Tell a story of an experiment gone wrong to a group of experimental political scientists, and you are very likely to get a response of “if you think that is bad, here is what happened in my experiment.” Unfortunately, there is no repository of these stories, so too many people have to re-learn lessons the hard way.

This new section of the newsletter is intended as a forum to share stories of these screwups and the lessons learned by those experiencing them. The primary purpose is to help avoid the costly waste of multiple people learning lessons the hard way. It may also help reassure scholars new (and not so new) to experiments that it is normal for things to go wrong.

Submissions will be selected for inclusion based on the import of the lesson learned, clarity of writing, and an eye to sharing lessons about all types of experiments. Since the newsletter has few space constraints, we will seek to share as many lessons as possible. Our plan is to have this section be a part of each edition of the newsletter.  

Describe the lesson you learned in less than 5000 characters (~750 words).

Good storytelling and even a dash of humor is a plus.

You must identify yourself when you submit, but we will publish contributions under pseudonyms to encourage the sharing of truly embarrassing mistakes.