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Science or art? How aesthetic standards grease the way through the publication bottleneck but undermine science.

Giner-Sorolla, Roger (2012) Science or art? How aesthetic standards grease the way through the publication bottleneck but undermine science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7 (6). pp. 562-571. ISSN 1745-6916. E-ISSN 1745-6924. (doi:10.1177/1745691612457576) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:36645)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691612457576

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.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/1745691612457576
Uncontrolled keywords: science, art, aesthetic standards, publication bias, fraud, false positive results, psychologists, psychological research, Aesthetics, Experimentation, Fraud, Psychologists, Sciences, Art
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Roger Giner-Sorolla
Date Deposited: 20 Nov 2013 11:43 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:13 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/36645 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Giner-Sorolla, Roger.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6690-8842
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