Ready Player One. Valerian. Worlds in chaos that need human video gamers to save their worlds via virtual reality. Similarly, high-tech gadgets utilizing facial recognition or voice activation tools to access superpower suits or weapons are the secret to saving the world in Iron Man or The Incredibles. Even our smart phones today utilize various virtual […]
Even beautiful minds take time to develop and mature. There is evidence that even an alleged child prodigy such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who started composing at age 5, required 10 years of practice to produce an outstanding piece of creativity. Alas, even beautiful minds will eventually turn from productivity to retirement, and no matter […]
The digital event dedicated to preregistration drew to a close last week, after a series of 8 posts. #PSprereg has now been given a permanent home, at this landing page. Feel free to bookmark the page or circulate the link to interested parties for easy (and permanent) access to the collection of 8 posts. As […]
At 1 am on 6 August 1997 Korean Air Flight 801, on approach to Guam, flew into Nimitz Hill, 6 km short of the runway, killing 228 of the 254 people on board. The approach occurred in limited visibility and while the instrument landing system was out of service. The crash was a classic example […]
I have written about a number of issues concerning the practice of science out of concern that the present narrative is unbalanced: I believe that science is doing very well, even in our fields, despite the problems many have identified. One essay, albeit aimed at all of science, is found in the recent PNAS article […]
“(…) a substantial proportion of research effort in experimental psychology isn’t expended directly in the explanation business; it is expended in the business of discovering and confirming effects” —Cummins (2000). I am contributing to this digital event from a theoretician’s perspective. I thought I’d be upfront about this to set the right expectations. Theoretical perspectives […]
I have a confession to make. I like the idea behind preregistration a lot, and over the last few years I’ve been making a concerted effort to start using it more often, but I still don’t preregister as much as I “should”. Ever since I was asked to write this post I’ve been wondering where […]
It is too early to know whether the recent period of methodological introspection in psychological science, and the sciences in general, will lead to positive changes in practices. As with any revolution, there is the potential of moving backward. One problem that has been consistently acknowledged is the problem of incentives: what gets one attention […]
Preregistration has many advantages, which have been pointed out in Steve Lindsay’s post yesterday and many other places. The most important advantage is probably that it demonstrates without doubt that the hypotheses and data-analysis path chosen for a study were not chosen in response to the data with an eye towards obtaining the desired results. […]
Richard Shiffrin’s 2018 PNAS article on the nature of scientific progress is beautifully written, erudite, and insightful. I learned a lot from it and agree with most of his arguments. But with the greatest respect I would like to counter Shiffrin’s expressions of doubt regarding the value of preregistering research plans. Those doubts were lightly […]