Metascience Digest
Metascience Digest is a weekly (or semi-weekly… or sometimes monthly) email newsletter run by Dave Sbarra.
In the Digest, Dave curates a bunch of interesting science-related articles, some cool new papers or preprints, clips from YouTube or podcast episodes, and a bunch of news-related content germane to doing science or public affairs more generally. There’s occasionally some humor, and, hopefully, there’s something for everyone. Metascience Digest includes ~ 5 or so content links with light commentary. It’ll arrive in your inbox on Fridays… also, sometimes on Mondays… or sometimes it’ll skip a few weeks.
Week Ending September 11
Great set of classic methodology readings from the MRES group at George Mason University.
As follow-up to the last Digest-- Psych Science retracted Ariely's 2002 paper due to data tampering! Retraction Watch reports.
Ripped from the headlines: NSF, it was a great run, sorry to see this happening.
Great set of resources on transitioning to Zenodo for data sharing.
A tutorial on enhancing replicability and reproducibility in observational-coding research. Reproducibility guidance can make us better from the outset!
Week Ending August 28
An incredible book by Theo Baker on science, greed, data falsification and integrity, and ethics at Stanford. Recommend X 1000!
Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination. "It's shocking," says Andrew Gelman.
Insights into doing Big Team Science from Jay Van Bavel-- really nice!
Heather Cox Richardson on Dolly Parton. What a treasure, what a loss.
Week Ending August 21
The Portable Mentor-- free ebook with tons of good advice. I often agree "you get what you pay for," but not in this case-- I'd pay a lot more than $0 for this book!
Why I Quit the Tenure Track in The Atlantic. Don't miss this one-- long but very thoughtful.
OSF will no longer be a viable data repository. See these guidelines from the Psych Science editorship team on trusted repositories and registries. Zenodo, here we come!
More on the "Unified Funding Strategy" (aka the White House's strategy toward less transparency). The formal policy proposal-- submit a comment!
A large-scale harmonization of papers on loneliness, social inactivity, and physical multimorbidity. Nice application of RI-CLMP?
Week Ending August 7
On male friendships. Shared activities as deep emotional support for men?
Video podcast: The replication crisis changed psychology. Did it fix it? A great history and interesting conversation with Brian Nosek.
Worldwide data from almost 100K people on the correlates of happiness. Lots of stuff on relational orientations and "communitarian pathways." Not a mechanisms paper despite its claims, but still thought-provoking.
This will be the last post from Regret Now-- just follow the Substack. P-hacking felt like truth-- https://www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/my-p-hacking-felt-like-truth
Yet another example where the crossover from observational research to experimental intervention fails... on inflammation drugs for CVD. This one hurts!
Week Ending July 17, 2026
500,000 comments on the OMB plan to exert more control on federal grants. Call me a nihilist, but I am not hopeful it will make much of a difference.
Paying peer reviewers? Fast & Fair could be the future.
Sleep and accelerated bio aging-- not as causal as you think?
Interview with the director of the Coalition of Autism Scientists, which was founded to "to counter this misinformation as well as other inaccurate and offensive claims about autism."
A depressing story about the stability of two-way interactions. Brace yourself: "Researchers are encouraged to avoid routine tests of two-way interactions unless sample size and reliability are adequate and hypotheses are specified a priori."
Week Ending June 19, 2026
I am obsessed with this book: Crisis of the Common Good by Chris Murphy, US Senator from Connecticut. So many important observations and good ideas.
Preprint alert: Great intro to instrumental variable (IV) regression in encouragement (non-binding intervention) designs. This sounds terrible, but it's quite important with many applications.
Lowering Inflammation to Treat Depression? Good coverage of a tough question-- see the quote by Mike Irwin in particular.
How Should Psychologists Use AI and Big Data? Nine Guides Point the Way. (Dave comment: Kongmeng Liew was one of our first editorial fellows at AMPPS-- now he's an AE there as well!)
Week Ending June 12, 2026
Another Jim Coan banger, this one about grade inflation. Great points!
PODCAST: Harry Reis on Speaking of Psychology-- “How to feel more loved”
arXIV bans researchers for hallucinating citations. Check all DOIs! (Here’s the Reddit thread on this if you’re into reading comments.)
On the miracle of life (it’s not what you think).
Week Ending June 5, 2026
New paper on face aging and cancer prediction. Cause, correlate, confound, or proxy variable?
Time to brush up on some best practices in missing data analysis? Here you go.
Week Ending May 29, 2026
Some interesting and brief videos on science communication and the life of a scientist.
PODCAST: Can AI make people feel less lonely? From The Daily
PODCAST: Dan Ariely on his relationship with Epstein. From College Matters. Do you believe him? (BONUS: From 2024-- “Is Dan Ariely telling the truth?”)