A good (in my opinion) trend in physics in the past decade or two has been the rise of "blind" analyses[1]. Basically, the entire analysis is predetermined, bef

A good (in my opinion) trend in physics in the past decade or two has been the rise of "blind" analyses[1]. Basically, the entire analysis is predetermined, before looking at the data. Once all the details are nailed down and everyone agrees with the approach, the blinds are taken off. There's no room for "p-hacking". This has some disadvantages, though. It requires a good understanding of the experiment so that you can figure out what an analysis will actually tell you. It's difficult to do a blind analysis on a brand new apparatus, since there can always be unanticipated problems with the data. As an example, one dark matter experiment invited a reporter to their unblinding. At first, it looked like they'd detected dark matter, but then they had to throw out most of the events because they were due to unanticipated noise in one of the photomultiplier tubes[2]. [1] http://www.slac.stanford.edu/econf/C030908/papers/TUIT001.pdf http://www.slac.stanford.edu/econf/C030908/papers/TUIT001.pd... is a quick review. [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/science/space/14dark.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/science/space/14dark.html