#bropenscience is broken science

Abstract

Over the last decade, a vocal and hardworking group of psychological scientists have set about reforming the ways we carry out analyses, share data and code, pass around manuscripts, and select which findings to report (e.g. Altmejd et al., 2019; Frank et al., 2017; Shanks et al., 2013). This group has been spurred into action by a variety of disappointing stories about irreplicable research (Open Science Collaboration, 2015) – due to both purposeful misconduct and variable guidance for transparent reporting standards – as well as inspired by the pre-existing ideals of ‘open science’. It might not come as a surprise to psychologists, however, that it is a very narrow demographic of researchers who have the institutional support to spend time on such projects as well as the fortune to be publicly acknowledged for their hard work. Open (psychological) science often seems to have even fewer diverse voices than psychology as a whole (Murphy et al., 2020) – a phenomenon replicated in the tech world with ‘open source’ being even less diverse than tech overall (Finley, 2017) – and sometimes it can become a toxic feedback loop, disincentivising minorities from taking part.

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