Transparent Replications

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2024-11-13 20:30:08

You may have noticed that one of the features of all of our replication reports is the “Study Diagram” near the top.  Our Study Diagrams lay out the hypotheses, exactly what participants did in the study, the key findings, and whether those findings replicated. 

We create a Study Diagram for each of our reports because we believe that readers should be presented with the key points of the hypotheses, methods, and results in a consistent format that can be understood at a glance. We do this because clear communication is essential to the scientific process functioning well.

Too often in the research literature key pieces of information are spread throughout the text of a paper, making it more time-consuming and difficult to get a clear overall picture of a study. Sometimes the paper itself doesn’t include all of the necessary information, and readers have to refer to supplemental materials to understand what was actually done. This makes it harder for people to find relevant studies, evaluate their claims, and put the information in them to use.

In contrast, imagine a world in which all published empirical research had a Study Diagram. Understanding the gist of a paper would be faster because the Study Diagram takes much less time to review than the whole paper, while also being more standardized and informative than a typical abstract. The Study Diagram would improve the clarity of published research, making it easier to evaluate how well the claims made in the paper correspond to what is being done in the study itself. This would make it easier to identify possible overclaiming or validity issues that can be signs of Importance Hacking. Finally, it would become much easier to sort through literature to find studies that are relevant to your question. At a glance you would be able to compare key features of studies, like their sample size, exclusion criteria, and whether participants were randomly assigned to conditions.

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