Encourage Playing with Data and Discourage Questionable Reporting Practices

Abstract

Not so long ago, in the early days of experimental psychology, researchers performed their data analyses by hand (or paid people to do these calculations for them). No wonder, they took ample time beforehand to think through which analyses to perform (and especially which not). Exploring data was not really an option. The t value or F value that resulted from the calculations provided a more or less definitive answer. H0 could be rejected or not.