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If the findings can’t be replicated, were they worth publishing to begin with? I know there is pressure to publish, but the effect on society is significantly g
by jonhohle 3y ago
If the findings can’t be replicated, were they worth publishing to begin with? I know there is pressure to publish, but the effect on society is significantly greater than a single researcher’s personal job security. If nothing else, papers with expensive or one-off experiments should be clearly marked as observations that should not be relied on as foundational for other work until replicated. When they’re cited peer reviewers could make sure they are referenced as such without requiring the peer reviewer to intimately know the details of the reference.
- the_snooze 3y agoI'm in a different field (computer security and privacy) and I want to point out that the notion of "replication" is trickier than what you might expect. Let's say I do a simple empircal measurement study, say on network traffic on some piece of internet infrastructure day-by-day in the year 2020. I find there's a huge sustained increase starting in mid-March, sustaining through the end of the year. I submit my results for publication. How can someone replicate those results, when the measurements were subject to conditions unique to that observation period? The best anyone can do is to replicate my statistics/analysis if I gave them my data set. That's different notion of replication. Would you consider that sufficient?