
Effect sizes and power in cognitive neuroscience and psychology literature - triplesec
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/25/071530
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bbctol
For those not in the know, John Ioannidis is responsible for much of the
current focus on reproducibility in science, following his seminal 2005 paper
"Why Most Published Research Findings are False."
([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/))

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triplesec
Here's an Atlantic profile on his work, from 2010
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-
dam...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-
and-medical-science/308269/)

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maroonblazer
I'd love someone more adept at the statistics than me to shed some light on
the veracity and implications of this study.

Based on the abstract it seems pretty damning for cognitive science research
conducted over the last 5 years (the period covered in the study). Perhaps it
extends even farther back if most of those studies were built on previous
research.

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SubiculumCode
Post-hoc power assessments? c'mon e.g. Hoenig & Heisey (2001) provide evidence
that several different approaches for calculating post-hoc power are flawed
and can produce misleading conclusions. Once a confidence interval has been
computed, there is no additional information that a post hoc power calculation
can provide.

Nevertheless cog neuroscience has had a bad habit of using small samples,
sample sizes that developmental cognitive neuroscientists have criticized.

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mattkrause
Hoenig & Heisey (2001) discuss computing power after finding _non_
-significant results. This is a bit different from the current paper, which
also looks at the power for significant findings. (The conclusion here being
that studies are so underpowered that they should be finding a lot fewer
significant effects).

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SubiculumCode
post hoc power calculations are inappropriate as they merely restate the
p-value in a different form. No new information is gained.

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triplesec
Full title "Empirical assessment of published effect sizes and power in the
recent cognitive neuroscience and psychology literature" was too long.
Authors: Denes Szucs and John Ioannidis

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brudgers
Direct link to paper:
[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/08/25/071530.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/08/25/071530.full.pdf)

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nonbel
What is with those awful blurry figures?

