Guest Editorial
Perception
2023, Vol. 52(1) 3–4
On cumulative science © The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/03010066221135720
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Marco Bertamini
University of Padua, Italy
Changing human behaviour is difficult. Psychologists are well aware of this and have studied the
impact of various approaches. For example, in the context of smoking, they have compared positive
and negative framing of the warnings. In general, positive framing seems more effective (Mollen
et al., 2017). Positive strategies include a focus on potential benefits (as opposed to risks) and
the avoidance of personal attacks.
Poor scientific practices are a type of bad habit, where we conduct underpowered studies, mis-
interpret results, and generally cut corners in order to get the high of a new publication. There is
now awareness, and much discussion, of this crisis of replicability in psychology. Not all fields
are equally affected, and in perception, we have some advantages (precision of measurements,
low individual differences, fast replications). However, even our field cannot assume to be
immune to these dangers.
The framing of the replication problem has often been apocalyptic. This is indeed the metaphor
used by Dorothy Bishop (2019). She listed four horsemen of the “irreproducibility apocalypse”:
publication bias; low statistical power; p value hacking; and HARKing (Hypothesizing After the
Results are Known). Replication attempts are useful and indeed necessary. However, and not sur-
prisingly, they also produce defensive, and in some cases angry, reactions from researchers who
feel attacked. It may be worth to focus just as much energy on what can be done in the spirit of
positive framing when it comes to good practice, and on self-reflection rather than direct criticism
of others.
One major problem with how we communicate findings is the fact that what is published is
selective and fragmented. This situation has become worse with the trend towards fast publication
and bite-size science (Bertamini & Munafo, 2012). Apart from the issue of replicability and flukes,
there is also a problem of the sheer number of journals and articles. It is becoming very difficult to
keep up, and to read everything that gets published on one topic.
Advances in technology, however, do offer new opportunities. Here I describe one example and
some reflections.
My laboratory in Liverpool has been working on perception of symmetry for over two decades.
In particular, in many studies, we have measured an event-related potential component known as
sustained posterior negativity (SPN). COVID provided the stimulus and the time for the creation,
led by Alexis Makin, of a systematic catalogue of all data ever collected in Liverpool about the
Corresponding author:
Marco Bertamini, University of Padua, Italy
Email: [email protected]
4 Perception 52(1)
SPN. It is now available on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/2sncj). Importantly, it includes
both published and unpublished data (6674 SPNs from 2215 participants, over 1 TB of data).
The database meets the FAIR criteria for open science: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and
Reusable. In practice, that means that any researcher can not only access the data, but they will find
it relatively easy to carry out their own analyses (Makin et al., 2022).
Many laboratories around the world are in a similar situation. That is, much data is saved locally
on computers or servers, and the joke is that at the time of the analysis, the exact pipeline is clear to
us and to God, and after 6 months, it is only accessible to God. The pressure of academia makes it
hard to find the time to document, organise and share the data. However, once one develops a good
scheme for data storage and documentation, all of this information can accumulate, creating large
databases. Of course, some people are by nature more organised than others, and they are system-
atic in how they store data. Creating this database has a cost (in time and resources), but it quickly
provides a personal and pleasant sense of achievement. The next natural step is to think not just
about how to make it easy for us to retrieve a study that we carried out a few years ago, but
how to make it easy and open for everybody. Wicherts et al. (2011) found that shared data tends
to also be good quality data. The end goal is true cumulative science.
The wheels for this new approach are now truly in motion. In the future when considering the
evidence in favour of any specific effect or the characteristics of a phenomenon, we will not be con-
fined to consult published papers. Instead, we will have access to large databases, and on these, we
will be able to test old and new hypotheses. In the longer run, journals as such may become obso-
lete, as well as publishers. That, however, is a topic for another day.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
ORCID iD
Marco Bertamini https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8617-6864
References
Bertamini, M., & Munafo, M. R. (2012). Bite-size science and its undesired side effects. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 7(1), 67–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611429353
Bishop, D. (2019). Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility. Nature, 568(7753), 435. https://doi.org/10.
1038/d41586-019-01307-2
Makin, A. D., Tyson-Carr, J., Rampone, G., Derpsch, Y., Wright, D., & Bertamini, M. (2022). Lessons from a
catalogue of 6674 brain recordings. eLife, 11, e66388. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66388
Mollen, S., Engelen, S., Kessels, L. T. E., & van den Putte, B. (2017). Short and sweet: The persuasive effects
of message framing and temporal context in antismoking warning labels. Journal of Health
Communication, 22(1), 20–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2016.1247484
Wicherts, J. M., Bakker, M., & Molenaar, D. (2011). Willingness to share research data is related to the
strength of the evidence and the quality of reporting of statistical results. PLoS One, 6(11), e26828.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026828
