Preregistration and the Hindsight Bias | Postdoc Position | Open Science's Marginalization of Qualitative Work | Replication Failures are Good for Science

Preregistration and the Hindsight Bias

Hartmut Blank and colleagues ask whether preregistration protects against the hindsight bias, in which researchers perceive their results as more predictable after they are known.

As Blank et al. (2026) explained:

The idea that there is hindsight bias for one’s own research predictions and that preregistration is needed to protect researchers from it has been taken for granted and has become part of the Open Science folklore.

For example, in their article on “the preregistration revolution,” Brian Nosek et al. (2018) explained that:

Mistaking generation of postdictions with testing of predictions reduces the credibility of research findings. However, ordinary biases in human reasoning, such as hindsight bias, make it hard to avoid this mistake. An effective solution is to define the research questions and analysis plan before observing the research outcomes—a process called preregistration.

Contrary to this reasoning, Blank et al. found that preregistration was unrelated to self-reported post hoc expectedness of research outcomes among 351 conference poster presenters (r = −.01). They concluded that:

It will come as a surprise to many (including ourselves, initially) that the first empirical test of this idea failed to show any support for it. In hindsight, and upon a closer look at the hindsight bias literature, it seems that the generality of the hindsight bias phenomenon has been overestimated (a typical research bias in itself; see, e.g., Simons et al., 2017).

The lack of support in our study for a preregistration-hindsight bias link remains intriguing, and this adds to recent discussions around benefits but also costs of preregistration (e.g., Lakens, 2019; Navarro, 2020; Nosek et al., 2019; Rubin, 2022; Shiffrin et al., 2018; Szollosi et al., 2020).

Blank, H., Kieslich, P. J., Bröder, A., Shevchenko, Y., Bernstein, D. M., & Erdfelder, E. (2026). Does preregistration protect against hindsight bias? Testing the retrospective expectedness of research outcomes in a sample of scientific poster presentations. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000288

Postdoc Position on Science Reform

There’s a postdoc position available working with Prof Jesper Wiborg Schneider at Aarhus University, Demark, as part of the research project “Reforming science: Investigating the reflexivity and reflectivity of (non)academic actors advocating for scientific reforms.”

Jesper Schneider

The project examines contemporary science reform movements and communities associated with, for example, Open Science, metascience, reproducibility, research integrity, research assessment and related reform agendas….The position will involve a combination of quantitative and qualitative research tasks, including bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, survey design and analysis, citation-context analysis, and historically informed comparative analysis of science reforms.

The postdoc is expected to contribute to:

• Mapping the social and intellectual structures of science reform communities

• Designing and analysing a survey of actors involved in science reform communities

• Conducting citation-context analyses to examine how key science reform publications are cited and used across research fields

• Contributing to a historical comparison of current science reforms with earlier episodes of reform in science

Applications are due by 10th August 2026. For further information, please see here.

Open Science’s Marginalization of Qualitative Epistemologies

In an editorial in Qualitative Psychology, Heidi Levitt considers the “practice of assigning badges for articles in journals that adhere to the values of open science, irrespective of their methods or epistemological perspectives.”

Although many virtues of open science exist, I question practices of open science that may support some epistemological approaches to science while devaluing or compromising others. Specifically, I am concerned that unreflective practices marginalize the historical practices endemic to qualitative methods that already serve open science goals and strengthen methodological rigor.

For example, Levitt addresses the issue of preregistering qualitative research:

Constructivist and critical epistemic perspectives dominate among qualitative psychologists (Grzanka & Moradi, 2021; Kovács et al., 2019; Rizo et al., 2025) and these researchers tend to view their analytic processes as locally bound and interpretively based.

Just because it is now possible to register qualitative studies does not mean that this process holds value for qualitative researchers or serves their goals then.

Following Andrea Bazzoli’s (2022) commentary on “open science and epistemic pluralism,” I’ve raised similar concerns about the epistemic encroachment of open science’s postpositivist principles on qualitative researchers here:

Levitt, H. M. (2026). A reflection on open science badges: Valuing methodological integrity and ethics in qualitative research. Qualitative Psychology, 13(2), 205-214. https://doi.org/10.1037/qup0000370

“10 Years Ago…” - Replication Failures are Good for Science

Stuart Firestein is the author of the 2012 book “Ignorance: How it drives science.” In 2016, he wrote an inspiring op ed in the LA Times about the importance of replication failures to scientific discovery. It ends as follows:

Science would be in a crisis if it weren’t failing most of the time. Science is full of wrong turns, unconsidered outcomes, omissions and, of course, occasional facts. Replication is part of that process, as open to failure as any other step. The mistake is to think that any published paper or journal article is the end of the story and a statement of incontrovertible truth. It is a progress report. Don’t be fooled.

Firestein, S. (2016, February 14). Why failure to replicate findings can actually be good for science. LA Times. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0214-firestein-science-replication-failure-20160214-story.html