Readings
Here are some readings on new developments in the Replicability movement such as the Psych Science Accelerator.
Scientific Utopia: I. Opening scientific communication
Scientific Utopia: III. Crowdsourcing Science
The Psychological Science Accelerator
Podcasts and links
Hertz Podcast 78 - Large-Scale Collaborative Science with Lisa de Bruine
In this episode, we chat with Lisa DeBruine (University of Glasgow) about her experience with large-scale collaborative science and how her psychology department made the switch from SPSS to R. (Disclaimer: I get a mention in the intro section, for grizzling about SPSS on Twitter!)
Bias in Open Science Advocacy: The Case of Article Badges for Data Sharing
Hilda Bastian blogs somewhat critically about the Scientific Utopia III paper.
Essay Topic - The Future of Replicability
What is the future for Psychology and science in general in the wake of the Reproducibility Crisis? Advocates for a more open approach to science have argued that we need to open scientific communication to all (Nosek & Bar-Anan, 2012), restructure the incentive system for doing science (Nosek, Spies, & Motyl, 2012), and move towards a more crowd-sourced way of carrying out research projects (Uhlmann et al, 2012). Recent moves towards these goals include offering badges for open practice (Kidwell et al, 2016), combining data across many labs to replicate existing studies (see Topic 4 for more details), involving undergraduate students in replication attempts (Grahe et al, 2012), and, most recently, designing and carrying out new large-scale many-lab studies in the Psych Science Accelerator project (Moshontz et al, 2018). In this essay, you will explore these initiatives and evaluate how effective you think they will be in reforming scientific practice and reporting.
References:
Grahe, J. E., Reifman, A., Hermann, A. D., Walker, M., Oleson, K. C., Nario-Redmond, M., & Wiebe, R. P. (2012). Harnessing the Undiscovered Resource of Student Research Projects. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 605–607. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612459057
Kidwell, M. C., Lazarević, L. B., Baranski, E., Hardwicke, T. E., Piechowski, S., Falkenberg, L.-S., … Nosek, B. A. (2016). Badges to Acknowledge Open Practices: A Simple, Low-Cost, Effective Method for Increasing Transparency. PLOS Biology, 14(5), e1002456. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002456
Moshontz, H., Campbell, L., Ebersole, C. R., IJzerman, H., Urry, H. L., Forscher, P. S., … Chartier, C. R. (2018). The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1(4), 501–515. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607
Nosek, B. A., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2012). Scientific Utopia: I. Opening Scientific Communication. Psychological Inquiry, 23(3), 217–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2012.692215
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(6), 615–631. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1745691612459058
Uhlmann, E. L., Ebersole, C. R., Chartier, C. R., Errington, Kidwell, M. C., Lai, C. K., … Nosek, B. A. (2012). Scientific Utopia III: Crowdsourcing Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 615–631.
Forum
A number of exciting developments have emerged in recent years which show promise in helping to make psychology a more robust, reproducible science. Among these is the Psych Science Accelerator, a large-scale collaborative effort to crowdsource psychological research across many labs in different countries. What do you think of this? Would you be interested to participate in something like this as a student?
Please post your thoughts below!