Abstract

Questionable Research Practices (QRPS, e.g., p-hacking, cherry picking/selective reporting) are common and problematic, and in some cases they likely border on ethical breaches, but where is the line? What is careless and what is an ethical violation? What the appropriate institutional steps for combating QRPs? Do existing ethics committees/IRBs have a role to play? Should these committees intervene on methodological issues when the authors seem destined for QRPs (for example, when statistical power is low, when many more conditions/variables are being elicited than hypotheses account for)?