Adversarial collaboration: (Open) Science at its best by Dr Tim Rakow

About the speaker

Dr Tim Rakow is a Reader in Psychology at King’s College London. He has over 20 years experience of supervising research and teaching research methods to psychology students. Tim uses a range of research strategies to examine human judgment and decision making. He has published over 50 research articles in more than 25 different academic journals, spanning the disciplines of psychology, health, medicine, decision science and behavioural economics. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Thinking & Reasoning and co-author of the 1^st EMEA Edition of the Cengage textbook Research Methods for the Behavioural Sciences.

About the talk

Adversarial collaboration is an approach to resolving scientific disputes, wherein researchers who have different positions on the issue at hand collaborate with the aim of making progress on their disputed research question. Adversarial collaboration sits squarely within the open science framework because it puts a premium on transparency in hypothesis specification, study design, data analysis, study interpretation and reporting – and supplies a framework that can encourage rigour in these components of the research process. This talk will use examples of published adversarial collaborations to give an overview of the approach, outlining some of its key features, and identifying potential benefits of the approach.