Sharing Is Caring: Ethical Implications of Transparent Research in Psychology

The call for greater openness in research data is quickly growing in many scientific fields. Psychology as a field, however, still falls short in this regard. Research is vulnerable to human error, inaccurate interpretation, and reporting of study results, and decisions during the research process being biased toward favorable results. Despite the obligation to share data for verification and the importance of this practice for protecting against human error, many psychologists do not fulfill their ethical responsibility of sharing their research data. This has implications for the accurate and ethical dissemination of specific research findings and the scientific development of the field more broadly. Open science practices provide promising approaches to address the ethical issues of inaccurate reporting and false-positive results in psychological research literature that hinder scientific growth and ultimately violate several relevant ethical principles and standards from the American Psychological Association's (APA's) Ethical Principles of Psychologists Code of Conduct (APA, 2017). Still, current incentive structures in the field for publishing and professional advancement appear to induce hesitancy in applying these practices. With each of these considerations in mind, recommendations on how psychologists can ethically proceed through open science practices and incentive restructuring-in particular, data management, data and code sharing, study preregistration, and registered reports-are provided. Public Significance Statement Misreporting of psychology research results and withholding data for verification upon request not only violates several principles and standards of the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code, but the publication of inaccurate findings engenders subsequent interpretation and research based on inaccurate information. The use of inaccurate and biased research findings can consequently pose risks to the general public when used in practice or implemented into policy and may undermine the credibility of the field of psychology. Open science practices and restructuring the publication process are promising approaches that align with the APA Ethics Code, which psychologists are charged to uphold in the service of public health.