Researchers should tick a checkbox “I swear I did not hack the data” before submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal to prevent this kind of misconduct.
Isn't this just basically fraud? I'm sure it's already covered by the existing things you sign, but surprisingly that doesn't stop people who are willing to commit fraud.
I assume that in this particular case, it's a joke referring to the subject of the study, which involved similar, if even weaker, assurances.
In general, this kind of thing is oddly common. It's all over government forms. I just interviewed with a Chinese father who wanted me to spend time with his children providing exposure to English. He asked me whether I had a criminal record.
I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask?
They do, but those "Reporting Summaries" are useless makework, IMO.
First, you fill them out after the data has been collected, analyzed, and written up. It's perhaps helpful as a reminder to include a few tidbits in the text (e.g., the ethics approval #), but literally no one is going to fill this form out, realize the sample size is way too small, and....abandon the manuscript.
Second, you don't actually want people to comply with the instructions. For example, it asks for "A description of any assumptions or corrections, such as tests of normality". A decent number of statisticians argue that you shouldn't be using normality tests to choose between parametric and non-parametric stats. On top of that, nobody actually writes out assumptions behind OLS in their paper either.
I am deeply skeptical that this cookie-cutter stuff actually helps in any meaningful way. It feels like rigor-theatre instead.
dtech|1 year ago
thaumasiotes|1 year ago
In general, this kind of thing is oddly common. It's all over government forms. I just interviewed with a Chinese father who wanted me to spend time with his children providing exposure to English. He asked me whether I had a criminal record.
I don't, but if I did, and I chose to lie about it, random Chinese parents would never know the difference. (Though entering China might have been a challenge.) Why ask?
red_admiral|1 year ago
2cynykyl|1 year ago
lern_too_spel|1 year ago
seagullz|1 year ago
zaphirplane|1 year ago
evandijk70|1 year ago
mattkrause|1 year ago
First, you fill them out after the data has been collected, analyzed, and written up. It's perhaps helpful as a reminder to include a few tidbits in the text (e.g., the ethics approval #), but literally no one is going to fill this form out, realize the sample size is way too small, and....abandon the manuscript.
Second, you don't actually want people to comply with the instructions. For example, it asks for "A description of any assumptions or corrections, such as tests of normality". A decent number of statisticians argue that you shouldn't be using normality tests to choose between parametric and non-parametric stats. On top of that, nobody actually writes out assumptions behind OLS in their paper either.
I am deeply skeptical that this cookie-cutter stuff actually helps in any meaningful way. It feels like rigor-theatre instead.
kmeisthax|1 year ago