However, statistical results can be manipulated (often unwittingly) leading to fallaciously high estimates of significance. Statistics is excellently suited to analyze data from well-designed experiments. Statisticians and others have been sounding the alarm about these matters for decades, to little avail.” Is the issue that statistics can’t be trusted? As the American Statistical Association wrote in a statement on the use and misuse of p values, “Nothing in the ASA statement is new. This “crisis” is a good thingįrom the perspective of most statisticians and many scientists, this “crisis” sparked a positive and much-needed debate around some of the systemic issues in science that can lead to misleading or unreplicable results. In response, some journals blamed and banned p values and classical null hypothesis testing. Scientists attempted to recreate experiments published in top-tier Psychology journals with soberingly unsuccessful results, and it has led to some alarming claims about science. You’ve probably heard of the replication crisis, where (valid) concerns have been raised questioning how many published experiments with statistically significant results could be reproduced if they were run again. Background on the replication crisis and p value controversy A reproducible experiment, then, would detail the process of sampling, data collection and experimentation sufficiently for another skilled researcher to be able to conduct the same experiment.
Often used interchangeably with replicability, reproducibility has to do with clearly laying out steps to reproduce the original experiment. Due to all sorts of factors, including random variability, this is not as common as some might think. What is replicability?Ī scientific experiment is replicable if it can be repeated with the same analytical results. In this article, we provide suggestions to increase the chances of your results being replicable.
“By chance” includes all sorts of obvious possibilities (perhaps your samples were contaminated and you never knew) as well as lesser-known ones based on math and probabilities. Most think science has a cut and dry answer, but any experimental results beg the question of whether the result would happen again or if it happened by chance. While you can’t guarantee that your experiment will be replicable, there are many steps that you can take to put your research on a solid foundation.
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