Eight Lessons from the Reproducibility Crisis

1. There is a reproducibility crisis in psychology.

2. Outright fraud is rare. Soft forms of bad practice are the bigger problem.

3. Most scientists are honest, but soft forms of bad practice emerge through self-deception or lack of awareness.

4. The problem is worse in medical research, but that is no excuse for psychologists to resist reforms.

5. Lists of new regulations are fine, but the core issue is that career incentive structures are not always aligned with truth discovery.

6. Some data outcomes are rewarded more than other data outcomes. This is bad.

7. Journals have little incentive to change this incentive structure themselves.

8. But granting agencies can help, by increasing the grant award probability to scientists who submit to good practice journals. Can someone at NIH/NSF please do something about this?

If you have comments, they might already be addressed in my FAQ.