Data Colada

[1] Around 2011, Simmons, Nelson and Simonsohn "bonded over the false, ridiculous, and flashy findings that the field [of behavioral sciences] was capable of producing", such as a paper by Cornell psychologist Daryl Bem that had supposedly found evidence for clairvoyance.

[2] They reacted by publishing an influential[1] 2011 paper about false positive results in psychology, illustrating the problem with a parody research finding that supposedly showed that listening to the Beatles song "When I’m Sixty-Four" made experimental subjects one and a half years younger.

[2] The "Data Colada" blog was launched two years later, in 2013, carrying the tagline "Thinking about evidence, and vice versa", becoming what the New York Times described as "a hub for nerdy discussions of statistical methods — and, before long, various research crimes and misdemeanors".

[1] In particular, the three researchers objected to the then widespread practice of cherry-picking data and attempts to make insignificant results appear statistically credible, especially an approach for which they coined the term p-hacking in a 2014 paper.

[3] The Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman described Data Colada in 2023 as "heroes of mine" and expressed his regret about previously endorsing research findings that the blog later showed were faulty.

"[3] On the other hand, as summarized by The New Yorker, "Data Colada's harshest critics saw the young men as jealous upstarts who didn’t understand the soft artistry of the social sciences".