1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility

Monya Baker

doi:10.1038/533452a

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1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility

Monya Baker (2016)

Published: May 25, 2016
Journal: Nature · Vol. 533 · No. 7604
DOI: 10.1038/533452a

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At a Glance

Nature asks 1,576 researchers if there's a crisis — 52% say "significant crisis," and yet 73% still trust the literature.

SummaryAI

A Nature survey of researchers across disciplines. Over 70% have tried and failed to reproduce someone else's work; over 50% have failed to reproduce their own. The top factors blamed: selective reporting, pressure to publish, low statistical power. Yet paradoxically, most respondents still trust the published literature, and less than 31% think failure to replicate means the original result is wrong. A snapshot of collective cognitive dissonance.

Background

common sense

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We are used to treating science as a source of knowledge that can be trusted a priori. But is this really the case? How much can we trust the results of psychological studies when making important decisions about our mental health and well-being. This collection contains articles devoted to checking psychological experiments — how well they can be replicated. In doing so, I examine two independent cohorts of studies: the reproducibility of the experiments themselves within large independent studies, as well as the reproducibility of meta-analyses. The latter are especially relevant, since the media often refer specifically to their conclusions.

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In 2016, 72% of scientists still believed the scientific literature; I wonder how many do now? Interestingly, scientists trust their OWN field more...

— ES