Research and Transparency Flashcards
What is not one of Merton’s norms?
Communality Secrecy Universalism Disinterestedness Organised skepticism
Secrecy is not a norm of the scientific community, as defined by Merton. It actually goes against one of Merton’s key norms, communality.
One big issue in research transparency?
One problem with scientific research which we will discuss in this section is the prevalence of specification searching and how to prevent it.
What are reasons for publication bias?
Publication bias can occur for a number of reasons. When an action affects the type of results that get published (whether its by journal editors or authors), it is publication bias.
Editors/referees only accept significant results
Authors only submit significant results
Authors manipulate / data mine until they achieve just barely significant results.
According to Franco et al., which of the following are least likely to be published?
Strong results
Mixed results
Null results
Null results
Results that fail to reject the null hypothesis are less likely to be published because authors are less likely to write them up. Additionally, missing results cannot be published (as they are missing).
What website should you visit if you want to register a randomized controlled trial in the social sciences?
www.socialscienceregistry.org
What is not something that would typically go into a pre-analysis plan?
Final results will not be known until the data is collected. They therefore cannot be included into a pre-analysis plan. All other answers are examples of things that should go into pre-analysis plans.
What is one benefit of writing a pre-analysis plan?
One strong case for why researchers should write pre-analysis plans is to strengthen their relationships with their partners. Pre-analysis plans can act as an agreement between the research and the partner prior to the beginning of the intervention.
Why was it important for the researchers in this example to register a pre-analysis plan?
The partners had a strong vested interest in the outcomes of the program
Since the researchers were collecting a lot of data, it would have been easy for them to cherry-pick the results
How does Hammermesh define a “pure” replication?
A replication where researchers use the same data, perform the same analysis, and employ the same methods as the original authors
Where is an ideal location to publish your research data?
Trusted data repositories have strong commitments to long-term storage and archival of data. Many data repositories even have agreements with other data repositories to back up and store their data in the event of an accident. In addition, most repositories will provide unique identifiers to individual datasets
