Critical metascience takes a step back to question some common assumptions, approaches, problems, and solutions in metascience.

Background

Sparked by highly publicised cases of scientific misconduct as well as the identification of issues surrounding questionable research practices and irreproducibility of research findings, a scandalization process ensued (Penders, 2024). This scandalization initially started around narratives of a crisis concerning the research (processes) in some psychological and biomedical (sub)disciplines.

Sheena Bartscherer

Sven Ulpts

Let’s Talk about Science Reform! Introducing a Workshop on Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Investigating the Open Science Movement

A conference called “The promises and pitfalls of preregistration” was hosted by the Royal Society in London from 4th-5th March 2024. Here, I discuss the presentations by Chris Donkin and Stephan Lewandowsky, both of which consider some of the potential “pitfalls” of preregistration.

The Pitfalls of Preregistration

Mark Rubin

During multiple testing, researchers often adjust their alpha level to control the familywise error rate for a statistical inference about a joint union alternative hypothesis (e.g., “

 H1

or

 H2

”). However, in some cases, they do not make this inference.

Redundant Multiple Testing Corrections

The December 2022 issue of the journal

 Industrial and Organizational Psychology

includes a very interesting discussion of the pros and cons of open science. There’s a target article titled “Open science, closed doors: The perils and potential of open science for research in practice” (Guzzo et al., 2022) and nine commentaries on this article. You can find all 10 papers here.

Opening Up Open Science to Epistemic Pluralism

Sabina Leonelli’s new book – “Philosophy of Open Science” – will be published later this year. However, there is an open access preprint available on the PhilSci Archive here. In the book, Leonelli provides “a constructively critical reading” of the standard approach to open science which, she argues, is focused on sharing “objects” such as data and materials.

Sabina Leonelli’s “Philosophy of Open Science”

Preregistration Distinguishes Between Exploratory and Confirmatory Research? Previous justifications for preregistration have focused on the distinction between “exploratory” and “confirmatory” research. However, as I discuss in this recent presentation, this distinction faces unresolved questions. For example, the distinction does not appear to have a formal definition in either statistical theory or the philosophy of science.

Preregistration, Severity, and Deviations

The Centre for Open Science’s symposium on “Critical Perspectives on the Metascience Reform Movement” took place on 7

 th

March 2024. It was organised by Sven Ulpts, and it includes presentations by Bart Penders, Tom Hostler, Stephan Guttinger, Sarahanne Field, Nicole Nelson, and Berna Devezer.

Critical Perspectives on the Metascience Reform Movement

The inflation of Type I error rates is thought to be one of the causes of the replication crisis. Questionable research practices such as

 p

-hacking are thought to inflate Type I error rates above their nominal level, leading to unexpectedly high levels of false positives in the literature and, consequently, unexpectedly low replication rates. In this article, I offer an alternative view.

Type I Error Rates are Not Usually Inflated

In an article published last week in Synthese, philosopher of science Pekka Syrjänen asked “does a theory become better confirmed if it fits data that was not used in its construction versus if it was specifically designed to fit the data?” The first approach is called

 prediction,

and the second approach is called

 accommodation

. The debate over the epistemic advantages of prediction and accommodation has been bubbling away for

Prediction vs Accommodation: Which is Better and When?

Abstract   I discuss Van Drimmelen’s (2023) Metascience2023 presentation on researchers’ decision making during the research process.

The Preregistration Prescriptiveness Trade-Off and Unknown Unknowns in Science

Felipe Romero presented his work - “The conceptual origins of metascience: Fashion or revolution?” - in The Popper Seminar at the London School of Economics on 30th May 2023. Here, I highlight a few points that he raised and provide some comments along the way. ::: {#youtube2-AKWCCdK-jgc .youtube-wrap attrs=“{"videoId":"AKWCCdK-jgc","startTime":null,"endTime":null}” component-name=“Youtube2ToDOM”} Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten.

What's Special About Metascience?

Abstract
 

Research on questionable research practices (QRPs) includes a growing body of work that questions whether they are as problematic as commonly assumed. This article provides a brief and selective review that considers some of this work. In particular, the review highlights work that questions the prevalence and impact of QRPs, including

 p

-hacking, HARKing, and publication bias.

A Brief Review of Research that Questions the Impact of Questionable Research Practices

An often overlooked source of the “replication crisis” is the tendency to treat the replication study as a definitive verdict while ignoring the statistical uncertainty inherent in both the original and replication studies. This simplistic view fosters misleading dichotomies and erodes public trust in science.

Forcing a Deterministic View on Probabilistic Phenomena: Implications for the Replication Crisis

We examine what generated crisis discussions, how they tended to unfold, and how they were resolved. And we derive some lessons from history for the current replication crisis.

Psychology’s Recurring Crises

This post is based on a presentation I gave in June 2025 as part of a Metascience 2025 Preconference Virtual Symposium convened by Sven Ulpts and Sheena Bartscherer and including Thomas Hostler, Lai Ma, Lisa Malich, and Carlos Santana.

If science is the subject of metascience, then metascience is the subject of critical metascience!

What is Critical Metascience and Why is it Important?

Abstract   Popper’s (1983, 2002) philosophy of science has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the wake of the replication crisis, offering a philosophical basis for the ensuing science reform movement. However, adherence to Popper’s approach may also be at least partly responsible for the sense of “crisis” that has developed following multiple unexpected replication failures.

The Replication Crisis is Less of a “Crisis” in the Lakatosian Approach than it is in the Popperian and Naïve Methodological Falsificationism Approaches

An Intellectual Vocation
 

In his book “The Soul of a University” (2018), Chris Brink describes the story of G.H. Hardy, a Cambridge Mathematician whose principled stance on his academic research was that it had no practical use whatsoever: “No discovery of mine” Hardy proudly wrote, “has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world”

Tom Hostler

An Intellectual Vocation

Scientific reform, post-academic research, and academic identity

I really enjoyed Mel Andrews’ recent essay: "Philosophy in the Trenches and Laboratory Benches of Science" and its main point that “every laboratory needs a philosopher.” This point is made in the context of a concern about “the industrialisation of science”:  This concern about the industrialisation of science reminded me of something that statistician Ronald Fisher wrote many years ago when he argued that the Neyman-Pearson approach to

The Industrialisation of Science

In this new article, I consider questionable research practices in the field of metascience. A questionable metascience practice (QMP) is a research practice, assumption, or perspective that’s been questioned by several commentators as being potentially problematic for metascience and/or the science reform movement. I discuss 10 QMPs that relate to criticism, replication, bias, generalization, and the characterization of science.

Questionable Metascience Practices

Tom Hostler has just published an article titled “The invisible workload of open research” in the

 Journal of Trial and Error’s

special issue on the “Consequences of the scientific reform movement: Is the scientific reform movement headed in the right direction?” It’s an insightful and thought-provoking piece that uncovers the potential workload costs of open research, considers why these costs may be ignored by university management,