Apr 29
Along with many other psychologists, I’ve been closely following (and participating in) the ongoing discussion about finding ways to effectively improve the shortcomings in our field’s research methods. Given that the Stapel fraud case was an important spark to these discussions, I read Yudhijit Bhattacharjee’s article, The Mind of a Con Man, in this week’s New York Times Magazine with great interest.
Oct 25
In recent months social psychologists have focused an increasing amount of attention on the soundness of their scientific methods. Although the problems we face are troubling, I believe that the renewed attention they are getting is a very positive trend because a self-critical approach is essential to ensuring the continuing health of the discipline. If, as a scientific community, we were to ignore problems as they became apparent, then our entire endeavor would be undermined. The question, then, is not whether we need to be improving the state of our science, but how we can do so most effectively.
Jul 22
An update on Simonsohn’s recently posted paper in which I discuss one of the techniques used to confirm Simonsohn’s suspicions of fraud. The results of the analysis make it clear that the data was not generated by real subjects.
Jul 20
Uri Simonsohn’s “secret” paper describing the analyses he used to detect fraud in the Dirk Smeesters and Larry Sanna cases has now been submitted for publication and is available on SSRN. Simonsohn explains the analyses he used to detect and confirm the fraud and calls on journals to make the publication of raw data their default policy.
Jul 16
Some guy thinks psychology is not really a science. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Jul 10
Is social psychology in need of reform? I propose that despite high profile cases of fraud, we should be more focused on fixing the mistakes that honest researchers make all the time.
May 09
Part 2 of my two-part series on conceptual replication: how conceptual replication can prevent us from replicating our mistakes with a look back at the history of Cognitive Dissonance Theory.
May 03
Here is the short commentary that I wrote about conceptual replication for the May issue of The Psychologist. It explains why conceptual replication is integral to social psychology research and why it can seem strange to people in the hard sciences.
Narrative Transportation 1,154 view
Simonsohn’s Fraud D... 651 views
Psychology is Science 595 views
Odysseus Nudged: Some mor... 512 views
The Stapel Continuum 453 views
