PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Berna Devezer
AU  - Danielle J. Navarro
AU  - Joachim Vandekerckhove
AU  - Erkan Ozge Buzbas
TI  - The case for formal methodology in scientific reform
AID  - 10.1101/2020.04.26.048306
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.04.26.048306
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/28/2020.04.26.048306.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/28/2020.04.26.048306.full
AB  - Current attempts at methodological reform in sciences come in response to an overall lack of rigor in methodological and scientific practices in experimental sciences. However, some of these reform attempts suffer from the same mistakes and over-generalizations they purport to address. Considering the costs of allowing false claims to become canonized, we argue for more rigor and nuance in methodological reform. By way of example, we present a formal analysis of three common claims in the metascientific literature: (a) that reproducibility is the cornerstone of science; (b) that data must not be used twice in any analysis; and (c) that exploratory projects are characterized by poor statistical practice. We show that none of these three claims are correct in general and we explore when they do and do not hold.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.