Experimental deception: Science, performance, and reproducibility

Experimental deception has not been seriously examined in terms of its impact on reproducible science. I demonstrate, using data from the Open Science Collaboration’s Reproducibility Project (2015), that experiments involving deception have a higher probability of not replicating and have smaller effect sizes compared to experiments that do not have deception procedures. This trend is possibly due to missing information about the context and performance of agents in the studies in which the original effects were generated, leading to either compromised internal validity, or an incomplete specification and control of variables in replication studies. Of special interest are the mechanisms by which deceptions are implemented and how these present challenges for the efficient transmission of critical information from experimenter to participant. I rehearse possible frameworks that might form the basis of a future research program on experimental deception and make some recommendations as to how such a program might be initiated.