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This seems to be a separable point, though. The issue here is not the act of pre-registration, but the friction it imposes. I know most of the experiments and research I have done could have been summarized at the time in 10 minutes - to the effect of "I will manipulate variable X over time ranges Y, this is supported by <source or professional explanation> and I expect Z", or even "We performed a gradient over variables X and Y expecting to modulate Z and looked for phenotypes not previously described for further characterization".

My experience in research is that there is very little pre-commitment on this level of granularity. Grant applications should be at the level of "We hope to study X because it is known to be correlated with Y and are hoping to elucidate a mechanistic relationship between these two". The experiments which go into proving such should more closely resemble mathematical proofs, is a viewpoint I currently hold.



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