Alex sat on stage, maintaining a carefully neutral expression as Dr. Sander van Dijk gestured expansively.
“The crux of the replication crisis,” Sander proclaimed, “is that we haven’t sufficiently embedded Bayesian priors within a robust Gaussian framework to counteract the heteroskedasticity inherent in latent psychological constructs.”
Alex cringed. The audience—a mix of social psychologists—blinked in polite confusion.
Dr. Lotte de Bruin leaned forward, nodding seriously. “That’s fascinating, Sander. This kind of deep theoretical thinking is exactly what psychological science needs!”
Alex nearly choked on their water. Vicarious embarrassment had reached critical levels.
Encouraged, Sander continued, “Right? The current methodological discourse lacks the ontological depth to fully integrate stochastic bifurcations in psychological theory.”
A psychologist in the audience hesitated. “I—sorry, what does that mean in practice?”
Alex seized the moment. “He means writing down hypotheses before running the analyses.”
The audience murmured in understanding.
“The core issue with reproducibility,” Sander continued, “is that we have yet to fully integrate epistemological and ontological considerations into our analytical frameworks—particularly when modeling psychological constructs through pairwise Markov random fields.”
Alex suppressed a sigh. Those are just partial correlations.
Dr. Hannah Vos, a well-respected social psychologist known for her sharp but patient demeanor, tilted her head. “I see,” she said slowly. “So, you're saying we need better statistical models that account for uncertainty in psychological effects?”
Sander beamed, mistaking her diplomacy for admiration. “Exactly! Which is why I argue that we must reframe our methodological paradigms through a Kuhnian lens, considering the stochastic—”
Alex coughed. “Or, put simply, we should stop overinterpreting p-values and consider alternative estimation techniques.”
Hannah’s lips twitched in amusement. “Yes. That’s what I thought.”
As they left the panel room, Alex caught two researchers chatting near the coffee table.
“Interesting discussion,” one mused.
The other nodded. “Yeah. That Sander guy—very impressive. You can tell he really knows his stuff.”
Alex walked straight past them and toward the coffee machine.
Queried after “Open science, closed mind”
This was great. Lets write another humurous brief story involving Alex and Dr. Sander van Dijk.
I love the idea of the academic panel! Lets make it a panel where methodologists reflect on the state of psychological science, and improving methodological practice, aimed at an audience of social psychologists. Make Dr. Sander van Dijk use a lot of smart-sounding jargon like "Gaussian distributions" instead of "normal distributions”. Include an awkward interaction with a smart social psychologist. Make Alex experience "plaatsvervangende schaamte".
I like it, but it needs another (lets make it another female social scientist) that takes Sander seriously. Also, have him mention both epistomology and ontology somewhere, as well as "pairwise markov random field" while he means partial correlations. Keep it relatively short, though.
Bring back the interaction with Hannah you had earlier. Have it end with Alex overhearing two social psychologists talking to eachother about the event.
Add back this bit "“….”"
Have the interaction between Sander and Lotte de Bruin come before the interaction between Sander and Hannah. Remove the interaction between Alex and Hannah.
Great. Adapt the title to include Methods and Stats.