There is increasing concern that the structure of modern science is flawed and that most published research findings may be false.
Commonly cited problems with how science works today include:
Publication bias and the file drawer problem.
"Result fishing", data dredging etc. - analyzing data in different ways to "get a finding"
The privileging of "positive" results over "negative" ones.
I have previouslyargued that, to solve these, problems we need a way to ensure that scientists publicly announce which studies they are going to run, what methods they will use, and how they will analyze the data, before running their studies.
We already have such a registration system in place for clinical trials. It's a good system. It's not perfect but it's helped. I propose we extend it to all science. But how would that work in practice?
I'm not sure. So what follows is a series of ideas. These ...
