The DOI matches its Crossref record; 70 of the 70 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Science or Art? How Aesthetic Standards Grease the Way Through the Publication Bottleneck but Undermine Science
Abstract
The current crisis in psychological research involves issues of fraud, replication, publication bias, and false positive results. I argue that this crisis follows the failure of widely adopted solutions to psychology’s similar crisis of the 1970s. The untouched root cause is an information-economic one: Too many studies divided by too few publication outlets equals a bottleneck. Articles cannot pass through just by showing theoretical meaning and methodological rigor; their results must appear to support the hypothesis perfectly. Consequently, psychologists must master the art of presenting perfect-looking results just to survive in the profession. This favors aesthetic criteria of presentation in a way that harms science’s search for truth. Shallow standards of statistical perfection distort analyses and undermine the accuracy of cumulative data; narrative expectations encourage dishonesty about the relationship between results and hypotheses; criteria of novelty suppress replication attempts. Concerns about truth in research are emerging in other sciences and may eventually descend on our heads in the form of difficult and insensitive regulations. I suggest a more palatable solution: to open the bottleneck, putting structures in place to reward broader forms of information sharing beyond the exquisite art of present-day journal publication.
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In the citing paper
“researchers can confirm the absence of p -hacking in their research reports by (a) actively affirming the disclosure of their data collection stopping rule, data exclusions, measures, and manipulations (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2012), (b) providing logical and principled justifications for nonstandard data exclusions and analytical approaches (Giner-Sorolla, 2012, p. 568), (c) providing”
From Does preregistration improve the credibility of research findings? (2020) · cites this paper as Giner-Sorolla, 2012, p. 568
In the citing paper
“And, clean papers in which the evidence consistently supports the proposed conclusion are more likely to be published than papers with equivocal evidence, exceptions, or other uncertainties 16,17 .”
From Initial evidence of research quality of registered reports compared with the standard publishing model (2021) · cites this paper as [17]
Citations
Cites
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
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Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611417632 · Cited by 6,567
Chaiken, S. (1980) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037//0022-3514.39.5.752 · Cited by 5,516
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005) · CHANCE · doi:10.1080/09332480.2005.10722754 · Cited by 4,702 · cited 3×
“It was in that field that Ioannidis (2005) declared that “most published research findings are false” because of incentives to publish only positive results.”
BackgroundCohen, J. (1994) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.49.12.997 · Cited by 4,003
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Processing Fluency and Aesthetic Pleasure: Is Beauty in the Perceiver's Processing Experience?
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Raise standards for preclinical cancer research
Begley, C. G., & Ellis, L. M. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/483531a · Cited by 2,979 · cited 1×
“Confidence in the applied usefulness of the publication process has taken a hit, as clinical trials have demonstrated unusually low success rates when trying to reproduce academic results (Begley & Ellis, 2012; Prinz, Schlange, & Asadullah, 2011; Turner, Matthews, et al., 2008).”
ResultStatistical methods in psychology journals: Guidelines and explanations.
Wilkinson, L., & Task Force on Statistical Inference (1999) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.54.8.594 · Cited by 2,791
Research works printed but not linked: 10
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
The preregistration revolution
Nosek, B. A., Ebersole, C. R., DeHaven, A. C., & Mellor, D. T. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1708274114 · Cited by 1,998
Pashler, H., & Wagenmakers, E. (2012) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691612465253 · Cited by 1,321
Nosek (2012) · doi:10.1177/1745691612459058 · Cited by 1,301
Replicability, Robustness, and Reproducibility in Psychological Science
Nosek, B. A., Hardwicke, T. E., Moshontz, H., Allard, A., Corker, K. S., Dreber, A., Fidler, F., Hilgard, J., Kline Struhl, M., Nuijten, M. B., et al. (2022) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-114157 · Cited by 770
Registered Reports: A Method to Increase the Credibility of Published Results
Nosek, B. A., & Lakens, D. (2014) · Social Psychology · doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000192 · Cited by 716
“This creates incentives to avoid or ignore replications and negative results, even at the expense of accuracy (Giner-Sorolla, 2012; Nosek, Spies, & Motyl, 2012).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Giner-Sorolla, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Kent, United Kingdom
- Venue
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-11
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 562-571
- ISSN
- 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6924
- OpenAlex
- W2125515636
- Cited by
- 274
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 40 · 2019: 40 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 23.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Kent Academic Repository (University of Kent) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Keywords
- publication bias, replication, scientific fraud, false positives, statistical significance thresholds, information economics, open science, research integrity
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