Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-c8zdz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-30T21:24:19.725Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Playing with Data—Or How to Discourage Questionable Research Practices and Stimulate Researchers to Do Things Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Klaas Sijtsma
Klaas Sijtsma*
Affiliation:
Tilburg University
*
Correspondence should be made to Klaas Sijtsma, Department of Methodology and Statistics, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. Email: k.sijtsma@tilburguniversity.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent fraud cases in psychological and medical research have emphasized the need to pay attention to Questionable Research Practices (QRPs). Deliberate or not, QRPs usually have a deteriorating effect on the quality and the credibility of research results. QRPs must be revealed but prevention of QRPs is more important than detection. I suggest two policy measures that I expect to be effective in improving the quality of psychological research. First, the research data and the research materials should be made publicly available so as to allow verification. Second, researchers should more readily consider consulting a methodologist or a statistician. These two measures are simple but run against common practice to keep data to oneself and overestimate one’s methodological and statistical skills, thus allowing secrecy and errors to enter research practice.

Keywords

data fraudhiring a methodologist/statisticianpublic availability of dataquestionable research practices

Information

Type
Original paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 The Psychometric Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abma, R. (2013a). De publicatie fabriek. Over de betekenis van de affaire-Stapel (The publication factory. On the meaning of the Stapel affair). Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Vantilt.Google Scholar
Abma, R. (2013). Het jaar van Levelt? (The year of Levelt?). De Psycholoog, 48(3), 34–39.Google Scholar
Anderson, M.S. (2014). Global research integrity in relation to the United States’ research-integrity infrastructure. Accountability in Research, 21, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armitage, P., McPherson, C.K., & Rowe, B.C. (1969). Repeated significance tests on accumulating data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 132, 235–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asendorpf, J.B., et al. (2013). Recommendations for increasing replicability in psychology. European Journal of Personality, 27, 108–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asendorpf, J.B., et al. (2013). Authors’ response: Replication is more than hitting the lottery twice. European Journal of Personality, 27, 138–144.Google Scholar
Bakker, M., Van Dijk, A., & Wicherts, J.M. (2012). The rules of the game called psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 543–554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barnett, V., & Lewis, T. (1994). Outliers in statistical data. Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley.Google Scholar
Bhattacharjee, Y. (2013). The mind of a con man. The New York Times April 28. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.Google Scholar
Berkhout, K. (2012). Het moet ergens in die doos zitten (It has to be somewhere in that box). Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant NRC, NRC Weekend June 30/July 1.Google Scholar
Borsboom, D. (2006). The attack of the psychometricians. Psychometrika, 71, 425–440.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carey, B. (2011). Fraud case seen as a red flag for psychology research. The New York Times November 2, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/health/research/noted-dutch-psychologist-stapel-accused-of-research-fraud.html?_r=0.Google Scholar
Carpenter, S. (2012). Psychology’s bold initiative. Science, 335, 1558–1561.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cronbach, L.J. (1954). Report on a psychometric mission to Clinicia. Psychometrika, 19, 263–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Dreu, C. (2012). Elkaar constructief de maat nemen (Providing constructive criticism). De Psycholoog, 47(10), 34–37.Google Scholar
Fanelli, D. (2009). How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data. PLoS ONE, 4(4), e5738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005738.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fanelli, D. (2010). Positive results increase down the hierarchy of the sciences. PLoS ONE, 5(4), e10068. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010068.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fanelli, D. (2013). Redefine misconduct as distorted reporting. Nature, 149, 494. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/news/redefine-misconduct-as-distorted-reporting-1.12411.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C.J., & Heene, M. (2012). A vast graveyard of undead theories: Publication bias and psychological science’s aversion to the null. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 555–561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, G.H. (1974). Einführung in die Theorie psychologischer Tests (Introduction to the theory of psychological tests). Bern, Switzerland: Huber.Google Scholar
Fisher, R.A. (1936). Has Mendel’s work been rediscovered?. Annals of Science, 1, 115–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, H.M., Jenny, M., & Fiedler, S. (2012). Psychologists are open to change, yet wary of rules. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 639–642.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodstein, D. (2010). On fact and fraud. Cautionary tales from the front lines of science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartshorne, J. K., & Schachner, A. (2012). Tracking replicability as a method of post-publication open evaluation. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 6(3), doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2012.00008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofstee, W.K.B. (2013). Psychologie als wedstrijd. Integer wetenschappelijk onderzoek (Psychology as competition. Honest scientific research). De Psycholoog, 48(4), 28–36.Google Scholar
Huff, D. (1954). How to lie with statistics. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Hunt, E. (2013). Calls for replicability must go beyond motherhood and apple pie. European Journal of Personality, 27, 126–127.Google Scholar
Hubert, L., & Wainer, H. (2013). A statistical guide for the ethically perplexed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.Google Scholar
Ioannidis, J.P.A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med, 2(8), e124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ioannidis, J.P.A., & Trakalinos, T.A. (2007). An exploratory test for an excess of significant findings. Clinical Trials, 4, 245–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
John, L.K., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2012). Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling. Psychological Science, 23, 524–532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Judson, H.F. (2004). The great betrayal. Fraud in science. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Kadane, J.B., Schervish, M.J., & Seidenfeld, T. (1996). Reasoning to a foregone conclusion. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 91, 1228–1235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. London: Penguin Books Ltd.Google Scholar
Kerr, N.L. (1998). HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 196–217.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kevles, D.J. (1998). The Baltimore case: A trial of politics, science, and character. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
KNAW Committee on Research Data. (2012). Zorgvuldig en integer omgaan met wetenschappelijke onderzoeksgegevens (Accurate and correct handling of scientific research data). Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Amsterdam: The Netherlands. Retrieved from http://www.knaw.nl/Content/Internet_KNAW/publicaties/pdf/20121004.pdf.Google Scholar
Kullmann, K. (2012). Zu schön, um wahr zu sein (To good to be true). Der Spiegel, 35, 123–124.Google Scholar
Lamont, M. (2009). How professors think. Inside the curious world of academic judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehrer, J. (2010). The truth wears off. Is there something wrong with the scientific method? The New Yorker. Annals of Science.Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M. (2011). Interim report regarding the breach of scientific integrity committed by Prof. D. A. Stapel. Retrieved from http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/nieuws-en-agenda/commissie-levelt/.Google Scholar
Levelt Committee, Noort Committee, Drenth Committee. (2012). Flawed science: The fraudulent research practices of social psychologist Diederik Stapel. Retrieved from http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/nieuws-en-agenda/finalreportLevelt.pdf.Google Scholar
Lilienfeld, S.O. (2012). Public skepticism of psychology: Why many people perceive the study of human behavior as unscientific. American Psychologist, 67, 111–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lilienfeld, S.O. (2012). Scientific Utopia or scientific dystopia?. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 277–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacCallum, R.C., Roznowski, M., & Necowitz, L.B. (1992). Model modifications in covariance structure analysis: The problem of capitalization on chance. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 490–504.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mahoney, M.J. (1977). Publication prejudices: An experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1, 161–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masicampo, E.J., & Lalande, D.R. (2012). A peculiar preference of p values just below.05. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 2271–2279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nosek, B.A., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2012). Scientific Utopia I: Opening scientific communication. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 217–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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, 615–631.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Panter, A.T., & Sterba, S.K. (2011). Handbook of ethics in quantitative methodology. Hove, United Kingdom: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pashler, H., & Wagenmakers, E.J. (2012). Editors’ introduction to the special section on replicability in psychological science: A crisis of confidence?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 528–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piegorsch, W.W. (1990). Fisher’s contributions to genetics and heredity, with special emphasis on the Gregor Mendel controversy. Biometrics, 46, 915–924.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raftery, A.E. (1995). Bayesian model selection in social research (with Discussion). Sociological Methodology, 25, 111–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, H.E. (1952). Some aspects of the sequential design of experiments. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 58, 527–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, S.M. (1994). A first course in probability. (4th ed.). New York: McMillan.Google Scholar
Saunders, R., & Savulescu, J. (2008). Research ethics and lessons from Hwanggate: What can we learn from the Korean cloning fraud?. Journal of Medical Ethics, 34, 214–221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shavelson, R. J., & Towne, L. (2002). Scientific research in education. Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research. Center for Education. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Sijtsma, K. (2012). Future of psychometrics: Ask what psychometrics can do for psychology. Psychometrika, 77, 4–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, J.P., Nelson, L.D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22, 1359–1366.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simonsohn, U. (2013). Just post it: The lesson from two cases of fabricated data detected by statistics alone. Psychological Science, 24, 1875–1888.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simonsohn, U., Nelson, L.D., & Simmons, J. (2014). P-Curve: A key to the file-drawer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 534–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steneck, N.H. (2006). Fostering integrity in research: Definitions, current knowledge, and future directions. Science and Engineering Ethics, 12, 53–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tucker, W.H. (1997). Re-reconsidering Burt: Beyond a reasonable doubt. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 33, 145–162.3.0.CO;2-S>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124–1131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van de Poll-Franse, L.V., Horevoorts, N., van Eenbergen, M., Denollet, J., Roukema, J.A., Aaronson, N.K., Vingerhoets, AJJM, Coebergh, J.W.W., de Vries, J., Essink-Bot, M.L., & Mols, F. (2011). The Patient Reported Outcomes Following Initial treatment and Long term Evaluation of Survivorship registry: Scope, rationale and design of an infrastructure for the study of physical and psychosocial outcomes in cancer survivorship cohorts. European Journal of Cancer, 47, 2188–2194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Pligt, J. (2013). Het jaar van Stapel (The year of Stapel). De Psycholoog, 48(3), 28–33.Google Scholar
Wagenmakers, E.J. (2007). A practical solution to the pervasive problems of p values. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 779–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagenmakers, E.J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., & Van der Maas, H.L.J. (2011). Why psychologists must change the way they analyze their data: The case of Psi: Comment on Bem (2011). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 426–432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagenmakers, E.J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., Van der Maas, H.L.J., & Kievit, R.A. (2012). An agenda for purely confirmatory research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 632–638.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wicherts, J.M., Bakker, M., & Molenaar, D. (2011). Willingness to share research data is related to the strength of the evidence and the quality of reporting of statistical results. PLoS ONE, 6(11), e26828. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0026828.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wicherts, J.M., Borsboom, D., Kats, J., & Molenaar, D. (2006). The poor availability of psychological research data for reanalysis. American Psychologist, 61, 726–728.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, M. (2013). Seeking a balance between the statistical and scientific elements in psychometrics. Psychometrika, 78, 211–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yong, E. (2012). Bad copy. In the wake of high-profile controversies, psychologists are facing up to problems with replication. Nature, 485, 298–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar