Tip Sheets

Understanding false positives, P-hacking and statistical power

This lengthy but informative slide presentation from Leif Nelson, an experimental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, was delivered in June 2014 at the Summer Institute of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences.

Although it was aimed at social scientists as an audience, it provides a number of helpful tips in understanding what types of P-hacking exists, how to spot it, and what can and should be done to address it.

Although not all the slides are applicable without having the accompanying lecture and discussion, it still serves as a useful tip sheet on wrapping your head around P-hacking you may come across in research you report on.