Generic language in scientific communication

Scientific communication poses a challenge: To clearly highlight key conclusions and implications while fully acknowledging the limitations of the evidence. Although these goals are in principle compatible, the goal of conveying complex and variable data may compete with reporting results in a digestible form that fits (increasingly) limited publication formats. As a result, authors' choices may favor clarity over complexity. For example, generic language (e.g., "Introverts and extraverts require different learning environments") may mislead by implying general, timeless conclusions while glossing over exceptions and variability. Using generic language is especially problematic if authors overgeneralize from small or unrepresentative samples (e.g., exclusively Western, middle-class). We present 4 studies examining the use and implications of generic language in psychology research articles. Study 1, a text analysis of 1,149 psychology articles published in 11 journals in 2015 and 2016, examined the use of generics in titles, research highlights, and abstracts. We found that generics were ubiquitously used to convey results (89% of articles included at least 1 generic), despite that most articles made no mention of sample demographics. Generics appeared more frequently in shorter units of the paper (i.e., highlights more than abstracts), and generics were not associated with sample size. Studies 2 to 4 (n = 1,578) found that readers judged results expressed with generic language to be more important and generalizable than findings expressed with nongeneric language. We highlight potential unintended consequences of language choice in scientific communication, as well as what these choices reveal about how scientists think about their data.

Exploring Research-Methods Blogs in Psychology: Who Posts What About Whom, and With What Effect?

During the methods crisis in psychology and other sciences, much discussion developed online in forums such as blogs and other social media. Hence, this increasingly popular channel of scientific discussion itself needs to be explored to inform current controversies, record the historical moment, improve methods communication, and address equity issues. Who posts what about whom, and with what effect? Does a particular generation or gender contribute more than another? Do blogs focus narrowly on methods, or do they cover a range of issues? How do they discuss individual researchers, and how do readers respond? What are some impacts? Web-scraping and text-analysis techniques provide a snapshot characterizing 41 current research-methods blogs in psychology. Bloggers mostly represented psychology's traditional leaderships' demographic categories: primarily male, mid- to late career, associated with American institutions, White, and with established citation counts. As methods blogs, their posts mainly concern statistics, replication (particularly statistical power), and research findings. The few posts that mentioned individual researchers substantially focused on replication issues; they received more views, social-media impact, comments, and citations. Male individual researchers were mentioned much more often than female researchers. Further data can inform perspectives about these new channels of scientific communication, with the shared aim of improving scientific practices.

Afterword: In the Matter of Judging Scientific Merit

In this afterword, I suggest expanding upon some of the criteria for judging scientific merit that have been discussed in the two symposia on "judging scholarly merit in psychological science." I discuss in particular the value of creativity, analysis, common sense, and wisdom and ethics in scientific contributions and discourse. In the course of this discussion, I consider where the field of judging scientific merit has been, where it is now, and where it may go.