A new Op/Ed in PNAS takes up the reproducibility crisis.
A. D Redish, E. Kummerfeld, R. L. Morris, A. Love (2018) “Opinion: Reproducibility failures are essential to scientific inquiry” PNAS 115(20):5042-5046. [Journal Site]
Takeaway quote from the Abstract
Most importantly, these proposed policy changes ignore a core feature of the process of scientific inquiry that occurs after reproducibility failures: the integration of conflicting observations and ideas into a coherent theory.
As you will see, they had me at:
In many of these cases, what have been called “failures to replicate” are actually failures to generalize across what researchers hoped were inconsequential changes in background assumptions or experimental conditions
(Oh, wait, they cited me! AHAHAA, of course I like this thing!)
Seriously though, this is good stuff. Go read. Bookmark to forward to anyone who starts in on how there is a reproducibility “crisis”.
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