May 7 the library welcomes Stefan Wiens, professor of Psychology at Stockholm University, for a lecture on the theme open science and pre-registration.

Bild på forskaren Stefan Wiens
Stefan Wiens

To count as a scientific fact, there has to be convincing evidence in support of it. Unfortunately, in many disciplines, science does not adhere to basic principles of providing convincing evidence. For example, hypotheses are generated after collecting and analyzing the data. As a result, hypotheses match the results perfectly and support the strong, but false, belief that the hypotheses predicted the results. Similarly, most data sets are huge and various analyses strategies may be tried out. If results that look best are presented, these results support the strong, but false, belief for the existence of an effect. Preregistration is a simple but powerful solution to these problems. Preregistration forces researchers to commit to hypotheses and data analyses before collecting any data. Preregistered results may be less clean and pretty than results that are not preregistered. Nonetheless, they provide convincing evidence when considering something as a scientific fact.

The lecture is open for all, no registration is needed.

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Stefan Wiens' research

Research data at Stockholm University

Open Science Lecture Series