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Science advances when repeat studies or refute previous research, but are "replicas", published can be a nightmare

professor Daryl Bem of Cornell University is a highly respected psychologist. The Journal of Psychology of Personality and Social is a respected magazine, published by the American Psychological Association. It has a strong impact and high rate of rejection of bids. This is clearly one of the best journals in the field. Not surprisingly, when Bern last year published the results of a series of nine experiments suggest that precognition - or the ability to "feel the future" - is real, the story has received much coverage traditional scientific circles around the world.

Bem has used a variety of techniques, but the general approach was to "reverse time", established the psychological effects. For example, the experiment that produced the largest effect size (experiment 9) took as its starting point the banal observation that the memory of words is better if allowed to repeat the words instead of being exposed alone once. Of course, this usually involves testing the memory words before one of them is tested.

The astonishing claim made by Bem - apparently with the support of their experimental data - is that the memory of words has been improved, although the trial has not taken place after the withdrawal was tested. The effect was called the "retroactive facilitation of recovery."

To his credit, in his role as Bem encouraged other psychologists to try to confirm these results and even offered to provide the right software to run the studies. In collaboration with Stuart Ritchie, of Edinburgh University, Professor Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University, and members of my own group in the Research Unit at Goldsmiths abnormal psychology, University of London, decided to do just that.

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was agreed that a replication attempt will take place in all three institutions. The three attempts to follow the same procedures as those used by Bem, even using the same number of participants, and experiences would be pre-registered. Whatever the outcome, I wanted to write and present our results for publication.

As you can see in our report published in the journal PLoS ONE, none of us produces results that support the effect reported by Bem (any more than Eric Robinson, in an article published in July 2011 in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research). Our inability to reproduce the results of Bem certainly not a surprise to many readers, as they have taken from the outset that the claimed effect of the paranormal was not real. Indeed, many commentators sharply criticized the Journal of personality psychology and social role for the publication of Bem, first, although it underwent a review process as other proposals.

not share his view. Once we think we know in advance that the effects are real and which are illusory, genuine scientific objectivity flies out the window. That said, my personal opinion is that the retroactive facilitation of memory is not a real effect.

I have my doubts about the other effects reported by Bem. As expected given the controversial nature of the claims Bem, a number of critics have crossed the original document with a fine tooth comb and tests revealed the flawed methodology and inadequate statistical analysis.

Yet I find myself in agreement with the comments may Yarkoni in his excellent blog: "It is important to note that none of these problems is really terrible one course, is bad take a look at data But the data. hovering just not likely to produce nine different false positives. are not using one-tailed tests, or the construction of measures on the fly, etc., but when combined data secretly, liberal thresholds , measurements of recombination of the study hypotheses flexible and selective, you have a recipe for false results. "

or not any of the reported effects are real Bem ultimately depend on the result of efforts by the representative. But at least as interesting as this question are the issues that arise when he tried to publish our representatives have failed. Since the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology was responsible for the publication of controversial statements in the first and Bem paper includes an explicit call to psychologists to attempt other replicas, we realized that this magazine was the obvious choice to guide as to the publication of our own conclusions. The editor of the magazine, however, disagreed and dismissed without even sending our work for review because of his newspaper "does not publish rebuttals". He then presented to science and Brevia received the same answer. The same thing happened when subjected to the journal Psychological Science. Our inability to obtain, even our work for consideration became a story in itself. Is covered, for example, Ben Goldacre Bad Science column and by the New Scientist and psychologist. When presented to the British Journal of Psychology, which was finally sent for review. One of the referees was very positive about it, but the second had reservations and the editor rejected the paper. We were pretty sure that the second referee was, in fact, is nothing other than his own Daryl Bem, a suspicion that the good professor kindly confirmed. It seemed to us that could possibly be a conflict of interest with respect to our presentation. Moreover, we did not agree with the criticism and suggested that the third arbitrator has been awarded. The editor rejected our request.

most scientists are aware of this bias, and rarely bother with consecutive repetitions. But successive replication attempts are often exactly what is necessary, especially when it comes to controversial statements. For example, parapsychologists are generally happy to accept the findings of a recent study, if replicated on a paranormal effect mentioned above. However, if you do not, are likely to blame any deviation from the initial procedure, no matter how insignificant. For this reason we decided to follow the procedure as close as possible Bem (other than a minor improvement methodology).

Given the high cost of paper publications and the frequency of sending a high rejection magazines "top", it could be argued that the rejection of replication studies is defensible in the pre- Internet. But what would prevent these journals adopt a policy to send reports of repeats, failed or not, for a comprehensive review and, if accepted, publication of the summary of the article in the paper and the full version online ? Otherwise, publication bias seems likely to remain a major problem in the psychology and science in general.

there is a final twist in this story. PLoS ONE was recently discovered in the center of another controversy over a failed replication. Professor John Bargh of Yale University, wrote an angry blog for Psychology Today, in response to an article published in PLoS ONE by Stephen Dean and his colleagues at the Free University of Brussels. These scientists did not reproduce a classic experiment, Bargh and his colleagues published in 1996 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that behavior can be significantly affected by the unconscious priming.

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