astronomy

Uri Simonsohn

Uri Simonsohn is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Uri Simonsohn rather than just read about it. In short: Uri Simonsohn is a behavioral scientist at ESADE Business School in Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, Spain, and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Wharton Credibility Lab at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His substantive interest is in Judgment and Decision Making, and he is also a methodologist.

Key takeaways

Uri Simonsohn belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Uri Simonsohn to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Uri Simonsohn from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Uri Simonsohn is a behavioral scientist at ESADE Business School in Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, Spain, and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Wharton Credibility Lab at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His substantive interest is in Judgment and Decision Making, and he is also a methodologist. He is originally from Chile. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Universidad Católica de Chile, and his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in Social and Decision Sciences in 2003, and became a professor of Operations Management at the Wharton School where he stayed until 2017, leaving to move to ESADE Business School in Barcelona as a full professor. He has been involved in research on false-positives, p-hacking, experimental replication, and pre-registrations of research. He has contributed to identifying various cases of scientific fraud including the work of Dirk Smeesters, Lawrence Sanna, Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino. He has also developed two R packages: groundhog, for version-control of R packages, and statuser, designed to simplify statistical output for applied researchers.

Wharton Credibility Lab Simonsohn co-directs the Wharton Credibility Lab at the University of Pennsylvania together with Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons. The lab develops and maintains several platforms aimed at improving the transparency and credibility of scientific research:

AsPredicted – a pre-registration platform for social science research, designed to be the simplest available tool for researchers to pre-register hypotheses before data collection. ResearchBox – a platform for sharing pre-registrations, data, code, and research materials in a transparent and permanently accessible way. AsCollected – a platform for archiving and sharing the materials used to collect data in research studies, such as survey instruments and experimental stimuli. p-curve.com – a web app implementing p-curve analysis, a statistical method developed by Simonsohn, Nelson, and Simmons to assess whether a set of studies contains genuine evidential value or reflects selective reporting. GRAN (Global R Archive Network) – a repository preserving all historical versions of R packages on CRAN, taken over by Simonsohn after Microsoft discontinued the service in 2023. groundhog – an R package for version-control of R packages, enabling reproducible research environments. statuser – an R package designed with the end-users of statistics in mind, simplifying the output of common statistical functions for applied researchers.

Data Colada Simonsohn is a co-founder and co-author of Data Colada, a blog launched in September 2013 together with Leif Nelson (University of California, Berkeley) and Joseph Simmons (University of Pennsylvania). The blog, subtitled "Thinking about evidence, and vice versa," focuses on statistical methodology, research credibility, and the detection of scientific misconduct. It has been described by The New York Times as "a hub for nerdy discussions of statistical methods — and, before long, various research crimes and misdemeanors." Among the blog's most notable posts are investigations into suspected data falsification, including a series presenting evidence that papers by Dan Ariely contained fabricated data, and a four-part investigation into papers by Francesca Gino that led to Harvard placing Gino on administrative leave and a subsequent defamation lawsuit against the blog's authors. Simonsohn has also identified his five personal favorite posts from the blog, spanning topics in statistical methodology and research design, which are listed at urisohn.com/colada5.

See also Data Colada Wharton Credibility Lab P-hacking Open science

References

External links Uri Simonsohn's homepage Data Colada blog Wharton Credibility Lab Uri Simonsohn on LinkedIn

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Uri Simonsohn

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Uri Simonsohn claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Uri Simonsohn before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Uri Simonsohn ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Uri Simonsohn

In research: Uri Simonsohn appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Uri Simonsohn in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Uri Simonsohn is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic staff of ESADE, American social psychologists, Carnegie Mellon University alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Uri Simonsohn outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Uri Simonsohn in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Uri Simonsohn means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Uri Simonsohn out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Uri Simonsohn in simple terms?

Why does Uri Simonsohn matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Uri Simonsohn?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Uri Simonsohn.