Daniël Lakens

Together with my co-host @smreeteemehta we've started a new podcast: Nullius in Verba. A podcast about science - what it is, and what it could be. The introduction episode is up now! Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nul… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/0tw0yVZxu… RSS: feed.podbean.com/nulliusinverba…

@RealJonBrauer Those 99.9% of papers are in practice fine. I mean, they can't even detect small effects anyway, beyond the few 10k datasets out there. And those will always get questions about practical significance. In practice, whether we model the 'null' as 0 or 0.1 rarely matters.

Agree, though with slight modification: The 'null is never true' argument is not a killer against p-values... *...as long as you use a different null than the default used in your fav stat package & in 99.9% of social science papers that test null hypotheses.*

Excellent point - we also need to remember that a substantial proportion of research findings are significant yet meaningfully null, and even larger portion are *practically* null (i.e. completely useless in any practical sense)

It is very funny to see that authors who in 2019 argued that "Preregistration is redundant, at best", are now co-authoring papers where their collaborators want to preregister all studies. I guess they weren't even able to even convince their direct co-authors!

@JoshRVogel @eegdude Happy to hear! I have quite some sport and exercise scientists among my collaborators!

@lakens @eegdude Thank you for sharing this! I’m a sport coach who has been working a lot on becoming more scientifically literate, to be able to evaluate claims made in my sport more accurately. Resources like this really help!

Some people think that 'the null is never true' is a killer argument against p values. It isn't. Just test against a meaningful null - e.g., r > 0.1, instead of r > 0. Moving to range predictions is a big improvement - also if you like p values. doi.org/10.1177/174569…

@DavidAOliverJr @eegdude Yes, that's a very nice way to put it.

@eegdude @lakens Senn says IIRC “It’s one you wouldn’t want to miss”

@eegdude By reading my free textbook! #sec-sesoi" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">lakens.github.io/statistical_in…

@lakens How do we know what effect size is meaningul?

New Paul Meehl Graduate School workshop announced: Computational Cognitive Models paulmeehlschool.github.io/2026-03-10-cog… Please note that the workshop will be exclusively in-person on April 20, 2026.

Almost in Paris for a talk on 'Which Research is Worth Doing Well' at the University of Paris Nanterre. It is so convenient to be able to walk to the train station, get into a train, and end up 2 countries away - all while working on the revisions of a paper.

New Nullius In Verba episode on miscitations: nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/ep-77-miscit… How often are citations to the scientific literature outright misleading? Do we really need to spell out that people are supposed to read what they cite? And should we review citations as they do in law?

Episode 77: Miscitatio ift.tt/S9f24GI

Theory matters in psychological science — but where does theory in psychology currently stand? We’re inviting psychological researchers for our survey to share their views on the state of theory. Overview: doi.org/10.31234/osf.i… Survey: forms.gle/Ct4qq4a4raun9L…

Emotional stimuli in psychology just got a high-tech upgrade. 🚀In our new paper in AMPPS, we introduce and validate the Library of AI-Generated Affective Images (LAI-GAI). We combined generative AI with a rigorous validation pipeline to modernize affect induction procedures.👇

@squig I am positive about the effect it had - tiny, but a signal that some cared. Funders and journals are themselves ridiculously conservative. They need to see this buttom up support to change their policies as well.

@lakens A more positive alternative take is that reviewers started demanding it and journals adjusted to reviewer demands.

I remember the widespread pushback when the Peer Reviewer Openness Initiative started in 2017, where we would only review papers that share data and code (or explain why that is not possible) opennessinitiative.org/the-initiative/ Now, funders and journals are requiring it.

A combination of a lack of principles, and not wanting to be told what to do, is an extremely unattractive property of many academics. As an acedemic, you have responsibilities to society. It would be good if these responsibilities were more salient (and the own ego a bit less).

The lesson for me was: academics don't like being told what to do by peers - not even if they are told to do the right thing. But they do not resists change on any principle. If the people with money or in control of journals say the same thing, they will do it.

New blogpost: Continuing the blizzard of 26 power howlers. Check to see that you can shovel through this easy peasy power quiz. Then see the bottom notes to ponder why many critics of tests get this backwards. errorstatistics.com/2026/03/03/con…