About this episode

This episode discusses the problem of miscitation in scientific literature and its implications.

In this episode, we discuss the problem of miscitation. How often are citations to the scientific literature outright misleading? Do we really need to spell out that people are supposed to read what they cite? What can we learn from other fields? Or should we just live with the fact that a decent percentage of citations in the literature are wrong? Enjoy. Careless citations don't just spread scientific myths – they can make them stronger (Nature) Cobb, C. L., Crumly, B., Montero-Zamora, P., Schwartz, S. J., & Martínez Jr, C. R. (2024). The problem of miscitation in psychological science: Righting the ship. American Psychologist, 79(2), 299–311. Simmering, M. J., Fuller, C. M., Leonard, S. R., & Simmering, V. R. (2025). Cognitive biases and research miscitations. Applied Psychology, 74(1), e12589. Qinyue Liu, Amira Barhoumi, Cyril Labbé. (2024). Miscitations in scientific papers: Dataset and detection. International Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval. Glasgow, United Kingdom. Lazonder, A. W., & Janssen, N. (2022). Quotation accuracy in educational research articles. Educational Research Review, 35(1), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2021.100430…

People in this episode

Hosts: Smriti Mehta, Daniël Lakens

Topics covered

• miscitation
• scientific literature
• citation accuracy
• psychological science
• cognitive biases

Keywords

• miscitation
• scientific citations
• research accuracy
• cognitive biases
• psychological science

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The problem of miscitation in psychological science: Righting the ship, Cognitive biases and research miscitations, Miscitations in scientific papers: Dataset and detection, Quotation accuracy in educational research articles, The energies of men, Mind Myths: Exploring Everyday Mysteries

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