Does the conclusion follow from the evidence? Recommendations for improving research

Recent criticisms of social psychological research are considered in relation to an earlier crisis in social psychology. The current replication crisis is particularly severe because (1) psychologists are questioning the accuracy of findings rather than the meaning of findings, and (2) researchers are responding to real scientific failures, rather than hypothetical scientific failures. I present an expanded model of statistical decision making that can be used to help researchers draw more reliable conclusions. Based on the premise that drawing conclusions on relatively bad evidence is an error, Type III and IV errors are introduced as categories representing statistical decisions that align with reality, but do not follow from the available evidence. Treating these as errors helps researchers and evaluators of research to draw more reliable conclusions. From the perspective of this model I discuss procedures that researchers can use to not only produce more replicable results, but also conduct more powerful statistical tests.