Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Aspiring to greater intellectual humility in science

Nature Human Behaviour volume 5, pages 1602–1607 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The replication crisis in the social, behavioural and life sciences has spurred a reform movement aimed at increasing the credibility of scientific studies. Many of these credibility-enhancing reforms focus, appropriately, on specific research and publication practices. A less often mentioned aspect of credibility is the need for intellectual humility or being transparent about and owning the limitations of our work. Although intellectual humility is presented as a widely accepted scientific norm, we argue that current research practice does not incentivize intellectual humility. We provide a set of recommendations on how to increase intellectual humility in research articles and highlight the central role peer reviewers can play in incentivizing authors to foreground the flaws and uncertainty in their work, thus enabling full and transparent evaluation of the validity of research.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. [Editorial]. Tell it like it is. Nat. Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0818-9 (2020).

  2. Pashler, H. & De Ruiter, J. P. Taking responsibility for our field’s reputation. APS Letter/Observer Forum https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/taking-responsibility-for-our-fields-reputation (2017).

  3. Whitcomb, D., Battaly, H., Baehr, J. & Howard-Snyder, D. Intellectual humility: owning our limitations. Phil. Phenom. Res. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12228 (2015).

  4. Alfano, M. et al. Development and validation of a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humility. PLoS ONE 12, e0182950 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Leary, M. R. et al. Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Pers. Soc. Psych. Bull. 43, 793–813 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Krumrei-Mancuso, E. J. & Rouse, S. V. The development and validation of the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale. J. Pers. Assess. 98, 209–221 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N. & Witvliet, C. V. Humility. Curr. Dir. Psych. Sci. 28, 463–468 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Merton, R. K. Science and technology in a democratic order. J. Leg. Pol. Soc. 1, 115–126 (1942).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Vinkers, C. H., Tijdink, J. K. & Otte, W. M. Use of positive and negative words in scientific PubMed abstracts between 1974 and 2014: retrospective analysis. BMJ 351, h6467 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Yarkoni, T. The generalizability crisis. Behav. Brain Sci. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20001685 (2020).

  11. Riddle, T. Linguistic overfitting in empirical psychology. Preprint at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qasde (2018).

  12. Anderson, M. S., Martinson, B. C. & De Vries, R. Normative dissonance in science: results from a national survey of US scientists. J. Empir. Res. Hum. Res. Ethics 2, 3–14 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Mitroff, I. I. Norms and counter-norms in a select group of the Apollo moon scientists: a case study of the ambivalence of scientists. Am. Soc. Rev. 39, 579–595 (1974).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Sessions, R. How a ‘difficult’ composer gets that way. New York Times (8 January 1950).

  15. Bem, D. J. in The Compleat Academic: A Practical Guide for the Beginning Social Scientist (eds Darley, J. M. et al.) Ch. 10 (American Psychological Association, 2004).

  16. Kail, R. V. Reflections on five years as editor. APS Observer https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/reflections-on-five-years-as-editor (2012).

  17. Nosek, B. A. et al. Promoting an open research culture. Science 348, 1422–1425 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Davis, W. E. et al. Peer-review guidelines promoting replicability and transparency in psychological science. Adv. Methods Pract. Psychol. Sci. 1, 556–573 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Morey, R. D. et al. The Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative: incentivizing open research practices through peer review. R. Soc. Open Sci. 3, 150547 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. & Simonsohn, U. A 21 word solution. Soc. Pers. Soc. Psych. Dial. 26, 4–7 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  21. Chambers, C. D. Registered Reports: a new publishing initiative at Cortex. Cortex 49, 609–610 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Loftus, G. R. A picture is worth a thousand P values: on the irrelevance of hypothesis testing in the microcomputer age. Behav. Res. Meth. Inst. Comp. 25, 250–256 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Dragicevic, P., Jansen, Y., Sarma, A., Kay, M. & Chevalier, F. Increasing the transparency of research papers with explorable multiverse analyses. In Proc. 2019 Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems (eds Brewster, S. et al.) Paper no. 65 (Association for Computing Machinery, 2019).

  24. Steegen, S., Tuerlinckx, F., Gelman, A. & Vanpaemel, W. Increasing transparency through a multiverse analysis. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 11, 702–712 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Wagenmakers, E. J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., van der Maas, H. L. & Kievit, R. A. An agenda for purely confirmatory research. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 7, 632–638 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Hoekstra, R., Finch, S., Kiers, H. A. L. & Johnson, A. Probability as certainty: dichotomous thinking and the misuse of P values. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 13, 1033–1037 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Van der Bles, A. M. et al. Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science. R. Soc. Open Sci. 6, 181870 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Hoekstra, R. Risk as an explanatory factor for researchers’ inferential interpretations. Math. Enthus. 12, 103–112 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wasserstein, R. L., Schirm, A. L. & Lazar, N. A. Moving to a world beyond ‘P < 0.05’. Am. Stat. 73, 1–19 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Etz, A. & Vandekerckhove, J. Introduction to Bayesian inference for psychology. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 25, 5–34 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Ly, A. et al. Bayesian reanalyses from summary statistics: a guide for academic consumers. Adv. Methods Pract. Psychol. Sci. 1, 367–374 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Vazire, S. Editorial. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 7, 3–7 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Simons, D. J., Shoda, Y. & Lindsay, D. S. Constraints on generality (COG): a proposed addition to all empirical papers. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 12, 1123–1128 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. IJzerman, H. et al. Use caution when applying behavioural science to policy. Nat. Hum. Behav. 4, 1092–1094 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Flake, J. K., & Fried, E. I. Measurement schmeasurement: questionable measurement practices and how to avoid them. Preprint at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hs7wm (2019).

  36. Schubert, S. Hedge-drift and advanced motte-and-bailey. LessWrong Blog https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oMYeJrQmCeoY5sEzg/hedge-drift-and-advanced-motte-and-bailey (2016).

  37. Sumner, P. et al. The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study. BMJ 349, g7015 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Rohrer, J. M. et al. Putting the self in self-correction: findings from the loss-of-confidence project. Perspect. Psychol. Sci., https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620964106 (2021).

  39. Yarkoni, T. (2018). No, it’s not the incentives—it’s you. Talyarkoni Blog https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/ (2018).

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank A. Allard, A. Holcombe, H. Kiers, L. King, S. Lindsay and D. Trafimow for valuable input for this paper.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Rink Hoekstra, Simine Vazire.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Rink Hoekstra

  2. University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Simine Vazire

  3. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Simine Vazire

Authors
  1. Rink Hoekstra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simine Vazire
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rink Hoekstra.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hoekstra, R., Vazire, S. Aspiring to greater intellectual humility in science. Nat Hum Behav 5, 1602–1607 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01203-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01203-8

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing