Respond to Peers

Renee Herring posted Apr 19, 2024 9:52 PM

Hello Class and Doctor Ault,

Discussion 6

According to Nosek, the author of this blog, a close friend of his had serious cancer and was denied access to invaluable research that could have helped her in her recovery of ovarian cancer (Nosek,2017). I noticed on several sites such as PUB Med and Academic journals a fee is imperative to get access to the most current research or complete academic research results. There are also other websites that result in a fee such as Acadamia.com in which they tempt you to your academic research or writings or results of a topic you are doing research on. The results of research seem to appear more apparently from other countries such as China, Germany, the UK, or Canada in which the results of specific research maybe only associated with that country alone. Another important aspect I replication process of the same study with multiple responses of different results. The results may be skewed to confirmed bias or from a company that may have a monetary gain from these results (Earp.2015). May scientists admit that they add conjecture and a more biased opinion of the results than the prior results to make an impact on their work of research. The OSF (Open Science Framework) Is a useful tool for research transparency and more accessible to researchers and the public (Foster,2017). This tool is operated and controlled by the Center of Open Science (COS). This can be obtained by making an account with the OSF by registering to gather recent and accurate research. In the article with profanity, It would make me disengage from using it thinking it might be spam or junk mail or a way to bribe you for money. Although it was a good article it did not seem authentic or professional, such as a research article from NIH or Pub Med.

What do I think we need more than ever? I think we need transparency from our federal government, CDC, our lawmakers and in a professional setting. We need mutual respect for scientists and professional doctors and to keep corporations out of our science. I really want to live in a more utopian and human society, but this is only wishful thinking.

Earp, B. D., & Trafimow, D. (2015). Replication, falsification, and the crisis of confidence in social psychology. 
Frontiers in psychology, 
6, 621. 
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00621

Foster, E. D., & Deardorff, A. (2017). Open Science Framework (OSF). 
Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 
105(2), 203–206. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2017.88

Nosek (2018). Why Are We Working So Hard? An Open Science Personal Story. Center for Open Science Blog. 
https://www.cos.io/blog/why-are-we-working-so-hard-open-science-personal-story

Jocelyn Connelly posted Apr 18, 2024 8:33 PM

In Nosek’s, 2017, journal he starts with writing on research and how that often in times of need, family or one’s own health emergencies, scholarly peer-reviewed [reliable] research is not readily available to the public. Nosek, 2017, writing how that oftentimes it can cost upwards of $20 for access to these resources. The author continues that he had a close relative diagnosed with cancer and how their family [and the author] tried all they could to research and learn about the diagnosis. During this time the Nosek, 2017, had the realization that through his studies of scholarly business models in communication just what was halting the public’s readily access to this life changing knowledge. “Lack of access to published literature limits our ability to apply what we know to improving others’ quality of life,” (Nosek, 2017, para. 3).

Nosek, 2017, came to the realization that this was due to the need of satisfying publication wages. Due to this realization, he continued his research into the scientific publication process. Nosek learned of publication bias: not reporting study results within the 24 months end of trial time frame – “less than 50% of trials were reported”, trials were funded, “patients were put through treatments often with terrible side effects. And, by failing to report the study results there is zero return on investment and needless suffering for vulnerable people,” (Nosek, 2017, para. 4). Nosek continues on his findings that through his research he could clearly detect the bias in reported results; if the results were positive, they were more publicized as this was a positive statistic and therefore more ‘publishable’. Whereas the negative results were disappointing, uninteresting, and less published. Continuing on, in the research field producing positive results proved difficult as the credibility of these results were reviewed and reported.

Evidence suggests that rampant selection bias [outcome switching], often occurring unintentionally, produces reported findings that are much rosier than what researchers actually observed. For doctors, policymakers, childcare providers, elder care providers, educators, members of national security apparatus and so many others who depend on published research to inform their choices and strategies, selective reporting results in false hope and ineffective action. To advance the human condition, the process of generating, analyzing, and reporting the data must be open, (Nosek, 2017, para. 6).

Having open access to many scientific journals may help the public in the credibility of their research, as well as give them peace of mind in certain aspects of health emergencies, in knowing what to expect. I believe that ‘open science’ would be a great improvement in research, not only for the public, but for scholars as well as the availability of scholarly peer-reviewed journals would increase substantially.

In Aschwanden’s, 2015, 
Science Isn’t Broken, is written on researchers ‘p-hacking’ and HARKing [hypothesizing after the results are known] their results; and how that many of the scientific journals published in the recent years are fraudulent as the peer-review process was often done by the author of the study themselves. This peer-reviewed process being self-completed going against many psychological/scientific ethical rules, standards, and regulations. “The p-value reveals almost nothing about the strength of the evidence, yet a p-value of 0.05 has become the ticket to get into many journals,” (Aschwanden’s, 2015, para. 6).

The goals of the OSF [Open Science Framework] should help to improve scientific integrity, if there is more public access to scholarly peer-reviewed past journals/studies this will help in creating and implementing techniques in current studies, as well as in research. However, this framework only proves to be successful and useful if all the previous-scholarly data have been properly [validly] published.

As researcher’s looking to prevent research fraud and inaccuracy, we can double check are resources; looking for scholarly peer-reviewed and hopefully also replicated, as this gives the resource more credibility. As researchers we can work to only collect data of this nature, we can work to understand the replication crisis, p-hacking crisis, and HARKing and make sure to research and publish only valid, peer-reviewed [preferably replicated] data and research.

In Cumming’s, 2013, 
The New Statistic, he writes that oftentimes researchers are ‘fishing’ for results that would support their hypothesis and projected study results, which brings about the concept of ‘p-hacking’; or the researcher(s) ‘cherry picking’, or even changing data/results in order to support and back their study. Continuing on with Cumming’s, 2013, writing one would perhaps say that psychology is moving in the right direction of scientific integrity. As Cumming’s, 2013, study supports the notion of: study replication, and relying on results and data that implement confidence intervals – empirical data. Cumming’s, 2013, writing supports the notion that with replication, and the implementation of empirical analysis [CIs] that the psychological field will produce more scientifically sound [integral] results.

References

Aschwanden, C. (2015). 
Science isn’t broken. FiveThirtyEight.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1 

Cumming, G. (2013). The new statistics. 
Psychological Science, 

25(1), 7–29. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504966

Nosek, B. (n.d.). 
Why are we working so hard to open up science?

A personal story. Center for Open Science.

https://www.cos.io/blog/why-are-we-working-so-hard-open-science-personal-story

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