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Psychologists Strike a Blow For Reproducibility

ananyo writes "Science has a much publicized reproducibility problem. Many experiments seem to be failing a key test of science — that they can be independently verified by another lab. But now 36 research groups have struck a blow for reproducibility, by successfully reproducing the results of 10 out of 13 past experiments in psychology. Even so, the Many Labs Replication Project found that the outcome of one experiment was only weakly supported and they could not replicate two of the experiments at all."

2 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not bad at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fact that people are trying to reproduce the experiments is good news in and of itself.

  2. Re:Not bad at all by bondsbw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the scientific community valued reproducibility as much as original work, we would solve 2 problems:

    1) Science without confirmation can lead us astray for years.
    2) There are plenty of scientists who a great at experimentation but lousy at coming up with new ideas, and these scientists (or potential scientists) may not be finding their full potential.

    And while we're at it, let's value failed experiments as much as successful experiments.

    --
    All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.