Keynote

Science in Textbooks and Science in Practice: Two Different Worlds?

In general, the public worldwide still trusts science rather strongly, but one might ask the question to what extent scientific knowledge can indeed be trusted. Firstly, Gert Storms will review both historical and more recent cases of fraud in science. Secondly, Storms will present data from anonymous questionnaires about so called ‘questionable research practices’ and direct and indirect evidence for the scale of the problem, explaining key notions like p-hacking, harking, power problems, paper mill papers and file drawing. Storms will conclude with some psychological perspectives on scientific misconduct and ask the question whether science, as described in textbooks, is, after all, all too human.

Gert Storms studied psychology at the University of Leuven, where he obtained his PhD in mathematical psychology. His research focuses on semantic memory, psycholinguistics and scaling of psychological data. He has been interested in scientific misconduct for more than 40 years. He has been a member of the Flemish Commission for Research Integrity since 2017 of which he is currently the chair.