This year's Brown Bag Series kicked off with an inspiring talk from Will Lowe on his role as a reviewer for the ERROR Project, a pioneering bug-bounty initiative for scientific research.
In summer 2024, Will was invited by researchers at the universities of Bern and Leipzig to participate in this innovative project (https://error.reviews/reviews/). The ERROR initiative aims to quantify the distribution of errors in published psychological research by pairing highly-cited articles with dedicated reviewers who examine the work far more thoroughly than traditional peer review allows.
Will served as the reviewer for Hehman et al.'s 2018 article "Disproportionate use of lethal force in policing is associated with regional racial biases of residents" published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. His review ultimately led to the article being assigned "major error that affects a core conclusion."
During his presentation, Will outlined:
• The methodological substance of his review
• The illuminating (if sometimes frustrating) dialogue with the authors that followed
• His reflections on psychological research, open science, and the complex nature of "research error" as a methodological, cognitive, and sociological category
The talk offered valuable insights for anyone interested in the parts of scientific research that seldom appear in its public record.
-
William Lowe, Senior Research Scientist