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graduate school, PhD, Masters, first-generation college student, drop out
It took me 10 years to go from an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry to a PhD in Social Psychology. Along the way I dropped out of a PhD program, worked as a lab manager, re-applied and re-entered graduate school, changed PhD advisors, and changed sub-disciplines of study. There are many ways to be successful in graduate school. If your goal is to most fully complete your education by earning your PhD, you can do it – even if you hit some bumps!

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R, RMarkdown, Papaja, tutorial, publication
I just preprinted my first 1st-author paper. Exciting! You can find it here: How Many Psychologists Use Questionable Research Practices? I used this paper as a project to learn how to create a fully reproducible paper. By that, I mean a person could take my data files and my “paper” file and fully reproduce the paper (including analyses, figures, tables, etc) and the final document all in one step. The special part of this process is the “paper” file.

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R, twitter, rtweet, tone, open science

Some say there is an issue with tone in the push for more open and reproducible science. Is there evidence of this?

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R, twitter, rtweet

I wanted to try using R and rtweet to collect and explore some twitter data. Here are the results of 5 minutes-worth of tweets directed at President Trump!

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immunology, degrees of freedom, questionable research practices

Psychology is aware of its problems with flexibility in data collection and analysis…but what about immunology? Here I cover some glaring issues with a common immunological data collection method: flow cytometry.

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Recent Publications

Selected Publications

It is currently unknown how many psychologists are contributing to the current replication crisis by using questionable research practices. Previous estimates vary considerably, from over 60% to near 10%. In the current work, the authors produce three estimates of the number of American psychologists who have used questionable research practices in the past 12 months, utilizing direct, indirect, and social network measures of estimation. This social network method, called the generalized network scale-up method, acts to reduce selection bias by accessing the population of interest via the social networks of participants. From 613 participants, we estimate up to 24.40% of American psychologists have recently used at least one questionable research practice. These estimates represent a first step in generating actionable interventions to resolve the current replication crisis and increase public trust in published research.
Preprint, PsyArXiV
Details Preprint OSF project page

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological findings. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and non-representative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Large-scale collaboration, in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.
In Press, AMPPS
Details Preprint OSF project page

In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to p ≤ .005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.
Nature Human Behavior, 2018
Details Preprint OSF project page

Recent Talks

Projects

2: Maternal Immune Activation and Behavioral Outcomes in Adult Offspring

Studying how maternal illness affects fetal neurodevelopment and leads to behavioral abnormailites in adult offspring.

Teaching

While I was a PhD student at Rutgers University, I taught at least one class per semester. Here is the list of courses I taught during that time, with links to available review material.

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