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Questionable Research Practices Surprisingly Common
Not all scientific misconduct is flat-out fraud. Much falls into the murkier realm of “questionable research practices.” A new study finds that in one field, psychology, these practices are surprisingly common. The survey of more than 2,000 research psychologists, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that most have engaged in at least one of the questionable practices at some point in their career. “There have been some very widely publicized cases of outright fraud,” says Leslie K. John of Harvard Business School.
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Psychological Science Explains Uproar over Prostate-Cancer Screenings
WASHINGTON— The uproar that began last year when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force stated that doctors should no longer offer regular prostate-cancer tests to healthy men continued this week when the task force released their final report. Overall, they stuck to their guns, stating that a blood test commonly used to screen for prostate cancer, the PSA test, causes more harm than good -- it leads men to receive unnecessary, and sometimes even dangerous, treatments. But many people simply don’t believe that the test is ineffective.
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Wrongful Convictions Can Be Reduced Through Science, But Tradeoffs Exist
WASHINGTON – Many of the wrongful convictions identified in a report this week hinged on a misidentified culprit -- and a new report in a top journal on psychological science reveals the paradox of reforms in eyewitness identification procedure. In our efforts to make sure that good guys don’t get locked up, we could let more bad guys go. In the May issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, leading scholars in psychology and the law explore and debate various aspects of eyewitness identification procedures, providing a scientific foundation for this important social issue.
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Timing Can Affect Whether Women and Minorities Face Discrimination
Timing can affect whether females and minorities experience discrimination -- says a study published today in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Emails were sent from fictional prospective doctoral students to 6,500 professors across 258 institutions, requesting a meeting either that day or next week. Prospective doctoral students with Caucasian male names were 26% more likely to be granted an appointment with a professor when requesting one for next week than those with names signaling that they were minorities (African American, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese) or females.
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Marketing Is More Effective When Targeted to Personality Profiles
Advertisements can be more effective when they are tailored to the unique personality profiles of potential consumers, research suggests.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about new research published in Psychological Science. Is It Light or Dark? Recalling Moral Behavior Changes Perception of Brightness Pronobesh Banerjee, Promothesh Chatterjee, and Jayati Sinha Can the recollection of past ethical and unethical acts change a person's perception of brightness? Participants were asked to recall an ethical or an unethical event from their past.They were then asked to rate their preference for a number of items -- a lamp, a cracker, and a candle, for example -- and were asked to judge the brightness of the testing room.
