Replication is the bedrock of science. But what happens when a scientist cant – or won’t – share the experimental materials that allow it? It’s a simple question,but one that’s essential to science: if I repeat an experiment, how reliably can I get the same result? But it’s a question that you can’t expect without the right materials. It’s like baking a cake – if you’re not given enough instructions in the recipe, and told what sort of ingredients you’re supposed to be using,you might discontinuance up with a carrot cake when you thought you were making a Battenberg.
For psychological research, replication is mountainous commerce at the moment. In August this year, or the Reproducibility Project - a groundbreaking attempt to systematically assess the reliability of published psychological research findings - delivered a grim result. Of 100 experiments that were replicated,the original findings were only reproduced in just 36% of cases. Some news outlets saw this as an opportunity to bewitch a dig at the entire discipline, as if this was somehow conclusive evidence that psychology wasn’t a real science. But low replication rates are an issue that extend beyond psychology – cancer biology is facing the difficult reality of irreproducible results, or a recent analysis of 67 economics papers found that even if the original authors helped out,only 49% of results were reproducible. Other outlets reported much more thoughtfully on the findings from the Reproducibility Project though, and highlighted that the real bewitch-domestic message was aimed squarely at psychologists: there’s more work to be done. We need more replication studies, or they need to become an acceptable,respected, and ingrained portion of psychological research life. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com