Questionable research practices in ecology and evolution

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 13; no. 7; p. e0200303
• Main Authors: Fraser, Hannah, Parker, Tim, Nakagawa, Shinichi, Barnett, Ashley, Fidler, Fiona
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 16.07.2018; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Biological Evolution; Biology and Life Sciences; Data collection; Ecological monitoring; Ecological research; Ecology; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Evolution; Evolution (Biology); Humans; Hypothesis testing; Medical ethics; Methods; Physical Sciences; Psychology; Publishing; Reproducibility; Reproducibility of Results; Research Design; Research Personnel - statistics & numerical data; Researchers; Science Policy; Scientific Misconduct - statistics & numerical data; Scientometrics; Social Sciences; Statistical analysis; Statistical significance; Statistics as Topic; Surveys; Surveys and Questionnaires; Trends; Australia; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200303

We surveyed 807 researchers (494 ecologists and 313 evolutionary biologists) about their use of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), including cherry picking statistically significant results, p hacking, and hypothesising after the results are known (HARKing). We also asked them to estimate the proportion of their colleagues that use each of these QRPs. Several of the QRPs were prevalent within the ecology and evolution research community. Across the two groups, we found 64% of surveyed researchers reported they had at least once failed to report results because they were not statistically significant (cherry picking); 42% had collected more data after inspecting whether results were statistically significant (a form of p hacking) and 51% had reported an unexpected finding as though it had been hypothesised from the start (HARKing). Such practices have been directly implicated in the low rates of reproducible results uncovered by recent large scale replication studies in psychology and other disciplines. The rates of QRPs found in this study are comparable with the rates seen in psychology, indicating that the reproducibility problems discovered in psychology are also likely to be present in ecology and evolution.