Dr. Veilleux here. I’ve been slowly making the move toward open science, and although it’s been hard, I ultimately feel good about myself (and my lab) moving in this direction.
What is open science, you might ask? Well, if you want a good primer, you should go look at many of the things written by Brian Nosek (like this one)–he’s going to do a much better job of explaining it than I am. But essentially the open science movement has stemmed from a variety of classic psychology findings not holding up to replication, which is when the same study is repeated to make sure we find the same thing. Essentially, replication helps us understand whether we are finding flukes or finding evidence of actual phenomena in the world.
Open science is really about creating transparency. It’s about saying ahead of time here is what I’m going to do and how I’m going to analyze it (pre-registration), and it’s saying “here’s what I did and how I did it” (posting data and the syntax used to analyze the data).
I have respected the open science movement for some time, but it took me a bit to join the fray. Why? Well, I’m mostly scared to post my data. I’m always a little worried I did the analyses wrong and someone is going to yell at me for that (note: yelling on the internet is like SENDING A MESSAGE IN ALL CAPS–IT IS INTIMIDATING!). I’m also worried someone will take my data and steal it and try to publish something with it that I didn’t agree to. I only posted my data for the first time earlier this year, and that act tested my fear. So far no one has yelled at me, either in person or in all capital letters. It was scary the first time and less so the second time, and now that I’ve done it a few times it just seems OK.
The other new thing is pre-registering, which is basically being explicit about what study you will do, who will be in the sample, and (most importantly to me) how you will analyze it. I hadn’t done this either until earlier this year but I’ve now got both an honors student and a masters student with pre-registered projects, and we’ve pre-registered some side projects as well. Here again, the idea is golden, it just took me a bit to jump on board. I think I’m usually pushing to collect data quickly and think “Eh, I can figure out how to analyze it later” but forcing myself to think through which variables matter and how will I look at them and who will I throw out…it’s actually been really helpful. Analyzing the data goes faster than it used to because I’ve thought of things on the front end, and I also find that I’m more intentional in the variables I’m assessing because I’m thinking about analysis on the front end. In short, I think both of these processes have made my work better.
So yep, I’m in the open science world, and proud of it.
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