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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Pre-registered research"
+description: ""
+category: [Research]
+tags: [clinical trials,pre-registered research]
+---
+
+{% include JB/setup %}
+
+[Clinical trials have had a pre-registration protocol](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/manage-recs/background) 
+for a while now. Basically, if you want to run a clinical trial, you have to 
+specify how you will conduct your research including how you will analyze it
+once the data have been collected.
+This pre-registration attempts to avoid so-called [p-hacking](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002106)
+and the [publication bias](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/more-and-more-scientists-are-preregistering-their-studies-should-you) that results.
+P-hacking is a term for the situation where a researcher 
+(intentionally or unintentionally) explores (mines) their data to determine what relationships result
+in a statistically significant result and then they publish those results.
+By requiring you to specify in advance how analyses will be performed, 
+you cannot (intentionally or unintentionally) p-hack.
+
+Unfortunately, pre-registration of research is not a common practice, 
+but more and more options are available for pre-registration. 
+Today, [PLOS ONE](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/) announced that the
+will provide a mechanism for [Registered Reports](https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2020/01/submit-your-registered-report-to-plos-one/).
+Like many pre-registration options, there are two stages to the PLOS ONE 
+Registered Report Process:
+1) Registered Report Protocol and 
+2) Registered Report Research Article.
+In the Registered Report Protocol, the research writes up what they plan to do
+and this undergoes peer-review the way a typical article would except that there
+are no results.
+Once the Registered Report Protocol has been approved, 
+the researcher conducts their research according to the Registered Report Protocol. 
+Once completed, a Research Article is submitted and its adherence to the 
+Registered Report Protocol is evaluated through peer-review. 
+In this second step, the only thing that matters is how well the actual research
+followed the protocol. 
+
+Now, this is still not a fool-proof system. 
+One way to game the system is to pre-register lots and lots of possibilities 
+and then only follow-up on the ones that worked. 
+I think there should be a limit to how much you can pre-register or, perhaps,
+you get credit for writing final reports of pre-registered studies and you can
+use these credits to write more pre-registrations.
+Also somebody could keep track of pre-registered 
+studies with no final report. 
+
+Another way to game the system is to try lots of things (without pre-registering), 
+registering the things that worked, and then publishing those things. 
+We can eliminate this if only pre-registered studies would be taken seriously.
+Any other ideas?
+
+Of course, most research is not a straight path. That is, things come up that
+you have to deal with. Ideally this is spelled out in the pre-registration,
+but what if it isn't.
+Obviously, the adherence to the protocol will likely never be 100% but the
+peer-reviewers in the second step above should determine whether the researchers
+made a good-faith effort to abide by their registered protocol.
+