Daniel Lakens
@lakens.bsky.social
Metascience, statistics, psychology, philosophy of science. Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. Omnia probate. 🇪🇺
Pinned
Daniel Lakens
@lakens.bsky.social
· Apr 14
OSF
osf.io
My paper on concerns about replicability, theorizing, relevance, generalizability, and methodology across 2 crises is now in press at the International Review of Social Psychology. After revisions it was 17500 words, so it is split in 2 parts: osf.io/dtvs7_v2 and osf.io/g6kja_v1
New blog post, inspired by the excellent recent qualitative paper by Makel and colleagues: On the reliability and reproducibility of qualitative research.
I reflect on how I will incorporate realist ontologies in my own qualitative research.
daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/02/on-r...
I reflect on how I will incorporate realist ontologies in my own qualitative research.
daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/02/on-r...
On the reliability and reproducibility of qualitative research
With my collaborators, I am increasingly performing qualitative research. I find qualitative research projects a useful way to improve my un...
daniellakens.blogspot.com
February 8, 2026 at 7:46 AM
New blog post, inspired by the excellent recent qualitative paper by Makel and colleagues: On the reliability and reproducibility of qualitative research.
I reflect on how I will incorporate realist ontologies in my own qualitative research.
daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/02/on-r...
I reflect on how I will incorporate realist ontologies in my own qualitative research.
daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/02/on-r...
Indeed, it is perhaps surprising this has not been pointed out, but as far as I know, qualitative research is among the most replicable research areas in science. Or at least, all the replication studies I have seen are basically successful replications. It might not be 100%, but it is high!
Note that this in itself is a well-replicated finding. At least a dozen studies show that when researchers replicate qualitative research, or re-analyze it, they come to basically identical themes. There is nothing special about qualitative research with respect to replicability.
This is a great qualitative research paper. It sheds light on questionable research practices. But more importantly it demonstrates direct replications in qualitative research work as you would expect: independent teams reach basically the same conclusions royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
February 7, 2026 at 9:41 PM
Indeed, it is perhaps surprising this has not been pointed out, but as far as I know, qualitative research is among the most replicable research areas in science. Or at least, all the replication studies I have seen are basically successful replications. It might not be 100%, but it is high!
Note that this in itself is a well-replicated finding. At least a dozen studies show that when researchers replicate qualitative research, or re-analyze it, they come to basically identical themes. There is nothing special about qualitative research with respect to replicability.
This is a great qualitative research paper. It sheds light on questionable research practices. But more importantly it demonstrates direct replications in qualitative research work as you would expect: independent teams reach basically the same conclusions royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
‘Don’t hate the players, hate the game’: qualitative insights from education researchers on questionable and open research practices
Abstract. Both questionable (e.g. p-hacking) and open (e.g. pre-registration) research practices are prevalent in education research. We sought to understa
royalsocietypublishing.org
February 7, 2026 at 9:26 PM
Note that this in itself is a well-replicated finding. At least a dozen studies show that when researchers replicate qualitative research, or re-analyze it, they come to basically identical themes. There is nothing special about qualitative research with respect to replicability.
This is a great qualitative research paper. It sheds light on questionable research practices. But more importantly it demonstrates direct replications in qualitative research work as you would expect: independent teams reach basically the same conclusions royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
‘Don’t hate the players, hate the game’: qualitative insights from education researchers on questionable and open research practices
Abstract. Both questionable (e.g. p-hacking) and open (e.g. pre-registration) research practices are prevalent in education research. We sought to understa
royalsocietypublishing.org
February 7, 2026 at 9:22 PM
This is a great qualitative research paper. It sheds light on questionable research practices. But more importantly it demonstrates direct replications in qualitative research work as you would expect: independent teams reach basically the same conclusions royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
One way to fix the system is to stop submitting low quality work. If your papers are regularly rejected after full review (ignoring desk-rejections) they are of too low for where you are submitting. Work should rarely be rejected after review by peers. If it is, you are doing something wrong.
In the last ten days, I agreed to review 6 manuscripts and declined 5 other. As an editor, I tried not to review more than 2-3 manuscripts a month. Now that I’m on the other side, the enormous challenge in securing reviewers is top of mind. On both sides, it’s clear that the system is very broken.
February 7, 2026 at 4:28 PM
One way to fix the system is to stop submitting low quality work. If your papers are regularly rejected after full review (ignoring desk-rejections) they are of too low for where you are submitting. Work should rarely be rejected after review by peers. If it is, you are doing something wrong.
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
There are so many folks who submit, submit, submit, and always decline reviews. Happy to use the resources for their own gain but unwilling to put in effort themselves. This seems like at least a partially solvable problem.
February 7, 2026 at 4:00 PM
There are so many folks who submit, submit, submit, and always decline reviews. Happy to use the resources for their own gain but unwilling to put in effort themselves. This seems like at least a partially solvable problem.
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
You still have time to sign up for the upcoming workshop of PMGS.
@denolmo.bsky.social will guide you through evaluating and writing high quality preregistration.
See more and sign up here:
paulmeehlschool.github.io/workshops/pr...
@denolmo.bsky.social will guide you through evaluating and writing high quality preregistration.
See more and sign up here:
paulmeehlschool.github.io/workshops/pr...
Preregistration in Practice | Paul Meehl Graduate School
February 19, 2026
paulmeehlschool.github.io
February 6, 2026 at 2:00 PM
You still have time to sign up for the upcoming workshop of PMGS.
@denolmo.bsky.social will guide you through evaluating and writing high quality preregistration.
See more and sign up here:
paulmeehlschool.github.io/workshops/pr...
@denolmo.bsky.social will guide you through evaluating and writing high quality preregistration.
See more and sign up here:
paulmeehlschool.github.io/workshops/pr...
Dunnette, 1966, on our tendency to bury negative results to make our research look better than it is. In 2026, this is a violation of the code of conduct for research integrity in my country, yet it is still common practice. One can only wonder what is needed to finally change this.
February 5, 2026 at 4:19 AM
Dunnette, 1966, on our tendency to bury negative results to make our research look better than it is. In 2026, this is a violation of the code of conduct for research integrity in my country, yet it is still common practice. One can only wonder what is needed to finally change this.
Most researchers are unaware that the concerns about strength of theories, methodology, and lack of generalizability led to a crisis in the 60's and 70's as well. Nothing changed then, and history is a good teacher for why nothing is likely to change this time around doi.org/10.5334/irsp...
Concerns About Theorizing, Relevance, Generalizability, and Methodology Across Two Crises in Social Psychology | International Review of Social Psychology
During two crises in social psychology, the first from the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, and the second starting in 2010 and still ongoing, researchers discussed the strength of theories in the…
doi.org
February 5, 2026 at 4:16 AM
Most researchers are unaware that the concerns about strength of theories, methodology, and lack of generalizability led to a crisis in the 60's and 70's as well. Nothing changed then, and history is a good teacher for why nothing is likely to change this time around doi.org/10.5334/irsp...
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
A very fruitful discussion about concepts and measures. I wish I had heard it before my PhD student submitted her scoping review on what “skills” are…
New episode of Nullius In Verba! We discuss the jingle-jangle fallacy, the problem of vague concepts, how the incentive structures promote vagueness, why people who prefer more rigour have to be called the validity 'police', and much more!
nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/episode-74...
nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/episode-74...
Episode 74: Notiones Vague | Nullius in Verba
In this episode, we discuss the problems associated with vague concepts in psychological science. We talk about the jingle-jangle fallacy, the trade-off between broad concepts and more precise…
nulliusinverba.podbean.com
February 3, 2026 at 11:10 PM
A very fruitful discussion about concepts and measures. I wish I had heard it before my PhD student submitted her scoping review on what “skills” are…
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
Hypothetically, the greatest test of an academic’s commitment to the freedom of knowledge is to ask them to sign a pirated pdf of their book.
This is a hypothetical test I have devised and never ever used.
This is a hypothetical test I have devised and never ever used.
Indeed. And further..
EVERYTHING👏DIAMOND👏OPEN👏ACCESS👏OR👏JUST👏FIND👏THE👏PREPRINTS/PIRATE👏IT👏
EVERYTHING👏DIAMOND👏OPEN👏ACCESS👏OR👏JUST👏FIND👏THE👏PREPRINTS/PIRATE👏IT👏
Every now again it’s useful to repeat advice about accessing papers that are behind a paywall that excludes you. Email the author. My estimate is that 90% of academics are so thrilled that a living, breathing, possibly even reading, person shows interest that they will swiftly send you a copy.
August 1, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Hypothetically, the greatest test of an academic’s commitment to the freedom of knowledge is to ask them to sign a pirated pdf of their book.
This is a hypothetical test I have devised and never ever used.
This is a hypothetical test I have devised and never ever used.
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
I wrote a blog for the Meta-Research Center expressing my infinite frustration about not getting data. What else is new, you might think? Well, I added an extra layer of annoyance directed at the journals who do NOTHING to enforce promised data sharing.
metaresearch.nl/blog/2026/2/...
metaresearch.nl/blog/2026/2/...
Promised Data Unavailable? – I’m Sorry, Ma’am, There’s Nothing We Can Do — Meta-Research Center
This blogpost has been written by Michèle Nuijten. Michèle is an assistant professor of our research group who investigates reproducibility and replicability in psychology. Also, she is the developer ...
metaresearch.nl
February 3, 2026 at 3:03 PM
I wrote a blog for the Meta-Research Center expressing my infinite frustration about not getting data. What else is new, you might think? Well, I added an extra layer of annoyance directed at the journals who do NOTHING to enforce promised data sharing.
metaresearch.nl/blog/2026/2/...
metaresearch.nl/blog/2026/2/...
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
Publication bias poses a serious challenge to clarity and precision in scientific research & meta-analyses. This article by Paweł Lenartowicz poses a way to deal with this: the Likelihood Ratio Test for Publication Bias.
👇 Read the editorial assessment, peer reviews, and full article on MetaROR now
👇 Read the editorial assessment, peer reviews, and full article on MetaROR now
Likelihood Ratio Test for Publication Bias – a proof of concept - MetaROR
metaror.org
February 3, 2026 at 4:49 PM
Publication bias poses a serious challenge to clarity and precision in scientific research & meta-analyses. This article by Paweł Lenartowicz poses a way to deal with this: the Likelihood Ratio Test for Publication Bias.
👇 Read the editorial assessment, peer reviews, and full article on MetaROR now
👇 Read the editorial assessment, peer reviews, and full article on MetaROR now
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
It's a beautiful plot, but it's terribly misleading about the impact of pre-registration. More recent studies (with higher sample sizes) find very little impact of pre-registration on the publication of null results.
Here's a thread with some references (1/N)
Here's a thread with some references (1/N)
@scientificdiscovery.dev Hi, I am creating a new version of my free online MOOC, and would like to use this picture, of which you have the copyright. Is it ok if I put it in a slide?
February 2, 2026 at 1:47 PM
It's a beautiful plot, but it's terribly misleading about the impact of pre-registration. More recent studies (with higher sample sizes) find very little impact of pre-registration on the publication of null results.
Here's a thread with some references (1/N)
Here's a thread with some references (1/N)
@scientificdiscovery.dev Hi, I am creating a new version of my free online MOOC, and would like to use this picture, of which you have the copyright. Is it ok if I put it in a slide?
February 2, 2026 at 6:18 AM
@scientificdiscovery.dev Hi, I am creating a new version of my free online MOOC, and would like to use this picture, of which you have the copyright. Is it ok if I put it in a slide?
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
Always worth going back to this @lakens.bsky.social piece on an influential statistician who *wasn’t* personally a piece of shit. daniellakens.blogspot.com/2021/09/jerz...
Jerzy Neyman: A Positive Role Model in the History of Frequentist Statistics
Many of the facts in this blog post come from the biography ‘Neyman’ by Constance Reid . I highly recommend reading this book if you find ...
daniellakens.blogspot.com
January 31, 2026 at 10:04 PM
Always worth going back to this @lakens.bsky.social piece on an influential statistician who *wasn’t* personally a piece of shit. daniellakens.blogspot.com/2021/09/jerz...
New episode of Nullius In Verba! We discuss the jingle-jangle fallacy, the problem of vague concepts, how the incentive structures promote vagueness, why people who prefer more rigour have to be called the validity 'police', and much more!
nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/episode-74...
nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/episode-74...
Episode 74: Notiones Vague | Nullius in Verba
In this episode, we discuss the problems associated with vague concepts in psychological science. We talk about the jingle-jangle fallacy, the trade-off between broad concepts and more precise…
nulliusinverba.podbean.com
January 30, 2026 at 8:57 PM
New episode of Nullius In Verba! We discuss the jingle-jangle fallacy, the problem of vague concepts, how the incentive structures promote vagueness, why people who prefer more rigour have to be called the validity 'police', and much more!
nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/episode-74...
nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/episode-74...
René with some good suggestions during his workshop on peer review and scientific criticism on when and how to ignore suggestions by reviewers or editors, such as when they ask to drop non-significant results, or add hypotheses.
January 30, 2026 at 11:01 AM
René with some good suggestions during his workshop on peer review and scientific criticism on when and how to ignore suggestions by reviewers or editors, such as when they ask to drop non-significant results, or add hypotheses.
Full room for the Paul Meehl Graduate School workshop on Scientific Criticism and Peer Review taught by René Bekkers. In the introduction round, it is clear there is a lot of need for education on how to review the work of others!
January 30, 2026 at 8:53 AM
Full room for the Paul Meehl Graduate School workshop on Scientific Criticism and Peer Review taught by René Bekkers. In the introduction round, it is clear there is a lot of need for education on how to review the work of others!
Awesome to see more journals promote replication studies. They are an essential but too rare part of scientific discovery. If an effect can't be intersubjectively established, we do not understand it well enough to consider it scientific knowledge.
New submission format at SBE:
“Replications as Registered Reports”
link.springer.com/journal/1118...
You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.
#EconSky
“Replications as Registered Reports”
link.springer.com/journal/1118...
You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.
#EconSky
January 29, 2026 at 6:28 AM
Awesome to see more journals promote replication studies. They are an essential but too rare part of scientific discovery. If an effect can't be intersubjectively established, we do not understand it well enough to consider it scientific knowledge.
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
New submission format at SBE:
“Replications as Registered Reports”
link.springer.com/journal/1118...
You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.
#EconSky
“Replications as Registered Reports”
link.springer.com/journal/1118...
You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.
#EconSky
January 29, 2026 at 5:54 AM
New submission format at SBE:
“Replications as Registered Reports”
link.springer.com/journal/1118...
You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.
#EconSky
“Replications as Registered Reports”
link.springer.com/journal/1118...
You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.
#EconSky
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
Played around with Causion by @isager.bsky.social
It's an impressive teaching tool for causal inference... and it also really pretty. Amazing color scheme and slick interface.
Shown below a demonstration of an extended front-door DAG in Causion.
It's an impressive teaching tool for causal inference... and it also really pretty. Amazing color scheme and slick interface.
Shown below a demonstration of an extended front-door DAG in Causion.
January 29, 2026 at 2:28 AM
Played around with Causion by @isager.bsky.social
It's an impressive teaching tool for causal inference... and it also really pretty. Amazing color scheme and slick interface.
Shown below a demonstration of an extended front-door DAG in Causion.
It's an impressive teaching tool for causal inference... and it also really pretty. Amazing color scheme and slick interface.
Shown below a demonstration of an extended front-door DAG in Causion.
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
New blog post introducing Causion - a web app for causal inference teaching and learning: pedermisager.org/blog/causion....
Introducing Causion: A web app for playing with DAGs | Peder M. Isager
Personal website of Dr. Peder M. Isager
pedermisager.org
January 28, 2026 at 9:23 AM
New blog post introducing Causion - a web app for causal inference teaching and learning: pedermisager.org/blog/causion....
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
"Social media is like a Skinner box" is a phrase I've heard repeated a lot, but never meaningfully engaged with. We try and do so in this preprint.
Behaviorist principles are very useful to understanding digital behavior, but work in this area tends not to be aware of them. So, we provide a primer.
Behaviorist principles are very useful to understanding digital behavior, but work in this area tends not to be aware of them. So, we provide a primer.
Our preprint has evolved!
v2 of “Digital Behaviourism” is out now with a new title, new co-authors, and a deeper dive into the behavioural concepts that shape our online lives.
It’s time to move beyond “screen time” and focus on function of online behaviours.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
v2 of “Digital Behaviourism” is out now with a new title, new co-authors, and a deeper dive into the behavioural concepts that shape our online lives.
It’s time to move beyond “screen time” and focus on function of online behaviours.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
January 26, 2026 at 10:08 AM
"Social media is like a Skinner box" is a phrase I've heard repeated a lot, but never meaningfully engaged with. We try and do so in this preprint.
Behaviorist principles are very useful to understanding digital behavior, but work in this area tends not to be aware of them. So, we provide a primer.
Behaviorist principles are very useful to understanding digital behavior, but work in this area tends not to be aware of them. So, we provide a primer.
Reposted by Daniel Lakens
This was really helpful and very informative! Thank you so much for this talk.
This was a really great discussion with people pushing the boundaries of scientific resesrch in their ManyMany projects. Really the cutting edge of scientific knowledge generation!
Tomorrow I will give a webinar on preregistration for the ManyMany's: What’s the use of preregistration for Big Team Science? You can join for free for the talk, and discussion afterwards.
For more info, see: manymanys.github.io/events/
For more info, see: manymanys.github.io/events/
January 27, 2026 at 7:36 PM
This was really helpful and very informative! Thank you so much for this talk.