Welcome Simine! Our New Cajoler-in-Chief

Stop Press:

Metascience

“Is metascience, and promotion of Open Science practices, the most urgent and consequential field for all of science at present? Maybe yes.” I wrote that about the latest AIMOS meeting (here). Now a leading metascientist is the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Science, arguably psychology’s flagship journal. Rejoice!

Psychological Science leading

Eric Eich probably first brought statistics reform and Open Science to many researchers’ consciousness with his famous editorial Business Not As Usual in Jan 2014. Following the editorial was my The New Statistics: Why and How, commissioned by Eric. Submitting authors suddenly needed to do things very differently–in a good way. Eric kept the advances coming.

Steve Lindsay, next in the job, kept up the progress. He modestly summarized the advances he and Eric had made in Swan Song Editorial at the end of 2019. I posted about that here. Progress has continued since.

Simine

In June 2019 Simine posted had i been editor in chief–her Vision Statement submitted as part of selection of the previous Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Science. It remains a fascinating read. It struck me at the time as about the strongest application anyone could possibly make. I won’t speculate how she might have revised her statement this time round but, happily, it did the job.

Simine now lives in Sydney with her newish husband Alex Holcombe, also a psychologist and metascientist. As noted above, Simine’s appointment is at the University of Melbourne. When in Melbourne she often stays with Fiona Fidler, her co-director of the MetaMelb Lab.

Join with me in wishing Simine all strength in her new role as Cajoler-in-Chief of us all to keep pushing for better.

Geoff