Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
Immigration Policy Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Dec 28;118(52). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2106178118.
While the social sciences have made impressive progress in adopting transparent research practices that facilitate verification, replication, and reuse of materials, the problem of publication bias persists. Bias on the part of peer reviewers and journal editors, as well as the use of outdated research practices by authors, continues to skew literature toward statistically significant effects, many of which may be false positives. To mitigate this bias, we propose a framework to enable authors to report all results efficiently (RARE), with an initial focus on experimental and other prospective empirical social science research that utilizes public study registries. This framework depicts an integrated system that leverages the capacities of existing infrastructure in the form of public registries, institutional review boards, journals, and granting agencies, as well as investigators themselves, to efficiently incentivize full reporting and thereby, improve confidence in social science findings. In addition to increasing access to the results of scientific endeavors, a well-coordinated research ecosystem can prevent scholars from wasting time investigating the same questions in ways that have not worked in the past and reduce wasted funds on the part of granting agencies.
尽管社会科学在采用透明的研究实践方面取得了令人瞩目的进展,这些实践有助于验证、复制和重复使用材料,但发表偏倚问题仍然存在。同行评审员和期刊编辑的偏见,以及作者使用过时的研究实践,继续使文献偏向于具有统计学意义的效果,其中许多可能是假阳性。为了减轻这种偏见,我们提出了一个框架,使作者能够有效地报告所有结果(RARE),最初侧重于利用公共研究注册中心的实验和其他前瞻性经验社会科学研究。该框架描绘了一个集成系统,利用公共注册中心、机构审查委员会、期刊和资助机构以及研究人员自身的现有基础设施的能力,有效地激励全面报告,从而提高对社会科学发现的信心。除了增加对科学努力成果的访问外,协调良好的研究生态系统可以防止学者们以过去行不通的方式浪费时间研究相同的问题,并减少资助机构在浪费资金方面的问题。