The Restrain Food Database: validation of an open-source database of foods that should be eaten more or less as part of a healthy diet

Studies of food-related behaviours often involve measuring responses to pictorial stimuli of foods. Creating these can be burdensome, requiring a significant commitment of time, and with sharing of images for future research constrained by legal copyright restrictions. The Restrain Food Database is an open-source database of 626 images of foods that are categorized as those people could eat more or less of as part of a healthy diet. This paper describes the database and details how to navigate it using our purpose-built R Shiny tool and a pre-registered online validation of a sample of images. A total of 2150 participants provided appetitive ratings, perceptions of nutritional content and ratings of image quality for images from the database. We found support for differences between Food Category on appetitive ratings which were also moderated by state hunger ratings. Findings relating to individual differences in appetite ratings as well as differences between BMI weight categories are also reported. Our findings validate the food categorization in the Restrain Food Database and provide descriptive information for individual images within this investigation. This database should ease the burden of selecting and creating appropriate images for future studies.

Post-publication critique at top-ranked journals across scientific disciplines: a cross-sectional assessment of policies and practice

Journals exert considerable control over letters, commentaries and online comments that criticize prior research (post-publication critique). We assessed policies (Study One) and practice (Study Two) related to post-publication critique at 15 top-ranked journals in each of 22 scientific disciplines (N = 330 journals). Two-hundred and seven (63%) journals accepted post-publication critique and often imposed limits on length (median 1000, interquartile range (IQR) 500-1200 words) and time-to-submit (median 12, IQR 4-26 weeks). The most restrictive limits were 175 words and two weeks; some policies imposed no limits. Of 2066 randomly sampled research articles published in 2018 by journals accepting post-publication critique, 39 (1.9%, 95% confidence interval [1.4, 2.6]) were linked to at least one post-publication critique (there were 58 post-publication critiques in total). Of the 58 post-publication critiques, 44 received an author reply, of which 41 asserted that original conclusions were unchanged. Clinical Medicine had the most active culture of post-publication critique: all journals accepted post-publication critique and published the most post-publication critique overall, but also imposed the strictest limits on length (median 400, IQR 400-550 words) and time-to-submit (median 4, IQR 4-6 weeks). Our findings suggest that top-ranked academic journals often pose serious barriers to the cultivation, documentation and dissemination of post-publication critique.

Beyond online participant crowdsourcing: The benefits and opportunities of big team addiction science

Participant crowdsourcing platforms (e.g., MTurk, Prolific) offer numerous advantages to addiction science, permitting access to hard-to-reach populations and enhancing the feasibility of complex experimental, longitudinal, and intervention studies. Yet these are met with equal concerns about participant nonnaivety, motivation, and careless responding, which if not considered can greatly compromise data quality. In this article, we discuss an alternative crowdsourcing avenue that overcomes these issues whilst presenting its own unique advantages-crowdsourcing researchers through big team science. First, we review several contemporary efforts within psychology (e.g., ManyLabs, Psychological Science Accelerator) and the benefits these would yield if they were more widely implemented in addiction science. We then outline our own consortium-based approach to empirical dissertations: a grassroots initiative that trains students in reproducible big team addiction science. In doing so, we discuss potential challenges and their remedies, as well as providing resources to help addiction researchers develop these initiatives. Through researcher crowdsourcing, together we can answer fundamental scientific questions about substance use and addiction, build a literature that is representative of a diverse population of researchers and participants, and ultimately achieve our goal of promoting better global health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The past, present and future of Registered Reports

Registered Reports are a form of empirical publication in which study proposals are peer reviewed and pre-accepted before research is undertaken. By deciding which articles are published based on the question, theory and methods, Registered Reports offer a remedy for a range of reporting and publication biases. Here, we reflect on the history, progress and future prospects of the Registered Reports initiative and offer practical guidance for authors, reviewers and editors. We review early evidence that Registered Reports are working as intended, while at the same time acknowledging that they are not a universal solution for irreproducibility. We also consider how the policies and practices surrounding Registered Reports are changing, or must change in the future, to address limitations and adapt to new challenges. We conclude that Registered Reports are promoting reproducibility, transparency and self-correction across disciplines and may help reshape how society evaluates research and researchers.

Effects of go/no-go training on food-related action tendencies, liking and choice

Inhibitory control training effects on behaviour (e.g. 'healthier' food choices) can be driven by changes in affective evaluations of trained stimuli, and theoretical models indicate that changes in action tendencies may be a complementary mechanism. In this preregistered study, we investigated the effects of food-specific go/no-go training on action tendencies, liking and impulsive choices in healthy participants. In the training task, energy-dense foods were assigned to one of three conditions: 100% inhibition (no-go), 0% inhibition (go) or 50% inhibition (control). Automatic action tendencies and liking were measured pre- and post-training for each condition. We found that training did not lead to changes in approach bias towards trained foods (go and no-go relative to control), but we warrant caution in interpreting this finding as there are important limitations to consider for the employed approach-avoidance task. There was only anecdotal evidence for an effect on food liking, but there was evidence for contingency learning during training, and participants were on average less likely to choose a no-go food compared to a control food after training. We discuss these findings from both a methodological and theoretical standpoint and propose that the mechanisms of action behind training effects be investigated further.