
The paper starts with exposing recurrent flaws in psychological science that lead some critics to announce a scientific crisis. Some researchers, either fraudulently or by ignorance, behave in such a way as to invalidate their conclusions. The most common practices include withholding null results and only reporting conclusive experiments, selecting the size of the sample while running the experiment, and multiple testing. The pressure to publish (or perish) and the need for ``sexy papers'' in order to convince leading editors encourage these practices. The author then details how one can, a posteriori, test a set of experimental results for consistency within the framework of null hypothesis significance test (NHST). The basic idea is that even if a conclusion is true, one should expect to get null findings within a set of experiments. The number of null findings one should expect in a series of NHST depends on the power or the tests used, which may be assessed from the data. The author describes the main characteristics of the resulting consistency test and reminds the reader that many papers published in leading journals failed to pass the consistency test. Last, he replies to a series of criticisms he faced after publishing evidence that many often-cited papers, including a claimed proof of precognition by Bem, Piff's experimental study associating wealth with poor moral behavior, and a few more.
publication bias, statistics, hypothesis testing, scientific publishing, Mathematical psychology, Applications of statistics to psychology
publication bias, statistics, hypothesis testing, scientific publishing, Mathematical psychology, Applications of statistics to psychology
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 79 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Top 10% | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 1% |
