ArticleDiscover psychology2023
Law and psychology must think critically about effect sizes.
Article in Discover psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This comment examines a threat to the development of law and psychology as a "public science" (i.e., one that goes beyond theory to address important issues in society), a failure to think critically about effect sizes. Effect sizes estimate the strength or magnitude of the relationship between variables and therefore can help decision makers understand whether scientific results are relevant to some legal or policy outcome. Accordingly, I suggest that those conducting and reporting law and psychology research should: (1) justify why observed effect sizes are meaningful and report them candidly and transparently, (2) scrutinize effect sizes to determine if they are plausible, and (3) plan studies such that they fit with the researchers' inferential goals. I explore these points by way of case studies on influential law and psychology studies, such as implicit bias in the courtroom. I end with suggestions for implementing my recommendations, including a metaresearch agenda for law and psychology.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.