MTS 525-0
 Special Topics Research Seminar

Section 20: Generalizing about Message Effects
 Spring 2020

SYLLABUS: TOPIC 3 (part 2)

TOPIC 3: The “replication crisis” and affiliated ideas (part 2)

 

Overall topic 3 outline:

3.1  Crises of replication (especially in psychology)

3.2  Underlying elements

3.3  Toward improved research practices

3.4  Being a vigilant research consumer

 

part 2 outline:

3.3  Toward improved research practices

            3.3.1  Changes in research culture

            3.3.2  Editorial practices: Reporting requirements, registered reports, etc.

            3.3.3  Researcher practices

            3.3.4  Alpha reduction/justification

3.4  Being a vigilant research consumer (and producer)

            3.4.1  Statcheck

            3.4.2  GRIM (Granularity Related Inconsistent Means)

            3.4.3  PubPeer

            3.4.4  General principles

 

 

 

 


 

3.3  Toward improved research practices

 

3.3.1  Changes in research culture

 

Nosek, B. A., Spies, J. R., & Motyl, M. (2012). Scientific utopia II. Restructuring incentives and practices to promote truth over publishability. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 615 – 631. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612459058

 

Nelson, L. D., Simmons, J. P., & Simonsohn, U. (2018). Psychology’s renaissance. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 511-534. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011836

 

Dienlin, T., Johannes, N., Bowman, N. D., Masur, P. K., Engesser, S., Kümpel, A. S., Lukito, J., Bier, L. M., Zhang, R., Johnson, B. K., Huskey, R., Schneider, F. M., Breuer, J., Parry, D. A., Vermeulen, I., Fisher, J. T., Banks, J., Weber, R., Ellis, D. A., Smits, T., Ivory, J. D., Trepte, S., McEwan, B., Rinke, E. M., Neubaum, G., Winter, S., Carpenter, C. J., Krämer, N., Utz, S., Unkel, J., Wang, X., Davidson, B. I., Kim, N., Won, A. S., Domahidi, E., Lewis, N. A., de Vreese, C.  (in press). An agenda for open science in communication. Journal of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz052

 

 

For further reading:

            Koole, S. L., & Lakens, D. (2012). Rewarding replications: A sure and simple way to improve psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 608-614. doi:10.1177/1745691612462586

            Levine, T. R. (2013). A defense of publishing nonsignificant (ns) results. Communication Research Reports, 30, 270-274. doi:10.1080/08824096.2013.806261

            McEwan, B., Carpenter, C. J., & Westerman, D. (2018). On replication in communication science. Communication Studies, 69, 235-241.  doi:10.1080/10510974.2018.1464938 

            Lindsay, D. S. (in press). Seven steps toward transparency and replicability in psychological science. Canadian Psychology.  Preprint available at PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/32uz6 

 

 


 

3.3.2  Editorial practices: Reporting requirements, registered reports, etc.

 

Fidler, F., Thomason, N., Cumming, G., Finch, S., & Leeman, J. (2004). Editors can lead researchers to confidence intervals, but can’t make them think: Statistical reform lessons from medicine. Psychological Science, 15, 119-126.

 

van 't Veer, A. E., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2016). Pre-registration in social psychology: A discussion and suggested template. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 67, 2-12. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2016.03.004  

 

Scheel, A. M., Schijen, M., & Lakens, D. (2020, February 5). An excess of positive results: Comparing the standard Psychology literature with Registered Reports. PsyArXiv manuscript. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/p6e9c 

 

 

For further reading:

            Fritz, A., Scherndl, T., & Kühberger, A. (2013). A comprehensive review of reporting practices in psychological journals: Are effect sizes really enough? Theory and Psychology, 23, 98-122. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354312436870 

            Simons, D. J., Holcombe, A. O., & Spellman, B. A. (2014). An introduction to registered replication reports at Perspectives on Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(5), 552-555. doi:10.1177/1745691614543974

            Bruce, R., Chauvin, A., Trinquart, L., Ravaud, P., & Boutron, I. (2016). Impact of interventions to improve the quality of peer review of biomedical journals: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Medicine, 14, 85. doi:10.1186/s12916-016-0631-5

            Button, K. S., Bal, L., Clark, A., & Shipley, T. (2016). Preventing the ends from justifying the means: Withholding results to address publication bias in peer-review. BMC Psychology, 4, article no. 59. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-016-0167-7 

            Findley, M. G., Jensen, N. M., Malesky, E. J., & Pepinsky, T. B. (2016). Can results-free review reduce publication bias? The results and implications of a pilot study. Comparative Political Studies, 49(13), 1667–1703. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414016655539  

            Claesen, A., Gomes, S. L. B. T., Tuerlinckx, F., & Vanpaemel, W. (2019, May 9). Preregistration: Comparing dream to reality. PsyArXiv manuscript. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/d8wex 

            Lakens, D. (2019, November 18). The value of preregistration for psychological science: A conceptual analysis. PsyArXiv manuscript.  https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/jbh4w 

            Chambers, C. (2019). The registered reports revolution: Lessons in cultural reform. Significance, 16, 23-27. doi:10.1111/j.1740-9713.2019.01299.x  

 

 


 

3.3.3  Researcher practices

 

Wicherts, J. M., Veldkamp, C. L. S., Augusteijn, H. E. M., Bakker, M., van Aert, R. C. M., & van Assen, M. A. L. M. (2016).  Degrees of freedom in planning, running, analyzing, and reporting psychological studies: A checklist to avoid p-hacking. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, article no. 1832. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01832 

 

Klein, O., Hardwicke, T. E., Aust, F., Breuer, J., Danielsson, H., Hofelich Mohr, A., Ijzerman, H., Nilsonne, G., Vanpaemel, W., & Frank, M. C. (2018). A practical guide for transparency in psychological science. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1), 20. http://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.158 

 

For further reading: 

            Westfall, J., Judd, C. M., & Kenny, D. A. (2015). Replicating studies in which samples of participants respond to samples of stimuli. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 390-399. doi:10.1177/1745691614564879  

            LeBel, E. P., & John, L. K. (2017). Toward transparent reporting of psychological science. In S. O. Lilienfeld & I. D. Waldman (Eds.), Psychological science under scrutiny: Recent challenges and proposed solutions (pp. 73-84).  John Wiley & Sons.  

 

 

 

 


 

3.3.4  Alpha reduction/justification

 

For further reading:

            Benjamin, D. J., Berger, J. O., Johannesson, M., Nosek, B. A., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Berk, R., Bollen, K. A., Brembs, B., Brown, L., Camerer, C., Cesarini, D., Chambers, C. D., Clyde, M., Cook, T. D., De Boeck, P., Dienes, Z., Dreber, A., Easwaran, K., Efferson, C., Fehr, E., Fidler, F., Field, A. P., Forster, M., George, E. I., Gonzalez, R., Goodman, S., Green, E., Green, D. P., Greenwald, A., Hadfield, J. D., Hedges, L. V., Held, L., Ho, T.-H., Hoijtink, H., Jones, J. H., Hruschka, D. J., Imai, K., Imbens, G., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Jeon, M., Kirchler, M., Laibson, D., List, J., Little, R., Lupia, A., Machery, E., Maxwell, S. E., McCarthy, M., Moore, D., Morgan, S. L., Munafó, M., Nakagawa, S., Nyhan, B., Parker, T. H., Pericchi, L., Perugini, M., Rouder, J., Rousseau, J., Savalei, V., Schönbrodt, F. D., Sellke, T., Sinclair, B., Tingley, D., Van Zandt, T., Vazire, S., Watts, D. J., Winship, C., Wolpert, R. L., Xie, Y., Young, C., Zinman, J., & Johnson, V. E. (2018). Redefine statistical significance. Nature Human Behaviour, 2. 6-10.  doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z

            Crane, H. (2017). Why “redefining statistical significance” will not improve reproducibility and could make the replication crisis worse. arXiv manuscript. arXiv:1711.07801v1

            Holbert, R. L., Hardy, B. W., Park, E., Robinson, N. W., Jung, H., Zeng, C., … Sweeney, K. (2018). Addressing a statistical power-alpha level blind spot in political- and health-related media research: Discontinuous criterion power analyses. Annals of the International Communication Association, 42, 75-92.  doi:10.1080/23808985.2018.1459198  

            Trafimow, D., Amrhein, V., Areshenkoff, C.N., Barrera-Causil, C., Beh, E.J., Bilgiç, Y., Bono, R., Bradley, M.T., Briggs, W.M., Cepeda-Freyre, H.A., Chaigneau, S.E., Ciocca, D.R., Carlos Correa, J., Cousineau, D., de Boer, M.R., Dhar, S.S., Dolgov, I., Gómez-Benito, J., Grendar, M., Grice, J., Guerrero-Gimenez, M.E., Gutiérrez, A., Huedo-Medina, T.B., Jaffe, K., Janyan, A., Karimnezhad, A., Korner-Nievergelt, F., Kosugi, K., Lachmair, M., Ledesma, R., Limongi, R., Liuzza, M.T., Lombardo, R., Marks, M., Meinlschmidt, G., Nalborczyk, L., Nguyen, H.T., Ospina, R., Perezgonzalez, J.D., Pfister, R., Rahona, J.J., Rodríguez-Medina, D.A., Romão, X., Ruiz-Fernández, S., Suarez, I., Tegethoff, M., Tejo, M., van de Schoot, R., Vankov, I., Velasco-Forero, S., Wang, T., Yamada, Y., Zoppino, F.C., & Marmolejo-Ramos, F. (2018). Manipulating the alpha level cannot cure significance testing. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 699.  Available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00699 

            Lakens, D., Adolfi, F. G., Albers, C. J., Anvari, F., Apps, M. A. J., Argamon, S. E., … Zwaan, R. A. (2018). Justify your alpha. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 168-171.  doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0311-x   

            Miller, J., & Ulrich, R. (2019). The quest for an optimal alpha. PLoS ONE, 14, e0208631. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0208631

 


 

3.4  Being a vigilant research consumer (and producer)

 

 

3.4.1  Statcheck

 

Nuijten, M. B., Hartgerink, C. H. J., van Assen, M. A. L. M., Epskamp, S., & Wicherts, J. M. (2016). The prevalence of statistical reporting errors in psychology (1985-2013). Behavior Research Methods, 48, 1205-1226 doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0664-2 

 

https://mbnuijten.com/statcheck/  

 

http://statcheck.io/

 

 

 

3.4.2  GRIM (Granularity Related Inconsistent Means)

 

Brown, N. J. L., & Heathers, J. A. J. (2017). The GRIM test: A simple technique detects numerous anomalies in the reporting of results in psychology. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 363-369.  doi:10.1177/1948550616673876 

 

 

http://www.prepubmed.org/general_grim/     

 

http://www.prepubmed.org/grim_test/ 

 

https://osf.io/3fcbr/   

 

 

3.4.3  PubPeer 

 

https://pubpeer.com/ 

 

https://pubpeer.com/static/extensions  

 

 

3.4.4  General principles

 

Sainani, K. L. (2020), How to be a statistical detective. PM&R, 12(2), 211-215. doi:10.1002/pmrj.12305

 

For further reading:

            Brown, A. W., Kaiser, K. A., & Allison, D. B. (2018). Issues with data and analyses. PNAS, 115(11), 2563-2570.  doi:10.1073/pnas.1708279115