Class #11: Replication and Good Science

1. I added other important ethical issues to the last post (Class #10), including “Vulnerable populations” and “Scientific misconduct”.

2. Types of replication studies:
–Direct replication: Straight from the source; could fail due to the change of the historical background
–Conceptual replication: Re-testing the same theoretical idea using different manipulations
-Replication-plus-extension: Re-testing the original study + adding new variables

3. The Replication Crisis (What might go wrong?)

• Contextually sensitive effects
• Number of replication attempts
• Problems with original study
  • Sample size: Too small
  • Harking: Claiming hypothesis after findings
  • P-hacking: Doing 100,000 analysis, but only reporting the significant results and claiming that’s all they’ve done
• Journals tend to only report new findings but not replication studies

4. What can we do?

• Larger sample sizes
• Report all analyses and variable
• Open Science Collaboration
• Preregistration