Wicherts Jelte M
Department of Methodology and Statistics, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Animals (Basel). 2017 Nov 27;7(12):90. doi: 10.3390/ani7120090.
In this review, the author discusses several of the weak spots in contemporary science, including scientific misconduct, the problems of post hoc hypothesizing (HARKing), outcome switching, theoretical bloopers in formulating research questions and hypotheses, selective reading of the literature, selective citing of previous results, improper blinding and other design failures, p-hacking or researchers' tendency to analyze data in many different ways to find positive (typically significant) results, errors and biases in the reporting of results, and publication bias. The author presents some empirical results highlighting problems that lower the trustworthiness of reported results in scientific literatures, including that of animal welfare studies. Some of the underlying causes of these biases are discussed based on the notion that researchers are only human and hence are not immune to confirmation bias, hindsight bias, and minor ethical transgressions. The author discusses solutions in the form of enhanced transparency, sharing of data and materials, (post-publication) peer review, pre-registration, registered reports, improved training, reporting guidelines, replication, dealing with publication bias, alternative inferential techniques, power, and other statistical tools.
在本综述中，作者探讨了当代科学中的几个薄弱环节，包括科研不端行为、事后假设（HARKing）问题、结果切换、在提出研究问题和假设时的理论失误、对文献的选择性阅读、对先前结果的选择性引用、不适当的盲法及其他设计缺陷、p值操纵（即研究人员倾向于以多种不同方式分析数据以获得阳性结果（通常是显著结果））、结果报告中的错误和偏差以及发表偏倚。作者呈现了一些实证结果，突出了降低科学文献（包括动物福利研究文献）中所报告结果可信度的问题。基于研究人员也是人，因此难免会有确认偏倚、后见之明偏倚和轻微道德违规行为这一观点，讨论了这些偏差的一些潜在原因。作者探讨了一些解决办法，包括提高透明度、共享数据和材料、（发表后）同行评审、预注册、注册报告、改进培训、报告指南、重复研究、应对发表偏倚、替代推断技术、功效及其他统计工具。
