Workshop "Statistical standards for scientific discovery in linguistics: a practical introduction"

This three-day workshop will focus on the discussion of the three main causes of the “replicability crisis” that social sciences are currently undergoing: 1) observations and experiments are carried out on samples that are too small to properly observe the investigated effects, 2) the current standard for claiming significant discoveries is based on p-values, which pose several problems (e.g. they do not indicate the size of the observed effects, they can suffer important alterations depending on small modifications of the data, eventually leading to “p-hacking”, and they are poorly understood by many researchers), and 3) strong pressure for publishing only significant results has lead to a publication bias caused by the reluctance to publish negative results, which precludes a great amount of relevant data highly needed to reject type I errors (i.e. false positives) from getting published.

Confirmed invited speakers

Harald Baayen (University of Tübingen)

Regina Nuzzo (Stanford University)

Joaquín Ordieres (Polytechnical University of Madrid)

David  Colquhoun (University College London)

Round table

Balthasar Bickel (University of Zurich)

Thoralf Mildenberger (Zurich University of Applied Sciences)

Maarloes Maathuis (ETH)

Tanja Samardžić (University of Zurich)

The workshop is especially aimed at doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. It has a strong practical focus, combining plenary conferences with short presentations by participants as well as practical sessions accompanied by the experts.

Funding by the UZH Graduate Campus via a GRC Grant is gratefully acknowledged.