Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie

Another option is to use an even more rigorous version of pre-registration. In this scenario, a scientist submits the registration itself to peer review and, if it’s approved and the reviewers agree that the study design is sound, the journal commits to publishing the eventual paper no matter how its results come out. Only then do the scientists start to collect their data.49 Not only does this type of study, called a ‘Registered Report’, kill publication bias stone dead, by removing the pernicious link between the statistical significance of the results and the decision to publish, but it reduces p-hacking as well, since you have to agree to your analysis with the reviewers beforehand and can’t just alter it post hoc without making it very clear what you’ve done. Best of all, it nullifies many of the perverse incentives that lead to bias and fraud in the first place. You know you’re going to get a publication in any case, so there’s no longer so much pressure to beautify your findings.50