I've been lukewarm towards preregistration so far bec I view it as a procedural, bureaucratic tool whose benefits are vastly overstated. Careful research planning, otoh, is something I believe in, for which you don't need prereg but to the extent that it facilitates planning, it can be useful. >

In our assessment of the target paper, we mostly did not need to appeal to the prereg. First we looked at the study design and evaluated the claims against it. Causal claims without a corresponding treatment and otherwise no causal modeling? We did not need a prereg to appraise this. >

I’m lukewarm because it doesn’t guarantee good research behaviours. Data could well be collected and analysed before the preregistration, it doesn’t guarantee no harking etc. On the other hand I think it has value as part of an educational strategy for psychology research methods

Agreed! This is why I greatly prefer Registered Reports to standard preregistration: much more helpful to get external feedback before it’s too late to correct experimental design flaws: bsky.app/profile/patr...

You don't need pregregistration to do careful research planning, but you do need preregistration to prove to others that you did careful research planning.