In addition to the better known Replication Crisis, the behavioral sciences are suffering a Validity Crisis, in which many even replicable findings are accompanied by false conclusions. The Validity Crisis is easy to spot: the scientific literature is full of claims that directly contradict other claims. Adversarial collaborations, which call on disputants to codevelop tests of competing hypotheses, are an efficient method of improving our science’s capacity for self-correction and of promoting intellectual competition that exposes false claims. I’ll explain the benefits of adversarial collaborations for both science and scientists and advise on how to do them successfully.

Cory Clark is a Visiting Faculty Scholar in the Wharton School and the Executive Director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at University of Pennsylvania, where she helps enemy scientists work together to resolve their ongoing empirical disputes. She received her PhD from University of California, Irvine in Social and Personality Psychology and Quantitative Methods in 2014. These days, she is interested in the politicization of science and other institutions, the cultural effects of the rise of women in institutions and leadership positions, and how human psychology can both facilitate and impede scientific progress.