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Questionable Research Practices in Ecology and Evolution
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, PLoS ONE, Vol 13, Iss 7, p e0200303 (2018)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- We surveyed 807 researchers (494 ecologists and 313 evolutionary biologists) about their use of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), including cherry picking statistically significant results, p hacking, and hypothesising after the results are known (HARKing). We also asked them to estimate the proportion of their colleagues that use each of these QRPs. Several of the QRPs were prevalent within the ecology and evolution research community. Across the two groups, we found 64% of surveyed researchers reported they had at least once failed to report results because they were not statistically significant (cherry picking); 42% had collected more data after inspecting whether results were statistically significant (a form of p hacking) and 51% had reported an unexpected finding as though it had been hypothesised from the start (HARKing). Such practices have been directly implicated in the low rates of reproducible results uncovered by recent large scale replication studies in psychology and other disciplines. The rates of QRPs found in this study are comparable with the rates seen in psychology, indicating that the reproducibility problems discovered in psychology are also likely to be present in ecology and evolution.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine
Research design
Open science
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Scientific Misconduct
Statistics as Topic
lcsh:Medicine
Social Sciences
Publication Ethics
01 natural sciences
Behavioral Ecology
bepress|Life Sciences
Surveys and Questionnaires
Psychology
lcsh:Science
Research Integrity
Statistical Data
Multidisciplinary
Ecology
Animal Behavior
Life Sciences
Biological Evolution
Research Personnel
Community Ecology
Research Design
Physical Sciences
Statistics (Mathematics)
Research Article
Cherry picking
Science Policy
Ecology (disciplines)
010603 evolutionary biology
bepress|Life Sciences|Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
03 medical and health sciences
P-hacking
Humans
Evolutionary Biology
Behavior
Research
lcsh:R
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Biology and Life Sciences
Reproducibility of Results
Publication bias
Unexpected finding
030104 developmental biology
Evolutionary Ecology
Evolutionary ecology
lcsh:Q
Zoology
Mathematics
Demography
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE, PLoS ONE, Vol 13, Iss 7, p e0200303 (2018)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....1256ef8bffe47d4977a5c52eda683bff