Detecting Bad Science: Reviewing and Improving Social Science Research (online course)

This intensive course will make you a Bad Science Detective with a good purpose: to improve social science research.

In case you missed it: science is in a credibility crisis. At least half of researchers in the social and behavioural sciences in the Netherlands admit to have engaged in questionable research practices (Gopalakrishna et al., 2022a). Yes – for every pair of scholars you randomly choose, one is engaging in bad science. For every sixteen researchers you choose, one has even committed fraud or fabricated data. Though the number of retractions by academic journals for fraud, fabrication, plagiarism and other integrity violations is rising, most bad science is still undetected. The quality control system that peer review is commonly believed to be is a very lax one, and easy to fool (Smith, 2006). As a result, it should be no surprise that half of all studies do not replicate, and published effects are only half the original size upon replication (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). In sum: you cannot trust research to be valid and reliable, even when it is peer reviewed and published in the most prestigious journals.