About 40% of economics experiments fail replication survey
Compared with psychology, the replication rate "is rather good," researchers say
Compared with psychology, the replication rate "is rather good," researchers say
Reanalysis of last year's enormous replication study argues that there is no need to be so pessimistic.
We revisit the results of the recent Reproducibility Project: Psychology by the Open Science Collaboration. We compute Bayes factors—a quantity that can be used to express comparative evidence for an hypothesis but also for the null hypothesis—for a large subset ( N = 72) of the original papers and their corresponding replication attempts. In our computation, we take into account the likely scenario that publication bias had distorted the originally published results. Overall, 75% of studies gave qualitatively similar results in terms of the amount of evidence provided. However, the evidence was often weak (i.e., Bayes factor < 10). The majority of the studies (64%) did not provide strong evidence for either the null or the alternative hypothesis in either the original or the replication, and no replication attempts provided strong evidence in favor of the null. In all cases where the original paper provided strong evidence but the replication did not (15%), the sample size in the replication was smaller than the original. Where the replication provided strong evidence but the original did not (10%), the replication sample size was larger. We conclude that the apparent failure of the Reproducibility Project to replicate many target effects can be adequately explained by overestimation of effect sizes (or overestimation of evidence against the null hypothesis) due to small sample sizes and publication bias in the psychological literature. We further conclude that traditional sample sizes are insufficient and that a more widespread adoption of Bayesian methods is desirable.
New startups like this one are trying to disrupt traditional academic publishing.
A look at the PLoS ONE paper on a hand designed by “the Creator”
Apparently creationist research prompts soul searching over process of editing and peer review.
Limited institutional resources mean that single parents often need a network of support to further their scientific careers.
Children’s ages, peer environment quality, and recent funding affect decisions to move to new institutions, a new study suggests
Fewer than half of academies have policies in place to boost gender equality in membership.
A report on international academic collaboration across the UK research base and on the implications of EU and global collaboration for universities, research assessment and the economy.
Is science quite as scientific as it's supposed to be? After years of covering science in the news, Alok Jha began to wonder whether science is as rigorous as it should be.
A review on the open citation advantage, media attention for publicly available research, collaborative possibilities, and special funding opportunities to show how open practices can give researchers a competitive advantage.
Policy statement aims to halt missteps in the quest for certainty: the misuse of the P value is contributing to the number of research findings that cannot be reproduced warns the American Statistical Association.
Ben Goldacre on why a ban on researchers speaking to politicians and policymakers fails the taxpayers who fund them
Tianhui Michael Li and Allison Bishop write about the overemphasis on calculus in high school and college math courses. Statistics, linear algebra and algorithmic thinking are more valuable in the digital age.
From multicoloured scans of the human body, to vivid photos of creatures up close - the finalists of the annual Wellcome Image Awards.
New Chinese 5-year plan promises 2.5% R&D:GDP ratio by 2020, up from 2.05% in 2014.
How do retractions influence the scholarly impact of retracted papers, authors, and institutions; and how does this influence propagate to the wider academic community through scholarly associations?
Jisc Digifest hears openness could bring benefits, but some cite plagiarism risks
Conference aims to raise awareness of shared resources for building lab equipment.
Silicon Valley’s hoodie-wearing tech entrepreneurs are the poster kids of innovation. But the innovators who are really changing the world are more likely to wear labcoats and hold government-related jobs in Grenoble, Munich or Tokyo. That's the conclusion of Reuters’ Top 25 Global Innovators – Government, a list that identifies and ranks the publicly funded institutions doing the most to advance science and technology.
Women do more of the day-to-day labor of science while men are credited with more of the big-picture thinking.
Science self-regulation allows detecting more quickly and accurately methodological flaws, fraudulent results and conflicts of interest that may affect the credibility of the discovery. However, it also opens room for disproportionate reactions.
Three UK neuroscientists jointly win the €1 million European Brain Prize for their work on memory.
Intelligence project aims to reverse-engineer the brain to find algorithms that allow computers to think more like humans.