21 words that could clear up methods-reporting issues in psychology

[Dolphin]

The headline is slightly adapted from a Twitter post:

21 words that could clear up the recent methods-reporting issues in psychology

I thought the "recent" was unnecessary, probably inaccurate.

The lay article is at: "This Photo Shows Exactly Why You Should Be Skeptical Of Psychology Research"
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-psychology-research-is-unreliable-2012-10

 

[Dolphin]

The full article is at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2160588

A 21 Word Solution

Joseph P. Simmons

University of Pennsylvania - Operations & Information Management Department

Leif D. Nelson
University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business

Uri Simonsohn
University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

October 14, 2012


Abstract:
One year after publishing "False-Positive Psychology," we propose a simple implementation of disclosure that requires but 21 words to achieve full transparency. This article is written in a casual tone. It includes phone-taken pictures of milk-jars and references to ice-cream and sardines.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 4

Keywords: transparency, disclosure, false positive, psychology, p-hacking

working papers series

Suggested Citation

Simmons, Joseph P., Nelson, Leif D. and Simonsohn, Uri, A 21 Word Solution (October 14, 2012). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2160588 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2160588

 

[Enid]

Dolphin - I must admit to resisting so called "evidence based" sciience (see Wikipedia on the problems with - especially psychiatry). I did psychology at Uni and well know it's limitations in real medicine. Four real Docs in my own family, so anger at anything "psychological" intervening in ME is inevitable. Evidence based is surely the patient opposite.

 

[Simon]

The authors of "21 Words" are also responsible for the famous "False-Positive Psychology" paper published last year that 'showed' listening to the The Beatles song "When I'm Sixty-Four" literally reduced people's age - as a demonstration that any results is possible if you tweak the analysis enough. It's an entertaining read, eg this concluding remark (note the authors have made very specific recommendations on how to fix the situation).

Concluding Remarks

Our goal as scientists is not to publish as many articles as
we can, but to discover and disseminate truth. Many of us—
and this includes the three authors of this article—often lose
sight of this goal, yielding to the pressure to do whatever is
justifiable to compile a set of studies that we can publish.
This is not driven by a willingness to deceive but by the
self-serving interpretation of ambiguity, which enables us to
convince ourselves that whichever decisions produced the
most publishable outcome must have also been the most
appropriate.

You can read a shortish article about this paper in Psychology Today, or an even shorter piece here.