title: Playing with Data--Or How to Discourage Questionable Research Practices and Stimulate Researchers to Do Things Right.
abstract: Recent fraud cases in psychological and medical research have emphasized the need to pay attention to Questionable Research Practices (QRPs). Deliberate or not, QRPs usually have a deteriorating effect on the quality and the credibility of research results. QRPs must be revealed but prevention of QRPs is more important than detection. I suggest two policy measures that I expect to be effective in improving the quality of psychological research. First, the research data and the research materials should be made publicly available so as to allow verification. Second, researchers should more readily consider consulting a methodologist or a statistician. These two measures are simple but run against common practice to keep data to oneself and overestimate one's methodological and statistical skills, thus allowing secrecy and errors to enter research practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Methodology and Statistics, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE , Tilburg, The Netherlands. k.sijtsma@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: Klaas
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sijtsma
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000941:ethics* / Q000592:standards; D000068598:Data Accuracy; D008192:Deception; D006801:Humans; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000941:ethics*; D015871:Scientific Misconduct / Q000941:ethics*; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000941:ethics / Q000592:standards
keywords: data fraud; hiring a methodologist/statistician; public availability of data; questionable research practices
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