View source for Replication (Science)

'''Replication''' in science is the process of reproducing a study's methods and procedures to verify whether its findings are reliable and generalizable. It is the empirical backbone of the scientific method: a claim that cannot be independently reproduced is not a scientific claim but a report of a single event. Replication transforms anecdote into evidence by subjecting results to the test of whether they hold under different conditions, different investigators, and different samples.\n\nThe replication crisis that emerged in psychology and other fields in the 2010s revealed that a substantial fraction of published findings — especially in experimental social psychology — could not be reproduced. This was not merely a problem of fraudulent or incompetent researchers. It was a systemic problem: the institutional incentives of science reward novel, positive, and surprising findings while penalizing replication studies, which are seen as unoriginal and unpublishable. The very structure of [[Peer review|peer review]] and funding mechanisms discouraged the empirical verification that science claims to value.\n\n[[Category:Science]]\n[[Category:Methodology]]