A few thoughts:
It seems to be very easy to immediately jump to the fancy methods, the complex techniques, and to the stuff with bells and whistles. As a pretty green academic, I find myself drawn to the methods and statistical techniques that look and are complicated. I am in dangerous territory if I forget that complicated does not necessarily mean better. After all, the plethora of statistics we have are not for looking smart, they are there to answer specific questions. Just like with strength and conditioning programs, the basics are the most important parts of the process, and when you jump straight to what is complicated or looks cool, you’re in trouble. With regard to research, I will paraphrase something I was told by a professor awhile ago – ‘years ago, we mostly used t-tests and correlations, yet we still managed to figure stuff out’.