Is Open Science passé? is the question asked by Xenia Schmalz in this blogpost. I recommend reading it before I share brief thoughts on some points that are raised. I wish an open science movement was not needed anymore, but I agree this is most likely not the answer to the leading question. Neither has the open science movement failed; progress toward more transparent and credible science is simply slow.
The Costs of HARKing: Does it Matter if Researchers Engage in Undisclosed Hypothesizing After the Results are Known? While no-one’s looking, a Texas sharpshooter fires his gun at a barn wall, walks up to his bullet holes, and paints targets around them. When his friends arrive, he points at the targets and claims he’s a good shot.
In this new paper (Rubin, 2021), I consider when researchers should adjust their alpha level (significance threshold) during multiple testing and multiple comparisons. I consider three types of multiple testing (disjunction, conjunction, and individual), and I argue that an alpha adjustment is only required for one of these three types.
Some ideas about how the peer review process in academic publishing can be used as a device for preregistering parts of an empirical analysis.
Why the filling of gaps in the research literature is similar to replication and probably better than its reputation.
How to enhance reproducibility when using fs/QCA software
Recently, I came across an interesting study from 2009, the content of which is not relevant here.
Last December I released a web site called Australian Faunal Directory on CouchDB, which was part of my ongoing exploration of how to build a simple yet useful database of taxonomic names. In particular, I want to link names directly to the primary taxonomic literature.
Time (just) for a Friday folly. A couple of days ago the latest edition of the Catalogue of Life (CoL) arrived in my mailbox in the form of a DVD and booklet: While in some ways it's wonderful that the Catalogue of Life provides a complete data dump of its contents, this strikes me as a rather old-fashioned way to distribute it. So I began to wonder how this could be done differently, and started to think of CouchDB.
Issues surrounding the relationship of Open Research and replication seems to be the meme of the week. Abhishek Tiwari provided notes on a debate describing concerns about how open research could damage replication and Sabine Hossenfelder explored the same issue in a blog post.