Harsh scrutiny of an influential political science experiment highlights the importance of transparency in research. The paper, from UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour and Columbia University Professor Donald Green, was published in Science in December 2014. It asserted that short conversations with gay canvassers could not only change people’s minds on a divisive social issue like same-sex…
A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science
Twelve points that will help separate the science from the pseudoscience (see here).
The Disturbing Influence of Flawed Research on Your Living Habits
Last year, we featured a story on our blog about the so-called cardiovascular benefits of fish oil, largely based on a seminal research study that had more to do with hearsay than with actual science. After your diet, flawed research is now trying to meddle with your sports life. A Danish study published in the Journal of the…
Facilitating Radical Change in Publication Standards: Overview of COS Meeting Part II
Originally posted on the Open Science Collaboration by Denny Borsboom This train won’t stop anytime soon. That’s what I kept thinking during the two-day sessions in Charlottesville, where a diverse array of scientific stakeholders worked hard to reach agreement on new journal standards for open and transparent scientific reporting. The aspired standards are intended…
Creating Standards for Reproducible Research: Overview of COS Meeting
By Garret Christensen (BITSS) Representatives from BITSS (CEGA Faculty Director Ted Miguel, CEGA Executive Director Temina Madon, and BITSS Assistant Project Scientist Garret Christensen–that’s me) spent Monday and Tuesday of this week at a very interesting workshop at the Center for Open Science aimed at creating standards for promoting reproducible research in the social-behavioral…
The 10 Things Every Grad Student Should Do
In a recent post on the Data Pub blog, Carly Strasser provides a useful transparency guide for newcomers to the world of empirical research. Below is an adapted version of that post. 1. Learn to code in some language. Any language. Strasser begins her list urging students to learn a programming language. As the limitations of…
Call for Papers on Research Transparency
BITSS will be holding its 3rd annual conference at UC Berkeley on December 11-12, 2014. The goal of the meeting is to bring together leaders from academia, scholarly publishing, and policy to strengthen the standards of openness and integrity across social science disciplines. This Call for Papers focuses on work that elaborates new tools and strategies to increase the transparency and reproducibility of research. A committee of…
BITSS Summer Institute – Summary of the First Day
BITSS is currently holding its first summer institute in transparency practices for empirical research. The meeting is taking place in Berkeley, CA with 30+ graduate students and junior faculty in the attendance. Ted Miguel (Economics, UC Berkeley), one of the founding members of BITSS, started with an overview of conceptual issues in…
“Interdisciplinary initiatives are where most progress happens and where exciting innovations come from”
Maya Petersen, Perspective from Medicine This is the fourth post of a video series in which we ask leading social science academics and experts to discuss research transparency in their discipline. The interview was recorded on December 13, 2013 at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Interdisciplinary initiatives are where most progress happens and where exciting innovations come from"
Maya Petersen, Perspective from Medicine This is the fourth post of a video series in which we ask leading social science academics and experts to discuss research transparency in their discipline. The interview was recorded on December 13, 2013 at the University of California, Berkeley.
BITSS Affiliates Advocate for Higher Transparency Standards in Science Magazine
In the January 3, 2014 edition of Science Magazine, an interdisciplinary group of 19 BITSS affiliates reviews recent efforts to promote transparency in the social sciences and make the case for more stringent norms and practices to help boost the quality and credibility of research findings. The authors, led by UC Berkeley…
New “Reviewer Statement” Initiative Aims to (Further) Improve Community Norms Toward Disclosure
By Etienne LeBel An Open Science Collaboration — made up of Uri Simonsohn, Etienne LeBel, Don Moore, Leif D. Nelson, Brian Nosek, and Joe Simmons — is glad to announce a new initiative aiming to improve community norms toward the disclosure of basic methodological information during the peer-review process. Endorsed by the…