Posted on November 7, 2019 February 11, 2020 by Berkeley Dietvorst, Rob Mislavsky, and Uri Simonsohn	
A PNAS paper (.htm) proposed that people object “to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies” (their title). In our own work (.htm), we arrive at the opposite conclusion: people “don’t dislike a corporate experiment more than they dislike its worst condition” (our title). In a forthcoming PNAS letter, we identified a problem with the statistical…
For this post, the third in a series on Bayes factors (.htm), I wanted to get a sense for how Bayes factors were being used with real data from real papers, so I looked at the 10 most recent empirical papers in Psychological Science containing the phrase "Bayes factor" (.zip). After browsing them all, I…
Just two steps are needed to go from computing p-values to computing Bayes factors. This post explains both steps and introduces Hyp-Chart, the missing link we arrive at if we take only the first step. Hyp-Chart is a graph that shows how well the data fit the null vs. every possible alternative hypothesis [1]. Hyp-Chart…
Posted on September 6, 2019 September 6, 2019 by Uri Simonsohn	
Would raising the minimum wage by $4 lead to greater unemployment? Milton, a Chicago economist, has a theory (supply and demand) that says so. Milton believes the causal effect is anywhere between 1% and 10%. After the minimum wage increase of $4, unemployment goes up 1%. Milton feels bad about the unemployed but good about…
Posted on May 25, 2019 November 18, 2020 by Uri Simonsohn	
In this post I show how one can analyze the frequency with which values get repeated within a dataset – what I call “number-bunching” – to statistically identify whether the data were likely tampered with. Unlike Benford’s law (.htm), and its generalizations, this approach examines the entire number at once, not only the first or…
Posted on April 24, 2019 November 18, 2020 by Joe & Uri	
A number of authors have recently proposed that (i) psychological research is highly unpredictable, with identical studies obtaining surprisingly different results, (ii) the presence of heterogeneity decreases the replicability of psychological findings. In this post we provide evidence that contradicts both propositions. Consider these quotes: "heterogeneity persists, and to a reasonable degree, even in […]…
Posted on December 5, 2018 November 18, 2020 by Guest co-author: Frank Yu, with Leif and Uri	
Today Psychological Science issued a Corrigendum (.htm) and an expression of concern (htm) for a paper originally posted online in May 2018 (.htm). This post will spell out the data irregularities we uncovered that eventually led to the two postings from the journal today. We are not convinced that those postings are sufficient. It is…