The replication crisis (also called the replicability crisis and the reproducibility crisis) is an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce.
What is meant by the replication crisis in psychology?
The “replication crisis” in psychology, as it is often called, started around 2010, when a paper using completely accepted experimental methods was published purporting to find evidence that people were capable of perceiving the future, which is impossible.
What is causing the replication crisis?
Replication Crisis Factor #2: Our incentives make us biased
Fierce competition , strong incentives to publish, and commercial interest have inadvertently lead to both conscious and unconscious bias in the scientific literature. And, the higher the vested interest in a field, the stronger the bias is likely to be.
Is there really a replication crisis in psychology?
For the past 10 years, psychology has been struggling through what’s called the “replication crisis.” ... It’s possible around 50 percent of the published psychological literature fails upon retesting, but no one knows precisely the extent of the instability in the foundations of psychological science.
What are at least three reasons that a replication attempt might fail?
- Original operationalizations were not relevant in replication study.
- Original sample size was small.
- Questionable research practices.
- Scientific journals want original studyies not replications.
- Publication Bias – significant differences over null effects.
What are the two types of replication?
There are two types of replication Blomquist1986: literal and construct .
How do you address a replication crisis?
- Be aware of your own biases, and take steps to mitigate them.
- Keep up to date with methodological and analytical best practice.
- Increase transparency in reporting.
- Take one step towards doing more reproducible research.
Why is replication important?
Replication is an essential process because, whenever a cell divides, the two new daughter cells must contain the same genetic information, or DNA, as the parent cell . ... Once the DNA in a cell is replicated, the cell can divide into two cells, each of which has an identical copy of the original DNA.
What are two main contributing factors to the reproducibility crisis?
Nosek and his co-authors attribute the reproducibility problem, in part, to a combination of publication bias and low-power research designs . Publications favor flashy, positive results, making it more likely that studies with larger-than-life effect sizes are chosen for publication.
When did the replication crisis start?
When did the replication crisis start? The field of psychology began to reckon with reproducibility around 2010 when a particularly dubious paper claimed to provide evidence of “precognition,” or the ability to perceive events in the future.
How serious is the replication crisis?
The replication crisis most severely affects the social sciences and medicine , while survey data strongly indicates that all of the natural sciences are probably implicated as well. ... The replication crisis represents an important body of research in the field of metascience.
Is psychology really a science?
Like all scientists, psychology researchers form hypotheses, devise experiments to gather data, and carefully analyze the results. Psychology journals are filled with such studies. Judged from this perspective, psychology is clearly a science .
Is psychology a STEM field?
Psychology is a core STEM discipline because of its direct scientific and technological innovations, as well as its indirect contributions to education and learning in science and technology.
Why do we not study replication?
Our results suggest that many of the studies failed to replicate because it was difficult to recreate , in another time and place, the exact same conditions as those of the original study. Our hypothesis was that certain topics would be more sensitive to context than others.
Why would a study not replicate?
In many cases, non-replicated research is caused by differences in the participants or in other extraneous variables that might influence the results of an experiment .
What is direct replication?
Direct replication is the repetition of an experimental procedure to as exact a degree as possible . This means that, as far as possible, the same equipment, material, stimuli, design and statistical analysis should be used.
