Researchers, says an experimental psychologist, generally know what they should do:
Yet many researchers persist in working in a way almost guaranteed not to deliver meaningful results. They ride with what I refer to as the four horsemen of the reproducibility apocalypse: publication bias, low statistical power, P-value hacking and HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known). My generation and the one before us have done little to rein these in.Dorothy Bishop, “Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility” at Nature
That’s interesting, considering how often we were ordered to see science as the relentless pursuit of truth. If we start with something as basic as giving up gimmicks, maybe we’ll get further.
She offers some thoughts on suggested reforms.
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See also: Another look at the call to abandon statistical significance
and
Pushback against abandoning statistical significance in science