Drang naar Samenhang

It's becoming a trend: another guest blog post. This time, J.P. de Ruiter shares his view, which I happen to share, on the value of experience in criticizing research. J.P. de Ruiter Tufts University One of the reasons that the scientific method was such a brilliant idea is that it has criticism built into the process. We don’t believe something on the basis of authority, but we need to be convinced by relevant data and sound arguments, and if we think that either the data or the argument is flawed, we say this. Before a study is conducted, this criticism is usually provided by colleagues, or in case of preregistration, reviewers. After a study is submitted, critical evaluations are performed by reviewers and editors. But even after publication, the criticism continues, in the form of discussions in follow-up articles, at conferences, and/or on social media. This self-corrective aspect of science is essential, hence criticism, even though at times it can be difficul...

This blog,  Drang naar Samenhang  will feature posts in Dutch from now on—but no worries, English speakers, I’ve got you covered too. I have launched Substack newsletter called  Craving Coherence :  https://rolfzwaan.substack.com . You don’t need to subscribe to read the posts—just hit  “No thanks”  if prompted. Of course, I’d really appreciate it if you  do  sign up. It’s completely free! So what is the newsletter about?  Why do we search for patterns, craft narratives, and cling to meaning? Craving Coherence explores the psychology of understanding—the mental shortcuts, biases, and frameworks that shape how we interpret reality. From cognitive science to philosophy, this newsletter examines how our minds construct coherence in an often chaotic world—and what happens when they fail. I hope to see you there! Back to the original post: Today a first in this blog: a guest post! In this post Alexa Tullett reflects on the consequences of Fox's ...

RetractionWatch recently reported  on the retraction of a paper by William Hart. Richard Morey blogged   i n more detail about this case. According to the RetractionWatch report: From this description I can only conclude that I am that “scientist outside the lab.”  I’m writing this post to provide some context for the Hart retraction. For one, inconsistent is rather a euphemism for what transpired in what I’m about to describe. Second, this case did indeed involve a graduate student, whom I shall refer to as "Fox." Back to the beginning. I was a co-author on a registered replication report  (RRR) involving one of Hart’s experiments. I described this project in a previous post . The bottom line is that none of the experiments replicated the original finding and that there was no meta-analytic effect.  Part of the RRR procedure is that original authors are invited to write a commentary on the replication report. The original commentary t...

You may have come across a viral video on Facebook from "deception expert" Rick Lax, who invites you to participate in a little pop quiz involving numbers. If you haven't seen it, watch the 1-minute-plus video right now . (I'd embed the video in this post for you but I'm not sure I'm allowed to do so.) If you were like me, you thought of  the number 7 at the end. Of course, this is exactly the number Lax wanted you to come up with.  So how does it work? Or does it work at all? There was some discussion about this urgent matter on Facebook in the  Psychological Methods Discussion Group . The moderator of that group, Uli Schimmack, who also thought of 7, suggested this was the result of priming. But then he questioned his explanation: " We don't know because we don't know how often he gets it right? We just see 1 million shares. It is like reading Psych Science . We only see the successes." This makes sense. In theory there could be a mas...

On the brink of 2017. Time for some New Year's resolutions. I won't bore you with details about my resolutions to (1) again run 1000k (not in a row of course), (2) not live in a political bubble, (3) be far more skeptical about political polls, (4) pick up the guitar again, (5) write more blog posts, and (6) learn more about wine. Instead I want to focus on some resolutions about research practices that Brent Roberts, Lorne Campbell, and I penned (with much-appreciated feedback from Brian Nosek, Felix Schönbrodt, and Jennifer Tackett). We hope they form an inspiration to you as well.  The Commitment Scientific research is an attempt to identify a working truth about the world that is as independent of ideology as possible.  As we appear to be entering a time of heightened skepticism about the value of scientific information, we feel it is important to emphasize and foster research practices that enhance the integrity of scientific data and thus scientific information. We h...

Update December 17. Data collection is in full swing in labs from Buenos Aires to Berkeley and from Potsdam to Pittsburgh. Some labs have already finished while others (such as my lab) have just started. Data collection should be completed by March 1.  Update October 24. Data collection has officially started. No fewer than 20 labs are participating! Besides investigating if the ACE replicates in native speakers, we will also examine if the effect extends to L2 speakers of English. Update November 11, 2021. The article reporting the findngs is now in press.  Mike Kaschak and Art Glenberg, discoverers of the famous ACE effect , have decided to run a registered replication of their effect. There already are 7 participating labs but we'd like to invite more participants. If you're interested in language, action, and/or replication and have access to subjects who are native speakers of English, please consider participating by responding to Mike's (kaschak@psy.fsu.edu) i...

With increasing attention paid to reproducibility in science, a natural worry for researchers  is, “What happens if my finding does not replicate?” With this question, Charles Ebersole, Jordan Axt, and Brian Nosek open their new article on perceptions of noveltyand reproducibility, published today in PLoS Biology . There are several ways to interpret this question, but Ebersole and colleagues are most concerned with reputational issues. In an ideal world, they note, reputations shouldn’t matter; the focus should be on the findings. But reality is different: findings are treated as possessions . Ebersole and his co-authors draw a contrast between innovation and reproducibility in evaluating reputations. Drawing this contrast is not without precedent. Some years back, I served on the National Science Foundation program Perception, Action, and Cognition. We were told that innovation was to be an overriding criterion in evaluating proposals. Up to that point, as I underst...