Pre-registration would put science in chains

I think that several of your criticisms of pre-registration may come from misunderstanding of what pre-registration is. Pre-registration does not forbid descriptive or exploratory research; it only makes certain that exploratory research is not labeled as confirmatory research. You mention that populations introduce complexity and noise, that humans are "dirty test tubes." At what point does a scientist know she has parsed out the complexity and noise rather than fit conclusions to noise? Without a confirmatory, preregistered replication, it is sometimes hard to tell what is truth and what is post-hoc rationalization. It is one thing to say "Exploring the data, it appears the effect may hold only for men but not for women," and it is another to say "Consistent with our predictions, the effect held only for men but not for women."