Chapter 3: Further Reading

Essential Sources

Open Science Collaboration. (2015). "Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science." Science, 349(6251), aac4716. The landmark study that attempted to replicate 100 published psychology findings. The paper that quantified the crisis. Essential reading.

Bem, D. J. (2011). "Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 407–425. The precognition paper that sparked the crisis. Read it to understand how standard methods could produce evidence for the impossible.

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). "False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant." Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359–1366. The paper that demonstrated how researcher degrees of freedom can find "evidence" that a Beatles song makes you younger. The definitive paper on p-hacking.

Hagger, M. S., et al. (2016). "A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect." Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546–573. The 23-lab, 2,000+ participant pre-registered replication that found no ego depletion effect. A model for how large-scale replications should be conducted.

Le Texier, T. (2019). "Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment." American Psychologist, 74(7), 823–839. The archival analysis that revealed previously unknown problems with the SPE, including researcher coaching of guards and at least one faked breakdown.

Carter, E. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2014). "Publication bias and the limited strength model of self-control: Has the evidence for ego depletion been overestimated?" Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 823. The meta-analysis that found strong evidence of publication bias in the ego depletion literature.

Carnahan, T., & McMillan, S. (2007). "Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: Could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty?" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(5), 603–614. Demonstrated that the SPE's recruitment ad attracted people higher in aggression and authoritarianism.

Button, K. S., et al. (2013). "Power failure: Why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience." Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(5), 365–376. The paper showing that median statistical power in neuroscience is only 21%, with similar implications for psychology.

Ritchie, S. (2020). Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth. Metropolitan Books. The most accessible and comprehensive popular account of the replication crisis and the broader problems in science.

Chambers, C. (2017). The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology: A Manifesto for Reforming the Culture of Scientific Practice. Princeton University Press. A detailed but readable account of the methodological problems and proposed solutions.

Nosek, B. A., Ebersole, C. R., DeHaven, A. C., & Mellor, D. T. (2018). "The preregistration revolution." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(11), 2600–2606. An overview of the pre-registration movement and its role in improving research reliability.

Online Resources

Open Science Framework (osf.io). The platform hosting pre-registered studies and open data. Browse it to see the reform movement in action.

Curate Science (curatescience.org). A platform tracking the replicability of published findings, including independent replications and effect size estimates.

ReplicationWiki. A database tracking replication attempts in psychology and economics, useful for checking whether specific findings have been tested.