When: Monday, Nov 6, 2017 @ 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM

Where:  Norm Endler Seminar Room (BSB 164)

Speaker: Chris D. Green, PhD, Department of Psychology, York University

Title: The Monsters Hiding Under Psychology’s Bed: Null Hypothesis Testing, p-Hacking, Publication Bias, Replication, and the Future of Psychology

Abstract: Psychologists have known since at least the 1960s that there are serious questions about the adequacy of their primary model of statistical analysis: null hypothesis significance testing. Although concerns of this sort have percolated along quietly for half a century, they have rapidly come to a boil in the past decade, especially once it was discovered that the replication of even many "well-established" psychological phenomena is highly problematic. Unstable p-values, low statistical power, inflated effect sizes, publication bias in favor of "significant" results, pervasive p-hacking -- all of these interlocking issues threaten to undermine psychology's credibility as a scientific endeavor. Psychology is not alone in this quagmire -- other social sciences and medicine are feeling the heat as well -- but psychology may be uniquely vulnerable to outside political pressure if it does not get its statistical house cleaned up in short order. This talk will review these pressing issues, and consider the potential of the solutions that are currently on offer.