TY - JOUR TI - Navigating the garden of forking paths for data exclusions in fear conditioning research AU - Lonsdorf, Tina B AU - Klingelhöfer-Jens, Maren AU - Andreatta, Marta AU - Beckers, Tom AU - Chalkia, Anastasia AU - Gerlicher, Anna AU - Jentsch, Valerie L AU - Meir Drexler, Shira AU - Mertens, Gaetan AU - Richter, Jan AU - Sjouwerman, Rachel AU - Wendt, Julia AU - Merz, Christian J A2 - de Lange, Floris P A2 - Shackman, Alexander A2 - Bradford, Daniel A2 - Larson, Christine A2 - Balderston, Nick VL - 8 PY - 2019 DA - 2019/12/16 SP - e52465 C1 - eLife 2019;8:e52465 DO - 10.7554/eLife.52465 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52465 AB - In this report, we illustrate the considerable impact of researcher degrees of freedom with respect to exclusion of participants in paradigms with a learning element. We illustrate this empirically through case examples from human fear conditioning research, in which the exclusion of ‘non-learners’ and ‘non-responders’ is common – despite a lack of consensus on how to define these groups. We illustrate the substantial heterogeneity in exclusion criteria identified in a systematic literature search and highlight the potential problems and pitfalls of different definitions through case examples based on re-analyses of existing data sets. On the basis of these studies, we propose a consensus on evidence-based rather than idiosyncratic criteria, including clear guidelines on reporting details. Taken together, we illustrate how flexibility in data collection and analysis can be avoided, which will benefit the robustness and replicability of research findings and can be expected to be applicable to other fields of research that involve a learning element. KW - learning KW - memory KW - exclusion KW - outlier KW - bias KW - non-learner JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -