This R package contains a collection of tools for scrutinising the results of articles and preprints to detect errors. References and web apps are provided for each below. Working examples are provided for each in the vignettes.
[TOC]
Install the package directly from GitHub, then view the vignettes in RStudio.
- Run the following code:
devtools::install_github("ianhussey/ERROR")
library(ERROR)
?ERROR- Click "Index" and then "User guides, package vignettes and other documentation." to view a list of all vignettes.
For assessing whether reported test statistics, degrees of freedom, and p values are mathmathically congruent with one another, and therefore useful for detecting reporting errors.
Nuijten, M. B., & Polanin, J. R. (2020) “statcheck”: Automatically detect statistical reporting inconsistencies to increase reproducibility of meta-analyses. Research Synthesis Methods. https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1408 [pdf on ilias]
Nuijten, M. B., Hartgerink, C. H., Van Assen, M. A., Epskamp, S., & Wicherts, J. M. (2016). The prevalence of statistical reporting errors in psychology (1985–2013). Behavior Research Methods, 48, 1205-1226. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-015-0664-2
For assessing whether reported means and standard deviations (and indeed standard errors and variances) are mathmathically possible, and therefore useful for detecting reporting errors.
GRIM (means) http://www.prepubmed.org/general_grim/
GRIMMER (SDs, SEs, or variance) http://www.prepubmed.org/grimmer/
Brown, Nicholas J. L., Heathers, James A. J. (2016). The GRIM Test: A Simple Technique Detects Numerous Anomalies in the Reporting of Results in Psychology. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 8(4), pp 363–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616673876
Heathers, J. (2016) The GRIM test — a method for evaluating published research. https://jamesheathers.medium.com/the-grim-test-a-method-for-evaluating-published-research-9a4e5f05e870
Anaya J. (2016) The GRIMMER test: A method for testing the validity of reported measures of variability. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2400v1
For reconstructing datasets that have the same summary statistics (M, SD, N) and constraints (e.g., range constraints) as those reported in articles, in order to assess the plausibility of those original datasets and summary statistics.
https://steamtraen.shinyapps.io/rsprite/
possibly also scrutiny?
Heathers, J. A., Anaya, J., van der Zee, T., Brown, N. J. L. (2018). Recovering data from summary statistics: Sample Parameter Reconstruction via Iterative TEchniques (SPRITE). PeerJ. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26968v1
Heathers, J. A. (2018). Introducing SPRITE (and the Case of the Carthorse Child). https://medium.com/hackernoon/introducing-sprite-and-the-case-of-the-carthorse-child-58683c2bfeb
Recalculate Cohen's d or Hedges' g effect sizes, independent t-tests, 1-way or 2-way between subjects ANOVAs from summary statistics (M, SD, and N per cell).
NA
[under construction, see vignettes for working examples]
[under construction]
For assessing the credibility of p values within a given literature.
dmetar (see Harrer chapter below)
Simonsohn, Nelson, & Simmons (2014) p-Curve: A Key to the File-Drawer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033242
Simonsohn, Nelson, & Simmons (2015) Better p-curves: Making p-curve analysis more robust to errors, fraud, and ambitious p-hacking, a Reply to Ulrich and Miller (2015). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000104
Harrer, M., Cuijpers, P., Furukawa, T.A., & Ebert, D.D. (2021). Doing Meta-Analysis with R: A Hands-On Guide. Boca Raton, FL and London: Chapman & Hall/CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-367-61007-4. https://bookdown.org/MathiasHarrer/Doing_Meta_Analysis_in_R/pub-bias.html#p-curve
Erdfelder & Heck (2019) Detecting Evidential Value and p-Hacking With the p-Curve Tool: A Word of Caution. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000383
For assessing the credibility of p values within a given literature. Argued to have advantages over p-curve, but is also more complex (both in its inner workings and to interpret the output of).
https://shinyapps.org/apps/p-checker/ (see the Excess Significance tab, although note this only produces some of Z-curve's metrics and not its plot)
Bartoš, F., & Schimmack, U. (2022) Z-curve 2.0: Estimating Replication Rates and Discovery Rates. Meta-psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2021.2720
For extracting data from plots.
https://automeris.io/WebPlotDigitizer/ (also has local apps for Windows, Mac OS and Linux)
digitizeR (note that this package is only available on GitHub, not CRAN. It provides an R interface for the underlying original WebPlotDigitiser, which is written in JavaScript I think)
See website for tutorials: https://automeris.io/WebPlotDigitizer/tutorial.html
A Simple Consistency Test For Binary Data
[to be added]
Heathers & Brown (2019) DEBIT: A Simple Consistency Test For Binary Data. https://osf.io/5vb3u
Rounded Input Variables, Exact Test Statistics: A Technique For Detecting Hand-Calculated Results in Published Research.
[to be added]
[to be added]
Brown & Heathers (2019) Rounded Input Variables, Exact Test Statistics (RIVETS): A Technique For Detecting Hand-Calculated Results in Published Research. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ctu9z
Check correlation tables for consistency and (re)create regression analyses using correlation tables as input rather than the participant level data
[under construction]
[under construction]
[under construction]
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