Psychology lecturer creates new article format for exploratory research
Cognitive neuroscientist Rob McIntosh establishes new article format in the international journal Cortex
Senior Lecturer in Psychology Robert McIntosh has introduced a new article format that promotes the inclusion of exploratory work in the publication Cortex.
Robert established the Visuomotor Lab here at the School of PPLS, which studies human movement with a focus on visually-guided action.
Rewarding curiosity
According to Robert, the scientific publishing community sometimes put pressure on authors to present work as though it confirms a particular prediction, when really the research is about exploring the data with no clear prediction on what the results will be.
This is important because whether research is trying to confirm a clear prediction, or explore the data more generally, can affect what sorts of statistics psychologists use to analyse and interpret their results.
With this new article format, Robert wants to promote curiosity and empower authors to explore their data, showing their workings as openly as possible.
Exploratory work is vital to the formation of ideas
Nature Index article – New research format rewards curiosity