| Meta-Research Center | |
| Parent: | Tilburg University |
| City: | Tilburg |
| Country: | Netherlands |
The Meta-Research Center at Tilburg University is a metascience research center within the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Dutch Tilburg University. They were profiled in a September 2018 article in Science.[1]
Meta-research aims to improve reproducibility by studying how science is practiced and published and developing better ways for the scientific community to operate.
The research institute has published a large statistical meta-analysis of studies on the effect of Stereotype threat on girls' mathematics performance. They also use methods for estimating publication bias.
The research institute has developed an R based software tool called Statcheck that can detect incorrect statistical methods used in research articles. A large amount of statistical errors were detected in a sample of 50 000 psychology research articles.[2] The use of it was perceived negatively by some of the researchers.[3] [4] The data mining practices of the research center have been in conflict with the policies of scientific publisher Elsevier.[5]
A scientific misconduct case in the field of social psychology at Tilburg University has been a contributing factor in establishing the research center.[6]
The research center makes recommendations for other researchers about how to avoid publication bias and to improve the statistical strength of results. They have stated support for pre-registration of studies and open sharing of research data.[3]