HARKing: Conceptualizations, Harms, and Two Fundamental Remedies

Since formalization of the concept by Kerr (Most underappreciated: 50 prominent social psychologists describe their most unloved work, 1998, Oxford University Press, p. 126), HARKing (Hypothesizing After Results are Known) has received increasing attention in psychology. However, with increasing attention has come a loosening of the original conceptualization of HARKing. Clarification of the concept as consisting of two core components (accommodation and false disclosure) is used to summarize recent insights into the nature of HARKing, its major variants (CHARKing, RHARKing, and SHARKing), its potential theoretical, methodological, empirical, and ethical harms, and remedies proposed to address these harms. It is concluded that despite a variety of proposed remedies to address the potential harms of HARKing, two remedies offer the most fundamental means of reducing the prevalence and negative impact of HARKing. These two remedies are systemic reliance on direct replication of one's own empirical work, and more controversially, systemic de-emphasizing of the hypothetical-deductive (HD) ideal as the superior approach to conducting psychology research.