[Statlist] Symposium on Meta Science for Methods Research at UZH

[Carolin Strobl]

Dear colleagues, 

Computational and statistical methods are the heart and soul of modern research, yet it has been well documented that the practices we as methodologists use day in and day out have some notable flaws. For example, there is evidence of selective reporting, manipulation of simulation parameters, unequal treatment due to asymmetric familiarity with compared methods, improper handling of method failures, and so on. So you might say that there is a reproducibility crisis in methods research similar to the one that empirical sciences are facing. To address this, we will hold a scientific meeting focusing not on the methodological innovations themselves, like our typical conferences, but rather how we as a scientific community organize ourselves to digest the explosion of “novel” quantitative methods, what measures we can take ourselves in our roles as scientists, supervisors and reviewers to make methods research more trustworthy, but also what needs to change in institutions or the publication system to shift incentives away from problematic practices. At the event, we would like to bring together views and experiences from all methodological research disciplines, including but not limited to (bio)statistics, psychometrics, econometrics, bioinformatics, machine learning, and quantitative methods for ecology, linguistics, etc.

So please save the date for the 1st interdisciplinary symposium on Meta Science for Methods Research (MSMR 2026): 

Monday August 31st and Tuesday September 1st 2026 in Zurich, Switzerland

Attendance is possible on-site or via livestream. Presentations are only possible on-site. Submission and registration is now open, please visit the conference website for further information: https://crsuzh.pages.uzh.ch/msmr/  

Confirmed keynote speakers include:
Jean Yang, University of Sydney (Biostatistics/Bioinformatics)
Anne-Laure Boulesteix, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (Biostatistics)
Tim Morris, Novartis (Biostatistics)
Björn Siepe, Philipps-Universität Marburg (Psychological Methods)

We would appreciate it if you could forward this information to other potentially interested colleagues. 

Kind regards and hope to see you in Zurich!
Samuel Pawel, Mark Robinson and Carolin Strobl 


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Universität Zürich
Psychologisches Institut
Prof. Dr. Carolin Strobl
Lehrstuhl für Psychologische Methodenlehre, Evaluation und Statistik
Binzmühlestrasse 14, Box 27
CH-8050 Zürich

carolin.strobl at psychologie.uzh.ch
www.psychologie.uzh.ch/methoden