable, the impact of failed replication efforts and the discussions surrounding them deserve more attention. Specifically, the …

The rules of the game called psychological science

If science were a game, a dominant rule would probably be to collect results that are statistically significant. Several reviews of the psychological literature have shown that around 96% of papers involving the use of null hypothesis significance …

The State of Social and Personality Science: Rotten to the Core, Not So Bad, Getting Better, or Getting Worse?

The scientific quality of social and personality psychology has been debated at great length in recent years. Despite research on the prevalence of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) and the replicability of particular findings, the impact of the …

The transparency of quantitative empirical legal research published in highly ranked law journals (2018–2020): an observational study

Background: Scientists are increasingly concerned with making their work easy to verify and build upon. Associated practices include sharing data, materials, and analytic scripts, and preregistering protocols. This shift towards increased …

The value of direct replication.

Reproducibility is the cornerstone of science. If an effect is reliable, any competent researcher should be able to obtain it when using the same procedures with adequate statistical power. Two of the articles in this special section question the …

Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology.

Theories in "soft" areas of psychology (e.g., clinical, counseling, social, personality, school, and community) lack the cumulative character of scientific knowledge because they tend neither to be refuted nor corroborated, but instead merely fade …

Theory-Testing in Psychology and Physics: A Methodological Paradox

Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in experimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a …